TELL-TALES

RIP David Parkinson

David Parkinson was sadly lost at sea en route from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to Nuku’alofa in Tonga. He had taken on a kiwi crew member, Alexander McDonald (65) who was a sailing virgin and when David was lost overboard he didn’t know how to sail the boat back to him, get the old engine on Santana going, or send a mayday. He drifted around for three days before setting off an emergency beacon and being rescued by a Tongan patrol boat. Alexander McDonald said that when he woke up to take his watch David was not there and he sailed around trying to find him, though he admits he is ‘no sailor’ so had little chance of finding him.

I met David in the Panama Canal YC in 2008 and over the weeks of waiting for a transit date shared a beer with him on numerous occasions. The first thing you noticed about David was that he could be a bit unsteady on his feet. Given the beer was one US dollar a pop in the PCYC it was easy to jump to the obvious conclusion. In fact David had Parkinson’s Disease but was still determined to sail around the world. He had already been around the world by motorbike (an old BMW R60 as it happened) and was now doing it the ‘easy way’. To control his Parkinson’s he had a pacemaker installed in a bit of cutting edge surgery, not for his heart, but to send electrical signals to his brain to control the Parkinson’s.

David was a former Royal Marine who had worked in hostage negotiations for a British company Control Risks and had apparently been involved in a particularly dangerous operation in Columbia that was later made into a film, Proof of Life, starring Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan. You never heard any of this from David and I only discovered his previous exploits life after his death. In Panama he was more concerned with the cat he had on board that appeared to be taking over the boat and running his life. And looking forward to the South Pacific.

The last time I saw him was in the Balboa Yacht Club. You went ashore in a bum-boat and at times the anchorage was so choppy getting on the bum-boat was tricky. David had obviously taken a tumble and had a huge gash on his calf. When I asked him if he was OK, in typical David fashion, he shrugged it off… ‘worse to come’ he said.

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12-10-09

All over Indonesia you will hear the tuk-tuk-tuk of single cylinder diesels chugging about the anchorages or in more open water out fishing. In Labuan Bajo I wanted to take a look at one of these engines, so I asked Pakko what sort of engine he had.

‘Oh, Mr Engine, he very good’ Pakko replied.

‘Yeah, but who makes them? Are they made in Indonesia? China? What sort is it?’

‘Mr Engine’, Pakko replied.

Now I thought this was all very sweet calling it ‘Mr Engine’, but I wanted a bit more and motioned to him that I’d like to take a look at it.

I crawled under the top platform and there in front of me was: Mr Engine. That’s what the Chinese Jianghuai Engine Works calls this single lung diesel. They are air-cooled, dry exhaust, and mostly started by hand. There is no gearbox, just start it up and away you go. Simple, robust and easily repaired. That’s ‘Mr Engine’.

Pakko and crew in Labuan Bajo. The boat had some wonderful old teak planks used in the construction.

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Nusa Tenggara: On the Ring of Fire

The Nusa Tenggara, literally the Southeast Islands, run pretty much from west to east with Bali at one end and West Timor at the other end. The chain includes a number of islands popular with cruisers including Flores, Rinca, Komodo, Sumbawa, Lombok and of course Bali. Although you can cruise from west to east, it is more easily done starting in the east and heading west. Most yachts will cruise the more sheltered north coasts of the islands where there are more anchorages than you could shake a 60 day social visa at.

Probably one of the most striking features of the islands is that there are volcanoes everywhere. Most are dormant, at least for now, but all around can be seen the characteristic cones and craters of volcanoes past and present. Some of them are alive and well, occasionally firing up at night, though most just let off a bit of steam from fumaroles on the side.

These volcanoes all sit on the western edge of what is called 'the ring of fire' in the Pacific, on a subduction zone where the Indo-Australian plate rubs up against the Eurasian plate causing earthquakes and letting magma bubble up to the surface and explode out of weak spots in the earth's crust, our volcanoes. Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait is the one we have all heard of and this massive eruption in 1883 destroyed most of the original island and flung so much dust into the air that world temperatures dropped for the ensuing two years of volcanic winter because the sun was partially obscured. This region is the most active in the entire ring of fire with more volcanic eruptions than anywhere else around the Pacific basin. I have to confess to some uneasiness as we sailed around Sangeang Island at dusk, which is just one gigantic volcano sitting in the Flores Sea, a little fumarole puffing away on its north side, as the insignificant speck of Skylax edged westwards on a fading breeze.

Sailing strategies

Yachts arriving from Kupang or Ambon and heading west will generally make for the northern coasts of the islands. From Kupang it is an overnighter up to Flores and then you can day-hop all the way along the northern coast. From Ambon yachts will usually come down to Alor and then proceed along the north coasts of Pantar, Adonara, Flores, Rinca, Komodo, Sumbawa and Lombok to Bali. Yachts heading east from Bali will head up to the north coast of Lombok and then potter along the island chain as far east as they intend to go, usually just to Komodo or Rinca before turning around to head back west.

Winds in the usual cruising season of August to October tend to be E-SE in the eastern islands and SW in the more westerly islands with a mixture of winds in the middle. Frequently the wind will start SE and clock around to the SW. There can also be a NE sea breeze blowing onshore in the afternoon. The high islands cause a lot of channelling and wind shadows so if you stay close to the land there will often be little or no breeze. Go a few miles offshore and there is usually wind, sometimes quite a lot.

There are anchorages all along the island chain and it is not difficult to look at the charts and then work out an itinerary. Nights along the northern coast are frequently calm so you can anchor in quite open roadsteads without any real problems. The holding also tends to be very good on mud, clay or sand.

Anchorage at Bari on Flores. Nights are usually calm.

Currents and tides

The narrow channels between the islands can give rise to very strong tidal races with overfalls and whirlpools, so getting the timing right so you go through on a favourable stream is important. In the Flores Strait between the eastern end of Flores and Adonara we did 10.4 knots over the ground with the engine on low revs. Friends on another boat who got it wrong went nowhere for two hours at max revs in the narrows at the northern end of the strait.

Working out the tides can be difficult with different regimes in different places. Most yachts now have tidal programmes that are accurate enough for the straits. The Admiralty tidal programme with tidal stream clocks seems to work particularly well here. In general the stream will run north with the flood and south with the ebb. To this general rule you need to add in data from other sources.

In the Lombok Strait between Bali and Lombok the stream runs south with the SW monsoon and north with the NE monsoon. Most yachts will be here when the stream is generally running south. This southern flow is attenuated by the tidal stream so that when the stream runs north the current is lessened. To complicate matters the prevailing SW wind kicks up a nasty chop in the strait.

In other places the tides are semi-diurnal and there can be two high tides together followed by two low tides. Some tides work on an approximate basis with moon-rise and moon-set which most GPS units will show. The Flores Strait is one of these with tides running north from moon-set to moon-rise and then reversing. It's all a messy business so take whatever advice you can.

Overfalls and whirlpools at the northern end of the Flores Strait

This idea comes from Michael on B'Sherrit and I'm amazed and happy (I love pizza) that it's so easy and the pizzas taste just great. It uses tortilla bases that you can buy with long use-by dates so it's easy to keep a good supply of them on board. Try to get the thickest tortilla bases you can find.

Tortillas (two per person is about right for hungry people)

Olive oil

Pizza sauce or tomato paste

Grated cheese (cheddar types or whatever you have are fine, parmesan is great)

Toppings: salami, bacon, sliced toms, olives, anchovies, capers - choose your favourites or use whatever is on board.

Lay out the bases and dribble some olive oil over them. We use a little brush to cover the top of the base. Spread some pizza sauce on, add toppings of choice, and then grated cheese. Put the first one in a heated pan with a thick base and put the lid on. It should be cooked in 4-5 minutes, but just take a peek every now and again.

Eat pizza while the next one cooks.

For more recipes and tips for cooking on board go to Gourmets & Gourmands

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Kupang from the anchorage

Kupang is a ramshackle city littered with rubbish where the whiff of sewerage lingers in the street. It is also delightfully un-touristy, vital and has a brilliant night market. From the anchorage you land on the beach and one of Napa’s ‘boys’ keeps an eye on the dinghy. If the afternoon sea breeze blows onshore it can be a bit wet landing or departing the beach, but there were always willing hands to drag the dinghy out or help launch it.

In town you can find most things you need and lots you don’t. The streets bustle with bemos and motorbikes buzzing about. There are only a handful of tourists here and that makes you a target for the half a dozen touts selling ikkats, the traditional hand woven cloth usually worn as a scarf when getting dressed up or as ceremonial adornments often signifying rank. Different islands have different patterns and the yarn is dyed with vegetable dyes, well at least that’s the story, and woven by hand on looms with stylised lizards, fish and birds and more abstract emblems. Lu bought a couple after three days of intermittent bargaining – they used to meet us on the beach when we came ashore.

Scenes from the night market

Internet access was relatively easy from the Café Lavalon where you can take your own laptop and get free wifi or use the owners computer if it is free. A bit further along from Lavalon is the main pasar, a big market with fresh fruit and veggie. At night the main street you come up to off the beach is barricaded off and becomes a night market with small stalls serving excellent food of all types. Mind you in most of them you eat with your fingers – right hand only OK.

Beach kids

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Racing a local fishing boat into Kupang - we won, under sail.

This passage is traditionally a light wind or no wind passage so you need to hone those light weather sailing skills and top up the diesel tank in Darwin before you leave. Some yachts have spent a number of extra days out here, low on diesel and drifting around, because they didn’t believe you couldn’t sail the whole way with a bit of patience. In fact we sailed for around 60% of the time, but some of that was very slow with a lot of slatting sails which can really get on your nerves.

We didn’t pick up any wind over 10 knots until around 80 miles off Kupang when a southerly began to build, eventually getting up to 20 knots or so. It felt like half a gale after the preceding calms. We just managed to get into Kupang on the evening of the fourth day courtesy of a beautiful close reach up the southern hook that you round to head up to Kupang town. You wouldn’t want to do it in the dark as there are badly lit fishing boats everywhere and fish farms extending some distance out from the coast of Kupang. The latest ‘must have’ for smaller Indonesian fishing boats are strobe lights (all colours including white, blue, green and red) arranged in no particular order on the boat. They have range of less than half a mile and give you few clues about what the boat is doing.

Other boats on passage around the same time seemed to have less wind than we did. Boats going to Bali via Ashmore Reef commonly had to motor all the way to Ashmore Reef and only picked up some wind between Ashmore Reef and Bali. This was often a SW wind which mean they were fairly tight on the wind to get there. As Bob on Boomerang said: ‘I hate to turn that darned engine on but to get across here you need to burn up quite a few dinosaurs’.

We nosed into suitable depths for anchoring at dusk and had the customary bottle of wine to celebrate arriving, as it happened just off one of the mosques that had a sermon from the imam that lasted most of the evening – it was Ramadan. In the morning we called up Napa on Ch.16 and he suggested moving a bit further along off ‘his’ beach. Our anchorage was where ‘bad people’ are… So we pottered a little further up and anchored in 8 metres off Napa’s beach. The currents swoosh up and down here and you are lying to the current most of the time. You also get an onshore sea breeze at times that can be quite brisk, but the holding is excellent and we had trouble getting the anchor out.

Once the dinghy was in the water it was off to see Napa waiting on the beach and clear into Indonesia. Now I knew it was going to cost something extra for the customs ‘retirement fund’, I figured around $US100-$US150. So it was a bit of shock to find the cost was $US250, though the figure was confirmed by other boats and a couple of sympathetic locals I talked to. Anyway apart from handing over the money it was all pretty painless and our paperwork and passports were back the next day and we were cleared in … all the way to Nongsa Point Napa said. ‘You have any problems with customs, you just ring this number’, and he wrote down the phone number of the head honcho of customs in Kupang.