SV-Kittani: Karimun Jawa

We completed our 2 night passage arriving at Karimun Jawa just before daylight. We put the boat into neutral, dropped the sails and pottered around for about an hour until there was enough daylight to show us the way through the channel into the anchorage. With Catamini out in front and advising us of the depths, we crept slowly in and dropped the pick in a mill pond of water. There was hardly a ripple and great for getting a few hours of shut eye.

After a few hours sleep, we could see ourselves in a pretty little anchorage with the village and harbour not far away. The shiny gold domes of the mosque dominating above this Muslim town and the mid morning call to prayer may have been what woke us. Our 2 days here was going to be all our own time with nothing scheduled. One of the main issues we, and many other boats have had with the rally, is that there is not enough time allowed to get from one rally venue to the next - a point the Indonesian event co-ordinators don't seem to grasp. The activities for this spot had finished the previous day and out of 85 vessels that started the rally, only 5 were in town for the gala dinner. Very disappointing for the locals and their efforts but it has been this way year after year and still they don't 'get it'.

Our arrival into the sleepy township of Karimun Jawa at sunrise

The first day was a rather lazy one as always after a 2 night sail. It was a chance to clean the boat and get things back to normal after the crossing. As there wasn't much in the way of restaurants ashore, we were eating on board that evening. As the sun started to set, the winds dropped off again to nothing and the anchorage once again became like a mill pond. So as the evening call to prayer was heard drifting across the water, Pete fired up the bar-b-que and put on our pork fillet. Ooops....! Probably not the best choice of dinner but hopefully they couldn't smell it. We enjoyed a lovely meal with a bottle of champagne, watching the local fishing boats returning from their day of work. From a distance some of them looked like a crayfish approaching - very basic craft but they scoot along quite quickly.

The next day was to be an adventure. Pete had talked me into getting on the back of a motorcycle and heading off around the island. Actually the road doesn't go all the way around, only so far in each direction, then you head back to town. So with trepidation I climbed on the back of our 1200cc Harley Davidson ...................yeah right !!!! Anyone who knows me knows that I have a paranoia of motorcycles. Actually it was a 50cc automatic Honda 'Scoopy' - and off we went. The roads are so bad on the island that it is impossible to go more than 30kms, and that was on the better parts. Other areas I could have walked faster. And being so sparsely populated, very little in the way of traffic. We meandered along the road stopping off for cold drinks and photo opportunities. And of course when the fuel gauge indicated, a bottle of petrol from a road side stall in a Sprite bottle. Maybe they are starting to get the hang of recycling :-)