Real

Mission impossible

So our first mission on the island was to find a spot where they’d sell kroketten. As a kroket is a Dutch snack and we ran in to a café called Amsterdam in Sanur, that seemed like the logical first place to go. And they did indeed have kroketten. But they were not approved by Rolf as “like the ones we have back home”. Even though we had some more run inns with kroketten, none of them turned out to be the “real thing” and Rolfs cravings have been left unsatisfied.

Getting some culture

Lucky for us, it turns out that in Indonesia they also have some wonderful Indonesian food. We loved the nasi campur, gado gado and all kinds of dishes that were new to us.

As the Indonesian way of driving kind of scared us, we were happy to find a driver for a day to show us around. So next to eating we tried to get some more of the local culture by visiting some temples, seeing a dance show and of course taking pictures of the monkeys.

Sad

What we saw of the island from the car and later from sea made us kind of sad though. Most of the nature on Bali seems to have been sacrificed either for logging or for building tourist resorts. Once Bali must have possessed rainforests like we have seen on the Solomon Islands or seeing now in Malaysia, but all that’s left now is hills that looked like plucked birds with a tree here and there. The same goes for the sea around the island, we’ve seldom seen so much man-made (plastic) crap in the water as around the Indonesian islands.

At sea

But still, we also seldom have seen so many dolphins on a trip. Although we’ve seen a lot of dolphins along the way, they still makes us smile and immediately run to the foredeck. They love to play with the bow, each trying to swim next to it and playfully pushing each other away when they think it’s their turn. Sailing from Bali to the Gilli Islands we saw something new: a mother and baby dolphin, swimming in perfect unison.

Another thing we haven’t seen before are these wooden contraptions we almost ran into about 6 miles from the coast of Bali. Trying to figure out what they are and what purpose they could possibly have, we circled around one for a while, but we still don’t have an answer to that. Along the way to Singapore we ran in to other objects in the water, like double wooden poles floating around or small sticks standing up straight. Although they are a nuisance from the sailors point of view, these all seem to be in use as markers for fishing nets or crab pots.

On our way again

After Bali we spend a few days on the Gilli Islands (part of Lombok), also touristy but in a much more laidback kind of way. The place reminded Rolf of his much loved Thai islands, with dive shops everywhere and relaxed beachside bars and restaurants. A bit smaller though, we walked around Gilli Air in 1,5 hour.

We then island hopped to Semarang on Java, where Boukje took a plane to Singapore, leaving Rolf and Russell to sail the remaining 550 mile together.

People often ask us what our most scary moment has been at sea. Usually we answer that we haven’t really been in any scary situations, as we try to avoid storms and rough seas and that kind of stuff. Oh sure, we’ve sailed out of an atoll, along the wrecks of two big cargo ships, with 48 knots winds (10 beaufort) on the bow, heavy waves, an engine held together by superglue and cable ties and sails that were damaged and barely holding on; but that was a calculated risk. But now for the first time in 2,5 years of sailing Rolf ran into something he really considered somewhat scary.

First you’ll have to know that the area we’re sailing in now is riddled with thunderstorms at night. They build up during the day over the islands and at night when the islands cool off a bit, they drift out to sea. Second: a lightning strike is probably one of the most devastating things that can happen to our boat. If we were to get hit by lightning, chances are everything electrical on board will fail; from all our electrical systems to all electrical apparatus we may have. That means no more plotter (our GPS), so we wouldn’t know where we exactly are or where to go, no more auto-pilot, so hand steering for the rest of the trip, no radar, so we won’t see anything coming and no satellite or other phone to check with the outside world (not to mention we can throw away our laptops, radios and XBox as well).

So you’ll understand that lightning clouds are something we try to avoid on our trips. And then, on the way from Semarang (Indonesia) to Singapore Rolf ran in to this:

For those of you who don’t stare at a plotter/radarscreen every day: the little green boat shaped thing in the middle is Helena, the big pink blurs around it our rain- and thunderclouds. Yep, we can actually see these things coming from literally 50 miles away. This one however is about 8 miles off. As you can see they go on for at least 5 miles behind that, the actual size we can not see because at some point our radar can’t penetrate the clouds anymore. But we did know that those were some big scary thunder clouds heading straight for us. And things got scarier by the minute. The clouds got closer and closer over the next two hours.

Until they were almost on top of us and lighting strikes came out of them every minute, all across the horizon. Leaving the sky around Helena looking like this:

By then Rolf decided to try and save whatever he could and put our emergency GPS, the satellite phone and lots more in our oven, hoping that would work as a Faraday cage. Then he sent Boukje (who was in Singapore already) an email so someone would know Helena’s last position and what was happening. After that he locked himself and Russell inside and just hoped for the best.

And then this happened:

Really? Nothing? Yes really! As the thunderstorms approached Helena, they just seemed to evaporate. The strangest thing ever seen on our plotter-screen.

So what have we learned from this experience? That real sailors really do not run into that much scary stuff…

We have arrived in our final port of call in Australia: Darwin. As we have been very, very lazy in updating this website, I will try and bring you up to speed on the developments on board of Helena since July quickly: The repairs in Cairns have gone well, the boat looks and feels great again. We had Eric en Maxine crew with us for 2 months. Boukje returned on board in the beginning of August. We sailed from Cairns, via Cooktown, Barrier Reef and Torres Strait to Darwin. In a couple of weeks we’ll leave Darwin to sail to Bali and Singapore.

And now some pictures

The “new” Helena

The trip

They were supposed to sail with us to Singapore, but we only got as far as Darwin… Maybe that’s for the better though, because coming from the Canadian arctic region they might not have been able to cope with real tropic temperatures. Suffice to say that the ice cream consumption on this boat has never been this high before.

We secretly called them the Eskimos, but they’re not really. They do live in Eskimo country though, and love icy activities like cross country skiing, dogsled riding and snow kiting. On this trip they added diving to their list of fun activities, getting their Open Water certificate with Rolf. Eric is actually going to the South Pole this winter (check out his website www.pittarak.com for more cool expeditions). Maxine is going home to finish her master in Social Work.

As a very proud aunt to be, Boukje decided to take a short break from cruising and be able to be one of the first to celebrate the new arrival in our family. She’ll be in Holland for the month, changing diapers and visiting friends, while Rolf is working hard on getting the boat back in the water.

We’re back in Australia. This time we brought Helena along! Our original plans were to go from the Solomons along the coast of PNG through the Torres Strait to end up in Darwin. However, due to an unreliable engine, two furling systems in need of repair and a broken genoa, we decided to take the easiest and quickest route to a place for repairs and sailed to Cairns. 

After crossing the Pacific Helena needed a little make-over, so she’s been out of the water for the last three weeks. She’ll be as good as new when we’re done, new engine, hull repairs, new anti-fouling, repaired sails, new couches and curtains and all kinds of small but annoying problems fixed, but it’s a lot of work. And for the moment it looks a bit like a bomb exploded on board. But, pictures of the new and improved Helena will follow soon!

Stuck on Liapari

Fixing the boat, waiting for parts and our shipment (which was massively delayed because someone in customs didn’t believe it was our stuff) and the heat, made us really, really irritated people. We had some not so fun weeks. We probably would have been spending our time cursing, screaming and crying, if it wasn’t for the amazing people we met while being stuck on Liapari. We had some nice dinners and cappuccinos with Harry, a 79 year old sailor from Germany who has been cruising for 12 years and is slowly making his way back home, and Steve, an Australian who is trying to sail carbon neutral to Japan (that means he only uses vegetable oil in his engine like used cooking oil he collects from restaurants or locally made coconut oil). With their help and the help of Noel –the owner of Liapari- we were able to get the engine running again, albeit at half power.

(Almost) canoeing

When we were in Tombe in January, we arranged a wooden canoe to be made for us by Sano (real life size). It was finished by now, so we returned here to pick it up and revisit the friends we made in the village. Sano made us a very good two person canoe and added two personalized peddles. The people here make it look so easy peddling around in their canoes, but for us so far it is quite a feat if we can just stay seated in it. Problem is we are probably going to be flipping over a lot while practicing, which in itself is not so bad if it wasn’t for the possibility of meeting a crocodile while in the water. So we have been looking for a crocodile-free spot in the Solomons but haven’t found one yet. Until we do, canoe practice is off.

We did some diving on the way and practiced with Rolfs new underwater camera (birthday gift from our parents, thanks again). Not there yet, but here are our first tries.

Arnavon Islands

Sailing through beautiful Marovo lagoon again (just look at the Google-earth images around 08.30S 158.00E and you’ll be as impressed as we are), we have made our way to the Arnavon Islands. These islands are a marine reserve run by three local communities. There’s no fishing our killing of other marine life allowed her. And as there is a turtle nesting ground along the beaches of these islands, the turtle-nests are protected and surveyed. Six conservation officers live on the island, in shifts of one month. Last night we were allowed to come along with them. They walk along the shore every night looking for turtles, and when they find them they ring and register them.  Every morning they go and check for nests, register them and make a protective cover for the eggs. We saw a lot of registered nests last night, but no turtles. We’ll try again tonight, and the men told us we might even see some turtle hatchlings coming out of the nests. We’ll keep you posted!

Somehow here in the Pacific the rule seems to be the remoter the island, the better the internet connection… This is us updating the website right now >>>

Update: We saw some big turtles while diving, which was very cool. And this afternoon the turtle hatchlings were finally ready to come out of their eggs and walk to the sea. There where 169 little turtles crawling out of the nest en starting on their first swim.

We enjoyed the Arnavons so much we ended up staying more then a week, instead of the planned three days. This gave Rolf a change to practice his dive instructor skills, making conservation officers Dickson Motui and Linald Madada Advanced Open Water Divers. As they both have years and years of experience diving around the Arnavons in the course of protecting the reefs there, they were probably Rolf fastest students yet.

Gerard & Marijke

But before that, we had a visit from home. After their trip through the Indonesia, Rolf’s parents arrived in Brisbane to spend a week with us. Together we went up to the Sunshine Coast, where it was indeed sunny and very relaxed. We visited some seaside towns, became members of the Noosa surf club (otherwise they couldn’t serve us coffee) and visited a hippie-market. And very Australian: the house we stayed in had kangaroos jumping through the garden.

Sydney

By then we had been in Brisbane for three week, so it seemed time to see some more of this country. At the airport we bought a plane ticket for the first flight, which turned out to go to Sydney. Arriving there, we found out we arrived just before the weekend of the gay Mardigras and the city was packed. We were actually very lucky to even find a bed for the night. The next day we got even more lucky. When we walked in to a hotel to inquire if they had any rooms left, the receptionist turned out to be Dutch and was in her last day on the job. She gave us the best room in the house and a huge discount!

So we started exploring Sydney. Walked around the city, had afternoon drinks on the waterfront, dinner in a very good Italian restaurant (the Italian food is amazing in Australia) and went for after dinner drinks in a local bar. There we met Tim and Karyn, a very nice Australian couple who have actually lived in Voorburg (a town in the Netherlands). They invited us to join them on their sailing boat for a sail through Sydney Harbor. Well, that was one of the dreams for this world cruise, so: yeah!  We had a beautiful and fun day on the water and actually did some real sailing again (with tacking and manual steering and everything;).  To top it all off, that night we had tickets to Figaro at the Opera House. A perfect Sydney day…

Cross country to Canberra

We spend some more days in Sydney, (tried to) watched the Mardigras parade, ate Dutch ‘kroketten’,  had drinks in the turning restaurant, did some shopping and went to the beach. Then it was time to hit the road again. From Sydney we drove west, to an area known as the Blue Mountains. The road took us through a gorgeous landscape of mountains and passes with red rock and waterfalls. We first thought we wanted to spend a few days there, but after seeing the giant spiders that creep along the countryside in this country we reconsidered (yep, we’re cityfolk).

So in a few day trips we drove to Canberra. Australia’s capital and a very strange city. It looks more like a big suburb then a capital city. Except for the government center, which stands on a hill by itself and looks grand and very much built to impress. In the National Museum and got an introduction into Aboriginal art from a very knowledgeable guide. Apparently the only other museum in the world with this big a collection of Aboriginal art is in the Netherlands (Utrecht). This was actually also our first introduction into Aboriginal culture. Although we had been in Australia for almost five weeks now, we hadn’t met or even seen any Aboriginals yet. Apparently Aboriginals live mostly in the outback, so we were told to go out there if we wanted to meet them. Unfortunately we had just over a week left on our trip, so we decided to save that for another time.

Melbourne

From Canberra we drove on to Melbourne, on the way meeting up with Caitlyn who was just over from Tuvalu visiting her family. Melbourne reminded us of home. The center of the city is very walke-able, there are terraces everywhere, street trams take you everywhere and it gets cold at night (we actually had to wear our summer coat and a sweater, wow!). What is certainly not like home, is the fact that there are penguins living next to the marina. Every day they swim out to open sea to catch fish, and at dusk they return home to feed their young. And of course there are tourists there waiting to have a look at them. We were, and we loved them.

Great Ocean Road

What we loved even more were the koalas we saw while driving along the Great Ocean Road. We had actually expected to see them everywhere along the road during our trip to Australia, but that’s just our tourist image of this country (as we were told by Australians). We did see a few kangaroos along the road, but unfortunately mostly dead ones.

The Great Ocean Road winds along the south coast between Melbourne and Adelaide. It has the most beautiful and stunning views of we have seen in this country. A wild sea and carved out rocks that seem to just stand on the beach on their own. There was a constant, cold sea breeze from the Southern Ocean that reminded us of an early spring day at the North Sea coast at home.

Back home

After a few days of cold sea wind through our hair, it was time for us to go back to the Solomons. The shipment had arrived in Honiara and we really wanted to get back to our boat to start the repairs.