Kumai River October 10 2008

Hello everyone.Well, it's pretty definite we'll be staying in SE Asia another year. Why, you might ask. Okay, I send a copy of my witty repartee to my broker. Mainly it's to let him know where the money is going. About 18 months ago he actually called me to chastise me for my wanton spending and reckless disregard for the state of my account. Now all this was done in a good natured fashion, but he explained that he couldn't increase my account if I kept spending all the gains he, and he alone, was responsible for. Now, this should give you a pretty good idea of the pittance the wicked witch left me. I don't need the tens or hundreds of thousands the rest of you are wastrelling away. No country clubs for Tim. No sirree!! No Mercedes; no Harleys (you know who you are); no vacation homes, etc., etc., etc. So anyway, normally, he, who shall henceforth be known as Dr. Doom, responds with a nice, but brief email back--"sounds like fun"; "I've been there. did you go to such and such" which is normally a 5 star resort which is protected from people like me by laser guided missiles and a small private army. Actually it's really nice, because most of you don't acknowledge my existence, and it's good to know my correspondence isn't lost in cyberspace somewhere. BUT, last letter, no niceties. All I get back is "market crashing, worst ever, another 1929". This ran on for a page. The only thing missing at the end was "have a nice day". So--curious to know if I needed to start looking for a tall building to jump off of, I emailed back asking how my account was doing. What I got back was "you still have enough for beer and gas". You might think that is good news for someone with as modest tastes as I--that is until you remember I drink Jack Daniels. So we can't afford to go anywhere else!!!You might have noted the more cheery attitude in this letter from the last several. Of course, you have or will. Normally, I'm writing these underway at 4 in the morning motoring away at $7 gallon for diesel. This takes the edge off a bit. Not today. Yes, I am writing this on my "late" watch, but it is 10 pm to midnight. Yes, we now have four crew and I, the captain, set the watch schedule so I'm not on again until 6. Hah, rank hath its privilege. We are also actually sailing. Not hugely fast but we're only going about 300 miles and are in no hurry to get there. Peaceful, quiet and $15 hour cheaper!! Finally, my spirits were buoyed this morning by a conversation I overheard on the VHF radio from a very nice Aussie chap to one of his mates. Since we've literally been up the river in Borneo without internet, we are woefully uninformed about the state of world affairs. Anyway, Dave, the Aussie, was bemoaning the state of the Aussie dollar at US$.64. Now I've got nothing against Australians and I do feel a bit bad for them, but the 9 months we spent there, the damn thing was hitting new highs all the time and peaked out at about $.96. Okay, bad luck for us, but the Oz press rubbed our noses in it. "$ hits new high". "$ expected to exceed parity in '09". "How low can US$ go", etc. That was another reason to stay in good old cheap Asia!!After my last missive, we had a minor change in plans. The weather was right, and there was no real reason to stop at Bawean Island on the way to Borneo, so we skipped it. Passing by we threaded, literally, our way through a large fleet of local fishing boats and actually had to call an oil tanker to remind him we were out there and were a sailing vessel he was supposed to yield to. You see, from here on out we'll be in really busy shipping lanes right up through the Malacca straits. Takes a bit of the boredom out of the late night watches when you need to worry about 100,000 ton tankers. Rose also saw a rather large sea snake en route.Our destination was Kumai, 15 miles up the Kumai river on the Indonesia (southern) part of Borneo, which is something like the third largest island in the world. Adding a bit of humor, or humour, if you like, to the trip was the ongoing story of Aqua Magic, redubbed Aqua Tragic. These are the guys that ran aground in Oz and then, that night, when finally anchoring, the guy almost cut his fingers off on the wind generator. Yes, it's dangerous out here. Then a bit later they ran into another boat while trying to anchor. So they were ahead of us when we hear on the radio another plea for help as they had run aground again at the river mouth. We couldn't help as one of our engines was out, but, as we passed the green buoy marking the channel, we noted they were almost on the beach. Seems they just followed the range markers in until they hit sand instead of taking a right at the buoy. After that, we figured these people are jinxes and everyone has gone to some length to avoid getting too close to them!!!Our trip up the river, which is quite shallow, was uneventful, and other boats already there gave us the lay of the land. It's too bad, but this was the antithesis of Lovina--no beach, dry town, no restaurants for 15 miles, likewise (ouch) massages. But, Kumai is the starting off point for an "African Queen" trip up the river to a nature reserve for orangutans which are only remaining in Borneo and Sumatra and are in danger of extinction through loss of habitat. Adi, one of two "go to" guys here in Kumai arranged for Rose and me to take a slow boat 40 or 50k up the river to the reserves for 3 days, 2 nights. When we got back the plan was for Joey and Olivia to do a trip. That way, we didn't have to leave the boat or the cat unattended, although part of Adi's service does provide a boat sitter. This was Wednesday and the trip was set for Saturday.Wednesday happened to be the end of Ramadan, so the mosques were going full tilt and we just hung out. Our friends on Scot Free II came over for dinner, and we planned to hit town the next day and, Jerry, who's handy, said he's take a look at the engine. Town was a total bust except we were able to get some totally outstanding fireworks. I'm talking Chicago 4th of July quality. Seems with the end of Ramadan, everyone takes off, so almost nothing, including the internet cafes, was open. No grocery store either. Now I'm a little hazy on timing of the rest here, but somewhere in there that afternoon, but I think the next day--life is hell when you're getting Alzheimer's--Jerry took a look at the engine which, by now, had miraculously decided to run. My engine rooms are so filthy, however, he insisted on spending 3 hours cleaning that one out before looking at the thing. Good deal for me, but we never did figure out what was wrong. We did fix a few other minor things down there. Unfortunately, Joey and I think he sprayed water into one of the alternators which froze up an blew a belt when I was up the river. All fixed now.In addition, before getting into the river trip, my ten year old shower sump float switch finally bit the dust. Not noteworthy you say. Yes it is, I say. Every other one has been replaced at least once, and I find it amazing that the one that has had the most use lasted the longest!!! We also had the windlass (the big winch we use to raise and lower the anchor) go into runaway down, feeding out almost all our chain before we got to the circuit breaker. Defective microswitch in the foot switch now also fixed. Probably got drowned in the massive rains we're having here. Finally, the thermostat, we think, on the fridge has packed it in. The compressor still runs and it's cooling, but we have to shut it down manually. Well, overall, we've been pretty lucky this year. We've put about 7 or 8,000 miles under the keel with very little problems.Now for the rest--I know this one is getting a bit long. Picture a double deck African Queen. The boat is about 40 feet long and 8, yes, 8 feet wide. The "crew" deck, and there are 3 crew, captain, cook and guide, has about 3 feet of head room and includes the wheelhouse and a galley, such as it is. The passenger deck above that is open in the back with the front half covered with a blue poly tarp canopy. Two deck chairs, plastic but with cushions are provided as are a "day bed" kind of thing to sit on under the canopy as well as lumpy mattresses and full mosquito netting for nighttime. We are in the land of Dengue fever and Malaria, after all. The piece de resistance is the head. This consists of a roughly 3 foot square platform hung on the stern with 4 foot walls and a toilet that flushed directly into the river by dumping a bucket of river water in it. It got pretty amusing when every time Rose went to the head one of the crew would come out to fish or do something back there. Most of the boats had showers using river water; our boat had a bucket. Power plant is a one lunger diesel. No electric lights so it's pretty much bedtime at dark after dinner. This was really roughing it, but it added to the ambience of the whole thing up river in the jungle, etc. Food was surprisingly good and frequent with morning and afternoon tea as well as three hot meals.The trip up to Camp Leaky, named after a biologist, which is the main orangutan research station is about 5 hours. Until the river branches off, the main channel is pretty disgusting from runoff from mines; the branch with the apes is much cleaner and the distinction at the actual river branch is striking. The channel is only about 40 feet wide so you see all sorts of monkeys, birds and snakes; we also saw a small croc sunning and a giant one swimming. Did I mention they discourage human swimming here? So we arrived in time for the afternoon feeding and were lucky enough to see Tom--yes, stupid name--who is the alpha male. The orangs are pretty tame or at least used to humans so you get pretty close and it's fascinating to see these very smart creatures in the wild. Rose, the next day, actually saw one of the females take the keys to the feeding room from one ranger, give them to another and then lead him by the hand to the door to unlock it.The 3 day, 2 night trip, in true Indonesian fashion, is very leisurely with lots of downtime so it's a really nice forced relaxation with lots of reading and sleep. The first night we just went back down the river and tied up to shore. Surprisingly, the bugs weren't bad at all, but they're just now going into the rainy season. There's a lot of walking involved so Rose hit the sack at about 7:30 and I followed shortly as there was no way to read outside the netting. Next morning was back to a different feeding station at Camp Leaky and a really interesting documentary on this specific area and group of orangutans in their information office. A leisurely trip down the river and lunch left us at a 3rd feeding station which Tim skipped, but Rose enjoyed with the female and the ranger thing.That night we stayed at another feeding area and rafted up to another boat that carried some friends, and another boat or two showed up later. No partying though as this is a highly Muslim area and they discourage drinking on the boats. At sundown, we saw a huge troop of monkeys, just 50 meters across the river settling in for the night. the next morning was another hike to a feeding station which started out as a bust until one of the guides pulled out an apple and got a baby to come down for it. I should mention, it's bloody hot here, almost unbearable in the sun, so these walks are no mean feat. I've even been running the air conditioning on the boat during the heat of the afternoon. (some of you know how I hate to run the A/C) Next was lunch, meant to be followed by a visit to a local village--this looked a bit hokey as we're up this remote river and the village had a big arch thing and welcome sign. Then we were supposed to do another feeding station and then back to the boat. Well, at 1 it started pissing rain so we canned the hokey village and last feeding. Seen one ape, seen 'em all!!. Got back about 4pm, and immediately took nice showers.Joe and Olivia had opted for a cheaper but less action packed, one day only speed boat trip up to the park for the next day and loved it. They just didn't get the African Queen thing. Of course, Olivia had never heard of the African Queen anyway. The next couple of days were fixing all that stuff I mentioned and finally getting to a grocery store. Oh, and there was the 5 mile walk to find the "local" internet place. It's too long a story to go into here, but the 1 k they said it was turned into several miles and the place was closed. Hot, no shade--I'm lucky to be alive!!! A really nice local family sort of took us in, gave us some snacks and water and then a ride back to the waterfront on motorbikes. I think that's the only way I did survive that experience.The final day was supposed to be a big all day freebie tour and dinner. But, we have been misled before, and, while I was smart enough to opt out, Rose went in. I was going to meet her for the FREE dinner, but found none of the transport runs after 5 and this was in the town 15 miles away. Worked out okay as Rose turned up at about 5, not wanting to sit around waiting for dinner until 8 and listening to more speeches in Indonesian.Okay, I know this is a long one, but I've been pretty good lately. We left about 6 this morning and with a falling tide made 10 knots down to the river mouth. We planned on taking 2 days for this trip, but have actually been getting some decent wind so, if it's okay to make a night landfall. we might get there tomorrow around early evening. "There" is Belitung. a large island between Sumatra and Borneo. We have no idea if we'll luck out with another Lovina or be roughing it in another Kumai. It's the last rally stop and about 300 miles to Singapore.CheersTim, Rose, Joe & OliviaP.S. I really did shorten this up. there's lots more to tell but no room.