SAILING ALONE TO INDONESIA

Welcome back to Adventures of an Old Sea Dog, where I'm on passage to Indonesia. It's good to be back at sea. Yes! A new Patreon sale. One thing I have missed, I've not been at sea for a long time, is that when you're at sea, every single night you get something like that. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sunset. It was almost too good to be true. In fact, it was too good to be true. There's always something that's going to go wrong in my life, and this was the next thing. I have to voice over this next bit because you can't hear what I'm saying, but I'm a bit angry. What's happening here is the roller reefing has jammed again. That's the system that takes the sail out and rolls it back in. I can't get it back in. It's jammed. It's an ongoing problem. I keep thinking I've done the fix, and then it happens again. Brand new sail getting a thrashing. The night turned to day, and I still had the damn thing wrapped around the forestay. I tried to wrap it around under control to tie it up with some of the ropes, just to stop it beating and tearing itself to pieces here. It was just too powerful. You don't realize sometimes the power of the wind with a big sail like that. It's a huge thing, and when it gets out of control, it's very violent. I'm on the helm. If I let go of the helm... This has been going on since last night. I've got to retain that sail somehow. I've let a rope up to go around it, but I can't get it to go right around. Oh, stop doing that! There was a nest of ropes up there all around where the roll of reefing is. It lined on my back with binoculars. I had to reel the whole of the sail out, so that's the full sail right there. My chair's in there. That's the mesh in the back cabin after the first night. I kind of made some more sense of it, but nevertheless, yes. Open sea will do that to you. And in the heads, a cascade of ropes coming down. They stop there, so that's where they're going to stay. I'm on another tack now, so I've got to change that, which looks disgusting. I know that's my sleeping bit I had to wedge myself in last night. And some of the supplies are on this side and more in my forward cabin. Because it's so bumpy on board, I've not been able to actually cook much. Going through my food supplies, the fresh stuff started to go off already, so I'm picking all this up. I'm cutting out the bad bits. I'm going to eat that for my lunch, get some greens inside of me. And it's hot weather. Got the hat. And I've also got a book about cold things. Hopefully that'll make me feel a bit better. That's my day. Then I had to deal with the next problem that had come up. All that thrashing around had damaged something, and the navigation lights didn't work. Down below, I've got the wiring diagrams for the boat and the test meter out. It's a big, scary electric panel is open, and I'm trying to make heads or tails of this stuff in here. Whoa. But I still can't get my navigation lights to work. Sun keeps coming through there, so I'm finding it difficult to see what's in here. Bit rocky and stuff down below. Hard to work. I've kind of given it up for the day. Closed it up. Maybe the magic fix-it fairies will come and sort the problem out. But I think the problem is up the mast. However, what has been of help is this wonderful book that the owner builder gave me with the boat. It's got all the circuits and everything you want to find something on the boat. It's all in there. That damn sail jammed again. That thing at the top of the mast up there has jammed on me again. I got it free, but it's just scary. For this trip, I did a lot of provisioning. And one of the things was seeds, sprouts in particular like this, that I wanted to cultivate on board so I could have fresh vegetables. Now, it rained a lot the other day. We were in bad weather. Water got in, and I just found my entire stock of seeds ruined. Soaked with like, there's all kinds of stuff in there. Oil and there was some bleach that burst. So that's just, everything's ruined. All my seeds have gone. So I'm not a happy guy. It's what they call the incidence pit. It's when things happen, and then they happen again and again. And one piece of bad luck brings another piece of bad luck, another piece of bad luck. And to get out of that pit of despair and yuckiness is hard. And that's what I've had today. I've just had stuff go wrong, go wrong, go wrong. It's actually been a really nice sailing day today. Honestly, brilliant. But I've had so many things go wrong. I put these seeds on this boat ready for the next long voyage that we're going to do, where I'm going to be no fresh vegetables. They're hard to get. I've spent ages collecting these seeds to grow them on the boat here. And the entire stock's been destroyed. They're in paper packets. There was some flooding in the bilge. I didn't know they were there. I'd forgotten they were there. But also, it wasn't just water. It would have been dirty water. But it was bleach. A five litre bottle of bleach burst in there. So they're soaked in bleach. So now I can't use them. I can't clean them out. This was going to feed me. Not anymore. Looks fine, but it's soaked in bleach. I can't talk anymore. If you go sailing on a weekend, that's the sort of thing you'd do to de-stress. But when you're out there in the middle of nowhere doing this as a thing, sometimes it can be very stressful. You look at a cloud like that and you think, is there a lot of wind under there? Am I going to have a problem or not? And then there's this. The fourth sail. Would it roll back in? For example, that cloud ahead. Is there a squall underneath it? Is the 40 knots of wind there? If there is, can I roll that sail back in before it rips or causes more problems? Too stressy. Think of something nice. Big Indonesian island just over there somewhere. We're going to sail past it. That's the idea anyway. Here comes the sun. Coffee's on. Let the day begin. Got myself one of these. It harks back to the old days of transistor radios, but it just does a lot more. Bought it really because it does single sidebands, that's long distance radio. And it's just handy to have, maybe to get weather forecasts or something. So I thought I'd see if I could find any Indonesian stations. Yeah, George and Harold. There you go, George. Harold's over there, look. Having a little sleep. Rope up there that's very, very annoying. We'll get to that. In the meantime, I can't work out why there's still a belly in this. The old sail was the same and it seems that we've ended up with a high cut sail again. I didn't want that. I don't quite know what's going on here. Right, trying to judge the wind. Coming from over there. Coming through that gap and hitting that. In the pain and strain of long distance sailing, there is a lot of stress, but then there's the payoff. There's always a payoff and it's easy to forget that. And the payoff in this instance is a new country, ladies and gentlemen, Indonesia. Big circle. Trying to find some place to anchor the boat for the night. This is the island of Lombok in Indonesia. I had a ways to go, but I wasn't going to make it today. It was getting late. So eventually found myself an anchoring spot. Been a long day and I'm actually secretly hiding now. I should have checked in, but I didn't. So I'm not strictly in the country, but I've anchored. I found myself a little spot to hide for the day. Over on the other side of the bay, there was a bunch of horses being exercised in the water. And then over here, there's some fishermen who've just anchored for the night on a buoy. They're going to fish, I think, all night. As the sun's going down, this is definitely not Australia. And just like that, it's morning again. And those guys in the little boats are just over there. They've been there all night fishing. Just had the morning call to prayer from over there. It's a bit loud. You're waking everybody up. And I'm prepping the boat and I've already got a sweat on. Engine prep's done. Missed out the hard part, pulling that thing up. Trouble with Shaddy. Actually, we should name an episode. Trouble with Shaddy. She just won't stay in a course. Keep wandering off. I want to go and look at rocks over there. We've got to earn our way on. That sun is hot. I'm all lubed up. I got really burnt yesterday and I'm out in the sun most of the day. I'm trying to shelter here because I'm trying to get the boat to move. There's not much in the way of wind and we're going to cross a major throughway for ships coming up and down here. I mean, there's some big, big ships coming through. So I've been stealth mode all last night because I was illegally parked. So I think I should make myself live again so people can see where I am. OK. Missed these two. OK, I'm live again. Right. OK. Yeah, they're kind of recumbent. They're sort of lying down. I've seen that in a few now. And they appear to be steering with their feet. I've heard that from other people as well. They've got some kind of system. They can steer. They've got an outboard with some kind of contrivance that they just push with their feet from making it work. I could do with doing that here, but I'd have to have a proper cover put on. This is fine. But I can't be in the steering position on the helm because I get burnt as I did yesterday. I am sore. So this is lovely. It's very nice. But I don't like sailing in an enclosed space. I've got boats all around me. Look at the volcano there and another volcano over here. And I'm trying to get to these islands up here. And I'm going very, very slowly. It's going to be a long day. A couple of hours on the scenery on this course going up the coast. It's just breathtaking. It's just beautiful. Getting close or closer. Another few hours left around that point and then to some islands. Having a hard time keeping shaddy on course. It just will not hold a course. I don't have electric steering on this boat. Only the wind vane. Problem is my hands beginning to burn out there. OK, I've been putting it off long enough. I am going for a treat that I've been saving. It's down here in a hot boat. It's so hot in here because the engine's running. But this is in the fridge. I think I'll be planning to do for a while is put canned fruit in the fridge. So it becomes cold canned fruit. And they've got that syrup. They're just going out to fish for the evening. I love those things. You lie, you lie down and you steer with your feet. Excuse my appearance. I just, I just stink. I'm hot. I'm sweaty. One giant sweaty kebab no less. I'm staying like that until I get back to civilization and get a nice shower. And maybe a pizza. There's the alarm again. It's all go today, boys and girls. Another pass. Bit shallow. Lots of current. Lots of traffic. Love these boats. I don't want to end up on the beach over there. It's quite a narrow gap. This looked like a nice resort, but I was on my way around the corner to Lombok Island and Madonna Bay Marina. I'd take a mooring there. Gonna use my friend Nice John's stick and a piece of rope to do the job. This time I'd be taking a mooring and not anchoring. Taking a mooring buoy is pretty straightforward, but when you're by yourself, it's a bit harder. Really, you should have someone on the helm and somebody else to grab the buoy. Hard work, yes. But in this case, I got lots of room around me and the weather was calm. So no problem. I lost John's boat hook in the water. I got it back. Okay, I'll tie that off. I'll tie that off and we're done. I've no idea where anybody is. All right, after a whole day. You are the best engine in the world, Perkinson. Yes, indeedy. Rest easy, my friend. Whoa, we're here. Safely anchored in this beautiful place. Like I said, there's always a payoff in the end. Next time on Adventures of an Old Seadog, join me as I explore this hunk of paradise. Many, many thanks to my patrons for being there for me and contributing so much to this project. Thank you so much indeed. For real-time updates, you can find me here. I hope you enjoyed the video. Please subscribe, leave a comment and I'll see you next time.