[password] kudzuu1114
[position] 05 45.785s 110 13.907e
[weather] squalls till noon, now sunny, humid, cirrus, 1008.3
[speed] 7.4 motoring
[heading] -28T
[status]Yesterday we departed Karimunjawa after a wonderful, but brief, visit. More on that below. We sneaked off, only 15nm, to the NW to anchor off tiny uninhabited Pulau Kumbang and enjoy an evening of splendid isolation. We thought we might stay another night at Kumbang, but 92F with 65% humidity and deathly still air yesterday discouraged that plan and we departed around noon today just to feel the breeze from the apparent wind as we motor to Borneo!

Karimunjawa offers less in terms of scenic beauty than many of the places we've visited, and the official Sail Indonesia Rally events consumed only a single day. But what a day it was!

Very early in the morning all the local boats, meaning some twenty or thirty of them, had motored away from the island out of sight. This isn't unusual, as they often go out fishing just before dawn, but this time each boat was overflowing with people. The town must have been nearly deserted! Suddenly an hour or two later, one of our yachties called on the VHF radio, "Here they come, everybody! Racing through the anchorage! Come up and greet Karimunjawa!" We hurried up on deck, as did everyone in the anchorage, and watched and jumped up and down, waving and cheering as they raced through the anchorage to the town wharf. like kids running an obstacle course, yelling greetings and all waving their arms in the air to welcome the us to Karimunjawa. We responded in kind, tooting our horns and waving and greeting them in return as they sped past! Local boat owners had spent days painting and decorating their boats with flags and banners and, crowded with happy shouting villagers, they created quite a spectacle! It was very exciting!

They tied up at the end of the wharf, rafting up the way they do in Indonesia, as many as six boats deep, in long colorful rows, hulls bright red, blue, green, white, purple, pink in the morning sunshine with red and white Indonesian flags flapping proudly in the breeze and vertical multi-coloured festival banners swaying with the movement of the boats. (Photo coming when we get Internet access.)

Robbie and I had agreed to attend a focus meeting (some things are the same in every country) organized by the Central Java Tourism Department and we appeared as promised at the wharf at 11:30 together with three other couples. Yodi and Arul, smiling and handsome, picked us up in an SUV and delivered us to the Karimunjawa Inn where a traditional Javanese orchestra and dancers were waiting for us. After a wonderful presentation of Javanese music and dance (yes, photo, as soon as we can) we stepped inside for a delicious buffet luncheon of fish, fried squid, white rice and nasi goreng, chicken, green vegetables (the spiciest dish of all!), people crackers and that pink coconut drink that accompanies all festive occasions here. It's made with very young coconut, so young it's usually gelatinous, coconut water, coconut milk, sugar, ice and don't ask me what makes it pink but it's a colour that does not appear in nature and I usually make it a practice not to eat things in colours that do not occur in nature. This pink drink is impossibly refreshing despite its colour and I enjoy it every time it's offered!
After luncheon was finished, the meeting was called to order, the dignitaries were introduced and for about fifteen minutes not a single word was spoken in English and I suspected that we had been duped into attending a political photo opp, a group of white people apparently incomprehensively hanging on every word uttered by the officials sitting before us on late 19th century Dutch sofas and gentleman's chairs. But I was mistaken. After lengthy opening remarks, we received a synopsis in translation, and then we were asked to fill out a form, "Is this your first visit to Indonesia?" "How do you find the beach?" "What infrastructure could be added that would make your visit more pleasant?" "How likely are you to visit Karimunjawa again?"

What beach? I didn't see a beach.

Then, the nice people from the Central Java Tourism Department took notes, furiously copying down our comments, as each one of us thanked them for their warm hospitality and made a few suggestions as to how Indonesia might attract more yachting tourists.

Karel Dimitri had the very best suggestion for infrastructure improvements. She said that we really need a dinghy dock in order to make it easy to get ashore from our yachts, and every yachtie present 'hear-heared' Karel's recommendation. Our greatest horror stories are not about trouble with Mersoleil, but about getting the dinghy to and from shore, or about getting in or out of it in difficult conditions! I still have a big bump on my left shin where I went down on one knee on the expanded metal dock at Gili Air three weeks ago. And I laugh till tears come to my eyes every time I recall how one night in Fiji another woman made a diving leap into her dinghy and then disappeared altogether as it bobbed up and down in the surf. Ben, the Fijian bartender, and I had tried to help them hold the dinghy still in the waves so she could make that leap, we looked at one another in disbelief wondering where she had gone! We'd seen her take flight over the inflated port tube and both felt sure she did not have enough momentum to carry her right over the dinghy and past it to the sea on the other side. We looked at one another, then at the dinghy, then at one another again in horror. What happened to Barbara?! The next time we looked back at the dinghy, Ben and I dissolved into peals of laughter, weak in the knees and leaning on one another in an effort to remain standing. Barbara's legs, pointing upwards from the knee to the foot, were performing a rapid scissors kick above the center of the dinghy as she lay on her back in the middle, wedged between the two seats and unable to get up. Gosh, I hope Barbara never reads this. It may have been the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life! For Ben and me. Barbara probably was not amused.

Sometimes we have to beach the dinghy, pulling it up onto the sand and tying the painter to a nearby tree. This is never a good solution for us - our dink is too heavy to lift and, with its outboard on the transom, moving it around on the beach is out of the question. Once while we enjoyed a long evening at a beachside pizza bar, the tide turned, waves slapped the stern of our dinghy and filled it with sand, building our own personal little beach right inside. It took an hour to get the dink cleared out and off the beach, back into water deep enough to put the propeller down.

And more than once we've tied our dinghy to a fixed pier, climbed up onto the wooden deck and returned two or three hours later to find that nothing short of a death defying leap or a graceful swan dive was going to enable us to board again before the next high tide. (I've made the death defying leap so many times it doesn't alarm me anymore. Have yet to try the swan dive, but that always seems high risk at low tide.) Anyway, Karel is absolutely right. Cruisers love to visit places where it's safe and easy to go ashore and a floating pontoon with cleats for tying dinghies is the answer to that need.

All eight of our group made good suggestions, I thought, and it was gratifying to see the officials scribbling down notes as we spoke. This did, however, make me wonder why we were translated after our comments. Maybe it was more culturally acceptable for us to speak through an intermediary.

My suggestion was that, after the dinghy dock and a spacious anchorage with proper depth, expensive infrastructure was not necessary at all, that it's the people of the local community who make our visits to new places special, enjoyable, memorable. Our fondest memories are of the people who have invited us into their homes, taken us fishing, shown us how they weave a basket, shared a meal with us or laughed late at night at the beach while launching dinghies in the dark. I told the tourism people that if they would just assign a family to each yacht and have that family help us top up our phones (something we NEVER get right without help) or show us around the local produce market, that we would never ever forget our visit to their village.

At the completion of the 'what do the yachties want' session, the same SUV whisked us back to town again in air conditioned comfort. We arrived for the end of the 'dress up in traditional Javanese clothing' fashion show and, to be truthful, did not understand exactly what was going on. But after I was dolled up in a sari with pleated front and contrasting jacket tied around the middle with a long sash, and Robbie in black pajamas and a headscarf tied like a skullcap, we proceeded across the stage and down the steps to take our seats amoung the group. I stopped at the top of the steps suddenly when hooting and hilarious laughter erupted amoung the crowd, yachties and locals alike, and turned to see Robbie hastily pulling his pajama bottoms back up over the cargo shorts underneath (thank God). The nice ladies who tied and pinned and buttoned him into his Javanese costume must have overestimated the girth of his skinny little butt, to the amusement of all.

We returned to Mersoleil for a little midday nap, then picked up Stedem from his yacht and returned to the wharf for the Sunset Jazz performance. Karimunjawa had spent two days setting up a stage, professional lighting and an impressive sound system at the outer end of the wharf. We toured past the local boats still rafted together in a riot of color, streamers and banners fluttering over the stage and the crowd, then rather than going ashore, we drifted in the shallows fifty meters away along with Fabio and Lisa (clever enough to bring their dinghy anchor!) and enjoyed the concert from there. This was serious jazz, too, top quality music like that you'd expect at an international jazz festival, and we bobbed happily in the water as the sun went down, sipping scotch and enjoying the sound.

Ashore after the jazz, we wandered the night market. Karimunjawa boasts only a couple of restaurants, but every evening as it grows dark pop up food vendors gather around the grassy football pitch in the center of the village. They spread tarps on the grass, place sturdy low tables on the tarps, and sell Indonesian delicacies from their carts for diners to carry to the tables and eat in the company of others. When the food runs out, someone just gets up and goes out for something more, marinated quails eggs on a skewer, or deep fried tofu stuffed with meat and spices, or vegetable fritters with a hot dipping sauce, or satay. Serious main dishes are available, too, at every stop. You choose your fish or squid and it will be barbequed to perfection over hot coals then delivered to your table.

We ran into our friends Arul and Yodi, again, the young men from Tourism, and Yodi used incomprehensible magic and his own Telkomsel account to top up our phone. We gave him the money and we are now able to make phone calls again and send SMS messages, something we'd been mysteriously unable to accomplish in forty five minutes at the Telkomsel shop on the previous day.

Before returning to Mersoleil late, in the dark, we made a plan for Yodi and Arul to come out to Mersoleil for coffee the next morning before they returned to Semarang by fast ferry. Robbie collected them from the wharf between raindrops the following morning (scrambling from a tiny sharp-edged concrete promontory, over a frayed wire of unknown voltage, down into the dinghy - see why we appreciate dinghy pontoons?) and we spent an hour or two together touring Mersoleil, comparing cultures, restringing Arul's jade pendant with whipping twine so it wouldn't choke him to death and agreeing that we should all remain friends by email even if we might never get face time together again. Both Yodi and Arul have subscribed to Mersoleil in YIT (they blush as they read this, I know) and will be following our travels here on this website, even as we travel away from them to other parts of the world.

How wonderful it is to know that we have loving friends in Indonesia. Yes, this is what we came here for!
[END]