This email was sent last week, but got lost in the ether! We are now in the new marina on Lombok at Medana Bay being royally looked after by the owners.

08 21.98 S 116 04.94E

28 August 2009

Dear friends,

We left Saumlaki a month ago now, although it seems half a life time away. With Easterly winds, we dropped the idea of sailing to the Kai Group, and opted instead for the west coast of Jamdena then across the Banda Sea to the Spice Islands of Banda. Flat seas & light, steady winds made for a perfect sail and we tied stern to the hotel in Banda Neira next morning. Well the anchor was in water 35 metres deep, but the water was so smooth that nothing was going to pull it. The "hotel" was a building in the traditional Dutch Colonial style with plastic chairs under ornamental palms along the water-front. The latter was a stone and concrete quay that had cracked and slid into the clear, deep water over the decades either because of poor construction or eruptions from the volcano on the opposite side of the harbour.

For over 200 years, the Dutch tried to enforce a monopoly of the world supply of Mace & Nutmeg from these tiny islands. Only "tried to" because there seems to have been so much cheating and corruption by their own officials that the system never worked. The history is quite a sordid story of massacre & enslavement, but now Banda is a peaceful jewel. Well it would have been but for the invasion of 50 sailing boats, 1 or 2 of which got embarrassingly drunk & noisy. We stayed 2 weeks until only 4 boats were left: climbed the volcano to the smoking fumeroles; had a couple of wonderful snorkeling trips over fresh corals growing on 20 year-old lava flows; took a local ferry boat for an overnight stop on the neighbouring island of Ai; and walked round the nutmeg plantations which are shaded by enormous 250 year-old tropical almond tress, which give the woods a cool, open feel. There are many small motorbikes, but almost no cars, and the roads get lined with drying herbs in the heat of each afternoon giving off a rich aromatic smell.

There was only 1 other non-Indonesian on the island of Ai. One village, a town pier to the edge of the fringing reef, 2 regular boats took an hour each way to the market in Banda Neira. On the way over, we were "adopted by each of 3 proprietors of guest-houses, and we chose the young man who cold speak English to us. Ai was fortified by the English to help break the Dutch monopoly on spices, and it still has lovely orchards of nutmeg. We watched large marine animals sounding and blowing a mile offshore, and were assured by our host that these were dolphins - what do we westerners know? On the trip back, 1 girl with her head covered in the traditional scarf, lay and moaned gently all the way with her head in the lap of her companion, and a baby next to Janet cheerfully regurgitated its breakfast.

Apart from a small aeroplane that "might arrive twice a week from Ambon if the weather is good" and a ferry that usually arrives each month, all the inter-island transport in Banda is still in small locally-built wooden boats. They are fast, low, and strong boats built from planks cut from tropical hardwoods on the steep forested hills. Power most often either outboard engine, or single-cylinder diesel engine, but the boats are traditional.

Small Mandarin Fish are supposed to swim around the dock each evening with tiny red light in front of its nose, but we never saw any.

After 2 weeks, we sailed to the Lease Islands just South of Ambon and again anchored in very deep water. We were welcomed to a village that made Banda Neira look like a city by Sammy, who used to work for an American Oil company in Irian Jaya. He proudly said that his was a Christian island. There was a pair of public baths made from a dammed stream running out through the village and we used these after our afternoon walk. The main public works project was the construction of a new pier. We never saw a ferry, and there was a very solid-looking pier a mile away, but perhaps local politics had some good reason for building a new one. Groups of women dancers were practicing for the coming celebrations for Indonesian Independence Day, and Jan amused us & several locals by joining in.

We stopped and watched Sago being made at the next village. Sago flour comes from the pith inside the sago tree's trunk, and we had read that sago-making was the easiest job available, since the trees need no caring between being planted and being harvested 10 years later, and that one man can make enough food for a month in two days work. However, his 2 days did seem active ones!

We bypassed the "city of Ambon" and 2 more nights sailing took us to Wakatobi. A prosperous little town on some low-lying islands near the SE tip of Sulawesi. While there we both developed temperatures, and we both had small cuts and scratches develop alarmingly into open sores or ulcers. Under the advice of 2 retired doctors who were anchored nearby, we were soon on courses of antibiotics and coddling ourselves as well as we could. We had become complacent and much of our medication in the first aid kit is way out of date. Also, the antibiotic of choice is not always available in our box or in the places we are visiting. That spoilt the experience of Wakatobi, but Jan watched the independence day celebrations on the soccer field, and then accepted an invitation from the local governor for formal speeches, dancing and "dinner" in the evening.

We have noticed no nasty animals, and few insect or flies anywhere in Indonesia. People have been generally friendly, sometimes a little more interested than we want. However, the boats that took the better-known routes further south sound to have been pestered and bothered by canoes in many anchorages. Most people seem industrious and the land is well farmed. Indonesia is an enormous and varied country. Much of the population of over 200,000,000 lives in Java, and the parts we have visited get few visitors. Our impression is that Primary education is nationally organized, and possibly the only organized event in the country. For secondary education local children usually have to move to the "cities", and post-secondary education requires the enormous expense of moving to Java or Sulawesi. However, many families make the effort, and children love to practice their English. 2 other cruising boats were commandeered to teach English classes in a local school. We had a school group come aboard Harmonica. The small boys enjoyed climbing up our rat lines. The children were well mannered and polite.

We stopped at Bone Rate to break the journey and to see the traditional wooden ships being built on the beach. In the 1 small town, We estimated 20 wooden, plank boats under construction of 50 to 200 tonnes and maybe 100 smaller boats in various stages. They lay the keel first, then dowel planking up the sides. Frames are cut from naturally twisted pieces of wood, but not added until the planking is complete and all boats seem to be built by eye without measures of any sort. There are power drills and sanders about, but the main finishing tool is the adze. The Bugis people of this region have a long tradition of seafaring. They also wear knitted balaclavas as protection against the sun which gave rise to the names "Boogy man" with which European parents used to scare their children. However the Bugi people have lovely smiles when the balaclavas come off.

We left Bone Rate hoping to sail the 300 miles to Lombok in 2 days, but we ghosted along with barely enough wind to hold the spinnaker off the rigging and then, on the second night, Dave put his hand through the bottom of the spinnaker while gybing it in the dark. This morning that led to a sewing-machine job that filled the cockpit with masses of sail material while we unpicked and re-sewed the foot. Jan also baked bread & started some alfalfa seeds growing, so this evening we fully deserve supper on shore in a Lombok restaurant.

The Bugis seem far more sensible than the boatloads of pink, white, & brown European tourists trouping past in the bright afternoon sun with next-to-no clothing on! Yes, this morning Bali is just visible across the strait to the west. We have moved from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of its tourist havens. Funny how quickly things change, and amazing to us to think that these tourists, huddling together in beach-front cabins think they are seeing Indonesia - but we think that too after less than 2 months spent in one remote corner. Funny too how this can be a poor country at all while being one of the world's major oil producers, but we suppose the oil money stays in Western banks in the accounts of the wealthy elite.

On one side of us we see the Lombok volcano Gunung Rinjani rising from the sea to 3700 metres; and on the other, Bali's Gunung Agung is in the distance. We are looking at Bali across "The Wallace Line" which 150 years ago Alfred Russel Wallace described as the boundary between the fauna of Asia and that of The Australs. The strait is about the same width as the English Channel - 20 miles - Amazing that so little swam across and started breeding on the other side in all those millennia!

It is now Ramadan as we are reminded by the frequent prayers and music from the local mosque. Our favourite restaurant does not open until 7pm to allow the staff to eat after 6pm sunset and before they start work.

Next week we shall sail across to Bali and start mingling with more tourists, cars, and roads.

Love to you all

Jan, Dave & Harmonica

We have started using Yotreps position-reporting again - see our web page www.techco.ab.ca/harmonica

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