Year 2- 11th October 2025 –Bawean -Java Sea – Borneo-Kalimantan – Kumai

Steve and I were on the 5.00am-8.00am shift and it was an understatement to say it was busy with fishing boats – see the picture of the day. We took over from Keith & Janet and they had had to dodge many fishing boats too. How there is any fish left in Indonesia I do not know as there have been so many fishing boats we have encountered on our trip.

 We were at least sailing and making some 5-6 kts which was fine. We saw the sun come up and the day dawn which was nice. After our shift I prepared coffee and breakfast which was our usual fruit and yoghurt. I then had a shower and it was on to admin for me. I had heard from Batam -where we will check out of Indonesia that they had a space and will help our check out. I had also heard from Putteri where we will check in to Malaysia and they of course wanted all sorts of documents which I had to supply them. This took time and of course the usual way of transfer did not work so I had to use an alternative. I then looked up the entrance to Kumai – which needed some careful consideration. I then worked out dates to check out of Indonesia and where will go on the way up the Malaysian coast and when we will get to Langkawi where we hope to take delivery of a new mainsail. I then contacted the Thai agent and where wewill check in to Thailand. This took most of the morning and it was quite satisfying once done.

 Stormbird of course sailed on and the watches passed with all watches having to watch out for fishing boats and tankers and occasionally having to take avoiding action. There was an issue on board as Steve, Ruth and Janet felt unwell with a tummy issue and they all blamed the spaghetti bolognaise but Mark, Keith and I were fine. I suspect that it may have been drinks ashore at the welcome event where there was ice in the drinks. This meant that they felt rough and were sleeping a lot and not really able to do watches.

 Mark, Keith and I therefore did watches on our own and we all helped each other. We had the rest of the ratatouille for supper with pasta and the others did not eat. I was on at 4.00pm and there were lots of fishing boats but we also started to see the odd tug towing larger barges which you have to be careful of the tow line as the distance to the barge behind is about 200 metres and you do not want to caught in between. The sun went down and we settled in for the night. It was clear to me that we were not going to be able to get into the Kumai river until light as it was not advised. I therefore looked at options and there was lots of space really to anchor outside but there was little shelter from the swell.

 We sailed on and Mark took over from me and then Keith came on and by this time I had had some rest. We sailed on and were doing well and were likely to arrive at around midnight to 1.00am. We had a waypoint off Kumai Bay and were then called up by a boat called Pegasus who asked what our intentions were. We explained we were going to anchor outside the river. They said to watch out for lots of fishing nets marked with black flags. They decided to go into the shallows early whereas I decided to keep out a bit and then to come round and to try and get some shelter from the swell behind the land spit which stuck out. We watched Pegasus on AIS and what they were doing.

 The wind picked up and as we came round we were coming closer to the wind and Stormbird picked up her skirts and were soon doing 7.5 -8 kts and making progress toward the river entrance which was about 20nm away and yet despite this we were only in 5-7m of water, I thought the sooner we can anchor the sooner we can sleep and we can cover the 20nm in the morning. However, we needed to come round and tuck in a bit more to limit the swell. This took us until about 12.30am and I thought this should be enough. We anchored in about 10m of water this time and although there was a little swell we hardly noticed. Steve, Ruth and Janet had been asleep for some hours.

We collapsed in bed only a couple of miles from Pegasus and had sailed 162 nm from Bawean and we will complete the rest of the journey to Kumai tomorrow am.  

 The picture of the day is a picture from the chart plotter of the sort of traffic with fishing boats we were having to contend with.

Need/Opportunity Year Three

In year three I will be going from Thailand to Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and then on to Chagos, Mauritius, Reunion, Cape Town, St Helena, Azores and back to the UK.  I am looking for crew from Mauritius/ Reunion Island to Cape Town and from Cape Town to the UK. If of any interest do email me.

The blog will continue as we continue the journey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog then do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com