Australia To Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar Route

[Wotname]

Crikey Alan, I never thought to google it - the cold down here must be sapping my brain; thanks for the translation!

[theway]

Originally Posted by MikeFergie

Austin I live in Mozambique and sail quite a lot in this region (9000 Nm in 2 1/2 years). Seychelles, Mayotte, Madagascar, Tanzania including Zanzibar, Mozambique and then South Africa you could probably spend at least a year sailing NOT only 3 months. There are truly amazing islands and waters and the joy for me is in a lot of the places you will be the only ones around with no other boats.
There is a cyclone season that covers Mauritius,Reunion,Comoros,Madagascar, and a section of Mozambique from early Jan til April but it’s safe above the zone or below it.

Thanks, that’s nice to hear. I’ve been hearing the same thing from other people too.

[theway]

Originally Posted by Alan Mighty

...
https://metbob.wordpress.com/2018/07...-29-july-2018/

...

Thanks again, another helpful resource.

[theway]

Originally Posted by daletournier

There is no piracy problems towards yachts on the passage your doing.

You can fuel up at Kupang then Bali which should get you to Belitung and and then onto Singapore.

I have Catalina Indonesia there is a limit on how much fuel a foreign can purchase (depending on where you are). You need to get a local to do it for you.

How’s the fuel situation in Saumlaki, and from there to Bali? Any places you’d recommend specifically for fuel?

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by theway

How’s the fuel situation in Saumlaki, and from there to Bali? Any places you’d recommend specifically for fuel?

We've fuelled in Saumlaki. Look at the end of the pier and see the small scale fishers' boats. A little further along the pier (E, towards land) you'll find the fuel supplier. The fuel supplier filled our jerry jugs.

Saumlaki and the Tanimbar islands generally are very pleasant. Most people are Christian (although that's not what makes people likeable or unlikeable in Indonesia or anywhere else. The Tanimbars are more-or-less divided among two Christian sects or denominations. Big investment in church buildings.

Saumlaki is a useful port of entry (or exit, in our case). Be sure to accumulate enough small change while in Saumlaki - some less developed parts of the Indonesian economy have problems dealing with the larger denomination notes.

[Alan Mighty]

We anchored about where you can see a yacht, about 1/5 of the way down the image.

From memory, as you walk E (landwards) along that pier, the red roof was used for sorting and selling fish by the fishers. The fuel supplier was beside that red roofed structure.

The blue roof, close to land or on land, was the port office and CIQ. There was a port health officer and I've forgotten whether he was in an office under that same roof or in a different building.

Most days a healthy sea breeze pushes up the bay/fjord.

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by Alan Mighty

of course, in the Maritime Continent you'll find the phenomenon called the Pacific Throughflow, where N Pac water flows through to the Indian O as part of the global ocean conveyor belt. Big whales used to (and some still do) use that as their roadway, so in the 19th C US whalers were found in the Maritime Continent. And some Indonesian still do small scale whaling using that same pathway).

Yesterday's The Guardian had a story on just that, focused on Timor Leste (which I would have thought was (1) not in the centre of the Indonesia Throughflow; and (2) does not have anything like the whaling heritage of a couple of other islands - but what would I know?): https://www.theguardian.com/environm...y-face-threats

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Alan Mighty

Yesterday's The Guardian had a story on just that, focused on Timor Leste (which I would have thought was (1) not in the centre of the Indonesia Throughflow; and (2) does not have anything like the whaling heritage of a couple of other islands - but what would I know?): https://www.theguardian.com/environm...y-face-threats

The ITF actually flows on both sides of Timor.



Ever heard of Timor Jack?


From Moby Dick:


" Was it not so, O Timor Jack! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay?"

Ombay (Ombai) is the little red dot on the north coast of Timor in the map above. It's one of the three "passages" that carry the ITF through the Indonesian archipelago. About 10% of it flows through the Lombok passage to the West, with 90% flowing either side of Timor. About 40% of that 90% flows through the Ombai passage and the other 60% through the Timor passage south of Timor.

[theway]

Originally Posted by Alan Mighty

We anchored about where you can see a yacht, about 1/5 of the way down the image.



From memory, as you walk E (landwards) along that pier, the red roof was used for sorting and selling fish by the fishers. The fuel supplier was beside that red roofed structure.



The blue roof, close to land or on land, was the port office and CIQ. There was a port health officer and I've forgotten whether he was in an office under that same roof or in a different building.



Most days a healthy sea breeze pushes up the bay/fjord.

Thanks for your continued Information.

How about two specific questions...

1: How did you find the phone coverage throughout Indonesia? Able to get forecasts, browse web, send email most places? Telkomsel seems to be the best from what I’ve.
(Map attached)

2: Which direction does the wind shift to during a thunderstorm. Here in Australia it usually goes SW right?

[theway]

Originally Posted by daletournier

By memory it's 40liters but it's not a problem, there's always someone to organise fuel for you.
The first time I went the inside route I was able to sail alot of the way from Bali to Belitung, but there's no guarantees, you need to be prepared to motor the whole way.
You can organise fuel on the north coast of Bali, you'll most like pull in at Lovina.
http://hackingfamily.com/ John and Sue have kept a very extensive blog that has much information including open cpn websites. They have cruised Indonesia extensively.

What months did you do Bali to Belitung?

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by theway

What months did you do Bali to Belitung?

By memory it was late September.

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by StuM

Ever heard of Timor Jack?

Is that like Monterey Jack? Something stolen by a Yankee carpetbagger?

I reckon you need to tell the sperm whales and the Pacific water where to go.

Whaling by locals in Nusa Tenggara has been going on since at least the 17th century (a Portuguese report c1660) for oil, meat, and ambergis - focused on sperm whales. US whalers showed up in the 18th century.

No whaling done by Timorese. For that matter, when we cruised the area we saw little fishing activity by Timorese.

The whaling was and still is being done by a few villages, ones that are largely Catholic and which remained temporarily in enclaves under Portuguese colonial while surrounded by Dutch colonials before the Dutch exerted greater control in the 19th century. The local whalers use traditional wooden boats, mainly working under sail but changing to paddling for the acceleration towards their prey (the local fishers also target other species, including sunfish, sharks, etc - the ones we met when cruising were relatively poor and on an island that was not rich in terrestrial resource. That's not unusual in eastern Nusa Tenggara, including on Timor, where there's not a lot of good agricultural land). In the 20th century, nutters at FAO thought it would be a good idea to increase the fishing effort of the whalers and came up with an aid program to provide them with GRP hulls and engines. Fortunately that failed.

The most well-known whaling village is Lemalara on Lembata. Since it's been featured on tv and in global media, the place fluctuates from quiet (when you can talk to the locals and examine their traditional boats) to busy (when cashed up tourists are there, including from giant cruise ships anchored off, and the locals are paid to put on a whale boat race for the bored rich white folk).

Here's a quick pic of the whale migration routes, showing the distribution of species, and (shaded dark grey) the waters hunted by the Lemalara people.

If you're cruising the area, you need to carry a copy of RH Barnes, The Sea Hunters of Indonesia. Barnes was a young anthropology student when he did his PhD research on the island (which had a different name then). He went back multiple times, including with his wife who researched and published on the weaving done locally. On one of his fieldtrips, Barnes documented the boat-building techniques and sail making techniques. And included the local names for everything. That's why you always carry a copy of his book.

I don't have a full digital copy of Barnes's book, but I do have part of the chapter on boat-building and sail making. I've not seen the traditional sails that Barnes described. Most everyone now seems to use a particular woven plastic. Barnes described traditional sail weaving using strips of leaflets from palm fronds. And he reckoned that the local sailors said the sails were effectively self-reefing: as the wind pressure increased, the weave would distort and let air bleed through the gaps; when the wind pressure dropped, the weave would tighten up.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter 11. The boat-building technique may be familiar to you, but was new to me.

[Alan Mighty]

This is what Barnes wrote about the sails. And a photo, from Barnes's book, of a sail maker weaving one of the squares of sail fabric that he describes.

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by theway

2: Which direction does the wind shift to during a thunderstorm. Here in Australia it usually goes SW right?

Hmm ... I'm not certain it's so simple.

If pressed, I'd say that in Aus when a single cell t-storm runs over us, I'd expect the wind to back. But that's just because in the S Hemisphere, I expect a gust to back and a lull to veer.

And if I was in the N-hemisphere, I'd expect the wind gust from a single cell thunderstorm to veer.

But a line squall is a multi-cell phenomenon. So where you are in string of t-storm cells, each of which probably has a rotating core, might determine your apparent wind.

Indonesian waters span the Eq, being S of the Eq (Nusa Tenggara Timur or eastern NT), on the Eq, and N of the Eq (Malukus, Sulawesi, Kalimantan etc).

And when you're close to the Eq, Coriolis force should be weak, no?

You have sailed across the Eq, of course. Did the water vortex running down the sink change direction? One way in the N hemisphere, the other in the S hemisphere? What happened when you were on or close to the Eq?

[Alan Mighty]

Seen the latest (3 August) issue of Science yet?

Serena Tucci et al. have a paper on the genomics of the villagers of Rampasasa village on Flores. And of course the villagers are modern humans (like everyone else on da planet) and with some Neanderthal and Denisovan inheritance. With (as you will note as you move from E to W either along the Nusa Tenggara chain or in the islands N of the Banda Sea) a mix of East Asian and New Guinea genes.

See the quick takes:

(Ars Technica): https://arstechnica.com/science/2018...-floresiensis/

(AAS Science): Island living can shrink humans | Science | AAAS

(Science Abstract): Evolutionary history and adaptation of a human pygmy population of Flores Island, Indonesia | Science