16th February to 20th April 2021

I’ve been here in Martinique for two months now. But before I tell you of life in Martinique, here’s a quick postscript for Saint Helena – that tiny isolated island of some 4,300 inhabitants in the South Atlantic, where Henrietta was not to linger and I was not allowed to land.

Skip the next few paragraphs if you want to read only of Martinique.

I did at first write rather a lot about Saint Helena, several pages in fact. I’ve deleted it. It’s best not to upset too many people. In any case no one really wants to read too much horrible stuff (that’s what the newspapers give you). 

The British Overseas Territories are a formidable topic for study, Saint Helena is just one of those Overseas Territories. So, prudence being the better part of valour (is that what people say?), I’ll spare you the the first draft. 

The good news is that Saint Helena reopened to visiting yachts at the start of April. 

The sad news is that in having looked more closely at the island’s recent history, decision-making and funding, I seem to have uncovered a can of worms, several cans in fact. I hesitate before telling you…….actually I shan’t tell you much. If interested, you can find out more and ask your own questions.

One of two matters worth a look is the new airport. At best it is an amazing project completed despite its complexity, at worst it’s a serious “embarrassment” and a ”fiasco” – according to the UK Public Accounts Committee (Airport Report )

The other matter is Lord Michael Ashcroft, a keen advocate and lobbyist for Saint Helena. He might be wealthy philanthropic angel or self-serving villain, or simply one of those rather powerful misguided missiles. It all depends. He’s perhaps all three. In any case his influence and involvement with the island is interesting. (Lord Ashcroft) (Ashcroft on St Helena Covid )

As for British funding for Saint Helena, for 2020/21 the UK taxpayer pays “up to £34.3 million”, around £8,000 per inhabitant. 

Cost of the airport to the UK taxpayer “up to April 2016” was £238.9 million (over £55,000 per inhabitant). Further work on the airport is ongoing. I’m waiting for a further reply from FCDO (UK Foreign Office).

That’s enough about Saint Helena….moving on to Martinique………

First I’d like to sing my praises for the French. Just look at what they’ve come up with.

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After the Eiffel Tower there’s camembert, good wine, exotic underwear, Tour de France, Pasteur, Flaubert, fine perfume, the guillotine ……You’d perhaps consider the French to be creative, inventive, cultured, sexy and adventurous. But you’d not think of the French as particularly sensible; well I wouldn’t. They’re often charming, generous, adventurous, outspoken and beautiful…but not notably rational.

Yet, when it comes to the tiny little business of how to treat long distance cruising sailors in the time of Covid, France, at least outside mainland France, is one of the world’s most reasonable and considerate of nations.

If you’ve been isolated at sea for an extended time (and you’re still alive), the odds on your being a carrier of the bug are virtually non-existent. This is understood by the French – in Réunion and Martinique anyway (the two French island territories I have visited in the past few months). I have been allowed to come here, to stay, do boat repairs, go shopping, walking, swimming and subject to local rules, carry on with life. Good sense prevails. They’ve not forgotten the importance of liberté.

There’re not many places where decisions are so sane. The list of countries that have treated long-distance yachting folk as insufferable and unwanted is surprisingly long – countries which you’d normally think of as sensible. I shan’t name them. But I shan’t forget them.

It’s always good to reconsider our preconceptions.

Countries that are accepting yachts must be benefitting financially from the business we bring. Certainly in Martinique and Réunion (and in Cape Town) boatyards are busy, and skilled workers are fully booked up.

Martinique is French territory. This delightful Caribbean island let me in. I needed to do repairs, and after six weeks at sea needed food and water. They check papers and passport to confirm where I’ve been, ask if I feel well, then I’m free. As I say, I’ve been here two months.

Given that movement around the Caribbean islands is now troublesome (though perfectly possible) with ever-changing rules and restrictions (plus spells in quarantine, testing costs etc), I’ve taken the easy option and stayed in Martinique, sailing all over the place, while fattening up on good bread, cheese and wine, and making more effort to learn more French.

Time passes fast and easily enough. Among the hundreds of boaters anchored in the main anchorage of St Anne are some of those wonderful and indispensable human organisers who arrange small social events, activities and self-help. We’re an international crowd, understandably dominated by the French and, as always with the cruising community, overwhelmingly friendly, good humoured and supportive.

To help keep moderately sane and fit, and to fight-the-flab, I join others for aquarobics (they call it ‘noodling’, the long tube of colourful plastic being a noodle – a frite in French). And often walk a few miles along the coast or up a mountain, kayak ashore for shopping or a meal, go snorkelling and attend occasional mini- parties.

But busy anchorages are not really my cup of tea, so I’ve spent most of the time, a few weeks, sailing slowly around Martinique stopping wherever looks sheltered and pretty, exploring lesser known, out-of-the-way places.

It is a mountainous volcanic island, three times the size of the Isle of Wight (Southern England). This ‘island of flowers’ is pleasingly spectacular with towering peaks, fine forests and exquisite beaches. Coral and fish life is poor alas, though turtles and rays are plentiful; and there are many pelicans, frigate birds and other sea birds.

The highest peak here, Mount Pelée, is a bit higher than Britain’s highest mountain, 1,397 metres. It’s a volcano which exploded in 1902 and was the most deadly volcanic eruption of the 20th century – the entire town of St Pierre (which was then the capital) was destroyed; nearly 30,000 people were killed (the sole survivor a prisoner in his heavy stone-walled cell); and the ships anchored offshore were sunk (now popular dive sites).

There are dozens of anchorages up the sheltered west coast, most with a few boats bobbing about. The capital, Fort-de-France, a thriving and colourful hub of activity (somewhat suppressed by global bug), a very active sailing school at Schoelcher giving hours of entertainment. My favourite stop, Anne Couleuvre, a so-called ‘day anchorage’, a bit rolly (overnight just me) and at the start of an especially beautiful forest walk in one of several Nature Reserves. And there are many peaceful anchorages along the east coast too, nestling behind the reefs which give protection from the Atlantic swell.

Recently further restrictions have been introduced. Even small gatherings are no longer allowed, cafes and so on only give takeaways, many shops have shut.

So in a few days I’ll head for the Azores. It is another big hop, about 2,300 miles, perhaps two or three weeks’ sailing. It’s what thousands of sailors have been doing for a very long time. It’s roughly what I did myself a few years ago.

Indonesia to La Reunion

11th August to 3rd September

Raffles (Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles) is best known as the ‘founder’ of Singapore, and is now a part of the Singapore brand. He was one of those incredibly capable, energetic, ambitious and visionary men who carved a place in history. 

He journeyed home after his time in the east over this same Indian Ocean some 200 years ago. 

He and his wife and two remaining children had set out from Bencoolen (now Bengkulu in Sumatra) on the Fame, bound for England. But less than 60 miles from shore the ship caught fire and sank.

They lost everything: all Raffles’ collections, writings, artwork, gold, jewellery, “135 hefty crates, apart from the live animals” (which included a living tapir, a new species of tiger and unknown types of pheasant). They were lucky to survive with their lives. Any further offshore and they’d have been unable to row back.

Remember, they weren’t sailing for fun or for adventure. They just wanted to get home. I don’t suppose they enjoyed it at all. But that was the nature of international travel until not so long ago: dangerous, uncomfortable, slow.

Eventually they found another ship, the Mariner, and left Sumatra in April 1824, reaching St Helena (Napoleon had died there three years earlier) in July, and England in August. Imagine rounding the Cape of Good Hope in mid-winter storms.

(While they were on their way home, the Treaty of London between the British and Dutch was signed. This ceded British stations in Sumatra to the Dutch, and removed Dutch opposition to the British in Singapore. Another bit of the colonial jigsaw was fixed.)

You may not find that bit of history interesting but I do. It puts our own Indian Ocean sailing adventures into perspective to realise how relatively easy and safe are our modern day travels. 

For me this was an unexpectedly long crossing, the bug having shut off stopping en route at Cocos Keeling (Australian territory – I was curtly told that to stop there I’d be contravening both the Customs Act 1901 and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Emergency Management Ordinance 2012. Just imagine what horrors might await an errant Pom. I sense this guy was longing to clap me in irons.) 

And so it was just over 3,000 miles to the little bit of French territory, La Reunion. 

The Southeast Trade Winds are well established now and wind direction steady.

Where else can you sail 3,000 miles on one tack, reaching all the way, over clear deep blue sea, scarcely seeing another vessel, and with warm sunshine most of the way? It was the kind of sailing you might enjoy one day in fifty in Northern Europe. And it went on for 23 days non-stop.

The downside was that half of it was a bit rough and windy. The other half was very rough and very windy. Both Henrietta and I felt a bit bruised by the time we reached Reunion.

At an average of just over 1,000 miles a week (6 knots) in just over three weeks, it was my second longest non-stop solo passage.

Henrietta has performed well, of course. The mainsail has rarely been needed, just a reefed genoa had us zipping along for most of the time. Hydrovane self-steering never in doubt as we skedaddled down the deep blue white-crested waves.

A few seabirds appeared, some boobies, a couple of gorgeous tropicbirds, and shearwaters magically soaring and swooping over the waves, somehow travelling upwind into 30 knots of spumey sea. And suicidal flying fish occasionally end their days on deck.

It does occur to me sometimes that aeroplanes may be pretty dull and spew a lot of carbon dioxide, but they are oh-so quick and pretty comfortable too. They cover in less than two hours what takes most yachts at least a week’s continuous sailing. But aeroplanes make me nervous. Plus I’ve really appreciated no news, no contacts, no gloom, no land-dwelling anxieties, and none of the silly stuff we tend to live with for so much of our lives.

Above all, slow sea travel can bring you such fabulous happy feelings: the endless majesty of ocean swell, the unsullied ocean breeze, sparkling starlit nights; and then the heart lifting and body-tingling joy that comes with landfall after a long time at sea, the emotional high of a new unknown island. 

I approached La Reunion before dawn. There was indescribable otherworldly beauty in a town in the north (Saint-Denis, the capital) with its twinkling lights glittering like gold dust scattered up the dark dark grey mountainside, all set beneath the bright silver globe of a full moon. And little bits of phosphorescence flashed in the passing sea.

Arrival in Le Port, Reunion a few hours later was quick, easy and efficient. Though the port approach seems to be in an acceleration zone where wind was over 30 knots, the marina is calm. I later find there’s no acceleration zone; it was just a very windy day – a rare event on the west coast.

Staff and neighbours give warm welcomes and Henrietta is tied up in two minutes, customs officials arrive and clear me in five more minutes. All done. No charges, no excessive paperwork, no passport stamp (luckily Britain not yet sufficiently Brexitted for that)…just a freshwater shower…..and I’m off to a boulangerie and U Express supermarket down the road. Yum! ( N.B. If you sail here, you should submit paperwork before leaving your last port).

I’ll probably stay here a month or so. Lots to do……

Farewell Indonesia, Farewell Southeast Asia

4th to 10th August

A palm oil refinery, stocking up, last goodbyes, and papers

After over two years and a few thousand miles in Southeast Asia, over a year of which has been in Indonesia, it’s time to move on.

For me, and apart from Europe, this is the most wonderful region of our planet. A long and fascinating history, colourful people, sophisticated culture, a multitude of different languages, diverse religions, fine mountains, clear seas and overwhelmingly friendly people.

Little wonder that so many boats stay here for many years. Some come here and never leave. Were it not so far from my home, I’d stay longer. Were it not for the global bug, I’d like more travel on land.  But for now, and before it’s too late, I choose to move on.

The past few days in Belitung have been busy. Fellow boat owners will know the tasks involved in preparing for long offshore passages. The checks: engine, standing rigging, running rigging, shackles, cables, batteries. Cleaning: hull, inside lockers, fridge, windows, laundry. Shopping: spares. Last emails, weather forecasts, route planning, and so on.

…oh yes! Food for a month or more too.

Before leaving there was just time  for a visit to Belitung’s biggest palm oil refinery. William, the manager, has invited me to come and see it. It is a fascinating day out.

I’ve always loved factory visits.  I’ll not swamp you with palm oil technicalities (though my note book is crammed).

Suffice to say, 12,000 hectares of palm trees are grown from seed, transplanted till maturity brings the fruit, which is then harvested manually and trucked to the refinery in a constant stream of small lorries, and tractor/trailers – about one every seven minutes all day. The fruit has to be milled within a few hours of picking and goes through a series of heating, milling, cooling, heating processes and lots of computer-controlled pipes and tubes and tanks, to result in a list of end products that includes cooking oil, solid greasy stuff (for soap, margarine, shampoo, cosmetics, ice cream and lots of other things), plus biodiesel. Dry residues are used to fire the boilers to provide the plant’s electricity, and exported for cattle feed. Everything is used.

 

 

 

We go down to the jetty where the products are stored before shipping overseas.

The ship we see is typical of the global maritime industry:- Bermuda registered, Russian captain, Philippino crew, cargo from Indonesia, heading for Malaysia. They await papers and a pilot and high tide. Every month, I estimate 30-50,000 tonnes of the various products are exported.The EU has given palm oil bad press. Plantations have devoured many thousands of hectares of rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia (though in Belitung, the native forests, where they existed, have long since been destroyed with tin mining. Soils are not fertile.)

I’ll not enter the debate as to the merits or otherwise of palm oil plantations. This refinery meets European standards. Working conditions for around 3,000 employees are good (play group, clinic, landscaping, housing, football pitch, indoor badminton, a mosque, everywhere clean and careful). William and the staff I meet are understandably proud of Belitung’s biggest export earner.

Next day passes with frantic foray to the market and local shops for enough food for several weeks. Guess there’s going to be quite a lot of onions and lentils with rice to keep me going. And some carrots and garlic and ginger and chillies (yum!) 

And finally there’s paperwork. Three young customs officials want to inspect Henrietta. They hadn’t travelled 500 metres of choppy water on an elderly Avon inflatable before. But with dampened backsides they were safely on board and thoroughly checked my cupboards, photographed lots of odds and ends and so on. I think they had a memorable half day out.

So, with more papers to allow my exit from Indonesia, I bid sweet sad farewells to some of those who’ve been so kind and helpful during my prolonged stop in Belitung. It has been one of my happiest, most memorable anchorages anywhere in the world.

There are lots of farewells! There are no fellow boats to say goodbye to, but local friends, and helpers, the shops and warungs I’ve come to know.

Thank you to everyone who has helped make my days here in Belitung so full, friendly and comfortable (fairly comfortable). Especially, Erfan, Fenny, Eddy, Johnny, Erne, Muramotosan, William, Alex, Rosa, Bambang, Cecilia, Frankie, Yvonne and everyone else (whose names I’ve forgotten.)

Final enquiries and phone calls to people in specific countries mean I’ll now head for La Réunion – a little French island east of Madagascar and southwest of Mauritius. If Mauritius reopens in September I’ll aim to go there instead.

 I write this at a peaceful little island in the Sunda Strait, Pulau Sebuku, not far from Krakatoa.

The two days and nights sailing from Belitung left me weary. It’s through an area that’s too busy with shipping and fishing, and oil fields to allow much rest!

Local fishermen have just come alongside and given me some fresh fish. I’ll leave tomorrow for the long sail to La Reunion, around four weeks, all being well.

 

(A bit of internet here may let this post be published, but maybe not)

 

I’ll be out of contact for a while. Best wishes and safe sailing to many sailor friends who’ve made different plans, and of course I’ll hope to see many of you again.

 

 

Belitung and Jakarta 2

1st July to 3rd August 2020

Getting to know Belitung, local friends, a new passport

Henrietta and I are not accustomed to long stays anywhere. We like to be sailing. ‘Rolling stones gather no moss’ (or, moving bottoms gather no weed) is our mantra. To stop is to stagnate; the mind grows dull, the body weak; not to mention poor Henrietta’s nether regions. 

In the five years we’ve been together, we have never stopped for more than a month anywhere – until now.

Now, things are rather different, as we all know. We’re seriously restricted in how we follow our desires and dreams, wanderlust suppressed, plans tattered. Apart from one sail to Jakarta and back, and, for me, two flights to Jakarta and back (more later), we have lived in Belitung for over two and a half months. When you reach an age where you know that life is finite, that’s much too long a time. 

And yet, and I stress this because it has surprised me, I have really enjoyed a more settled existence. It has been a rare pleasure to appreciate a slower and less demanding pace. I am happy. This is especially so as Belitung is friendly, fascinating and often fun; and central to this, it is open to free movement, albeit usually masked.

I’ve become a ‘local’ in as much as any Westerner will ever be local.

Folk know or know of the ‘strange Englishman who’s living on that sailing boat out there’. (Henrietta is prominent as the only boat anchored in a wide bay off over a kilometre of sand and coral).

I have my favourite local shops and ‘warungs’ for lunch or coffee, begin to know my way around the capital (40 minutes motorcycle away) and have explored much of the island. Even the local turtles seem to come and check up on me. (We share advanced distaste for the passing jet skis, their dangers and the noise – their insistent angry growls and roar – and the wash) 

Belitung’s wealth, such as it is, derives from tin mining, palm oil, kaolin and sand export (good building sand is barged to Jakarta), fishing, boat building and, in more normal times, local tourism (when over 2,000 visitors, Indonesian and a handful of foreigners, fly in each week on up to a dozen flights a day).

It may lack the spectacular volcanic mountains of Java, Sumatra and Bali but the beauty of its beaches, clear seas, unique rock formations had it strive for recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (It lost out to Langkawi in Malaysia). 

Given a healthy historic mix of peoples from all over Indonesia (including Malay, Java, Bugis, Sumatran, Chinese), and a handful of resident foreigners (at least a dozen), there is a happy acceptance of everyone.

One incidental outcome of this tolerance is Indonesia’s largest selection of beer (ie. fizzy lager), and Franky’s wife runs a small bright bar at their hotel that has stocked over a hundred varieties from around the world.

People have, almost  without exception, been friendly, polite, inquisitive and helpful. Locally, Erpan and his wife Penny have helped with taxi services, rental motorcycle, laundry, and all round advice and information. Johnny in the capital helps with visa paperwork and officialdom. 

More than anyone, the lovely local businesswoman Erny and friend, Muromotosan, have always included me with outings around the island and paddleboarding (or for me, kayaking) to nearby islands. It has been a treat to meet so many of their friends, and see places I’d never have found were it not for them.

Travelling alone on rented motorbike, or with Erny and Muromotosan by car, I’ve rarely had time to fester or succumb to melancholia.

Rather than give you day-by-day accounts of what’s gone on, here are a few odds and ends, edited as I feel necessary. Much of this would have been tricky without the contacts, and the energy, enthusiasm and encouragement of Erny: –

Seeing with Franky the undeveloped southern parts of Belitung. A tireless young businessman, his interests include tree plantations for plywood production, land speculation and development, a hotel, an eco-resort, herb production (whenever he talks I learn of another venture.)

Regular visits by paddleboard and kayak to Kelayang Island where we feed bananas to the one resident macaque, fatten ourselves with hot banana fritters, and swim and snorkel.

Pizzas and happy family gatherings with Alex, Rosa and children, Bambang and Cecilia. Alex is an enthusiastic, patient and knowledgeable animal-lover who’s made Belitung his home.

Hydroponic salad eco-farming

Honey production at Hendra’s home.

A palm oil refinery, where William, the general manager, explains the processes between harvesting from 30,000 hectares of palm trees to shipping processed oil and other products to China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, South Korea from their own shipping jetty…..He’s been in charge for nearly 20 years of this 24 hour, 365 days a year operation that employs around 3,000 people. Fascinating and he’s going to show me around the refinery later this week.

A day out on the private island of Leebong, where luxury villas are available for those more affluent than me. Now of course deserted apart from the owner’s family and friends.

And then, to test my stamina and powers of patience, I’ve been ‘getting-a-new-passport’, the old one unexpired but after five years rapidly filled with stamps and visas that accompany sailing around half the world. I cannot even leave Indonesia without a new one.

Should I or should I not castigate the UK Foreign Office in this post? An open letter to the Foreign Secretary perhaps? I’m tempted – but you don’t want to read a grumpy man’s rants.

Passport application processes are aimed at people who live more normal lives: those who travel overseas to work or for holidays, for example. Us sailors are clearly not considered normal; we don’t usually have a local address, or local British professionals to vouch that the photo is of us, or even know where we are going next, or even when we may go! And we often don’t live in places with reliable postal services. Our homes are our boats.

Of no interest to most of you who read this stuff, I’ll just tell you that wherever you are in the world, U.K. Passport renewal is done in Britain. In Indonesia an agent in Jakarta handles it. First trouble arose when I found that the Passport agent was shut for three months of Jakarta lock-down. (i.e.passport could not be renewed. You’re stuffed)

The Embassy doesn’t want to talk to anyone unless ‘emergency’. Phone calls to local Consul refer you to Britain where, even if staff have heard of Indonesia, they do not know anything of local realities. Enough…my little bit of hair turns grey, blood pressure off the scale.

And so, to spare you sharing any more of my grumpy-man anguish I’ll simply say that once Jakarta lockdown ended and the agent reopened I was obliged to invest in two return flights to Jakarta.

That’s four flights, two covid blood tests (needed before all flights), 14 taxis, two nights in hotels…..But at last, after all that and with a wallet that’s very much thinner, I have a new passport (big thank you to the staff who actually do the work – which does not include Foreign Secretary or embassy – and turned it round in three weeks).

In theory I can now move again.

I cannot do anything about the sad fact (sad for me anyway) that  the new black (hint of blue maybe) passport is one of these half-hearted ones with a new title –  it reminds us we shall no longer enjoy the privilege of unfettered travels or life or work in the EU. (But I shan’t start on that source of anger and irritation. Also, I do wish to remain friends with some lovely folk who think quite differently from me.)

This is turning into another ramble of ill-considered thoughts, so I’ll stop. As I said, I’m happy and healthy, and consider I’m very fortunate to be in Indonesia. I hope to leave in a week or so.