105. A Taste of Asia

I’m back on Lombok. At Marina del Ray. Ray as in Raymond, the Aussie that founded it. Not Rey as in a Spanish king. Pretty cool name if you ask me. It’s one of very few marinas in Indonesia and I’m here to have someone look at the compressor for my fridge and to get diesel delivered to Saoirse. I’m not surprised that the fridge is acting up as it’s fifteen years old by now and it’s been running constantly for the last four years, attempting to keep primarily refreshments cool in tropical conditions. My hope is that it can be brought back to life as getting a replacement shipped here could take months and involve all sorts of tariffs. Tariffs that I’m pretty sure that I, as a consumer, will have to pay. But I’m not that worried about living without fridge until I can replace the compressor in Malaysia. I still have the freezer which I could convert into a fridge or I can just try to remember to put the beers in there a couple of hours before I want them. And more importantly, take them out before they freeze.

Diesel is an interesting topic here. First of all, you tend to use a lot of it as Indonesia is very close to the equator, which in turn means very light winds. I have also found that gas stations frequently run out of it or at least of the grade you want. There are three grades here, DEX being the cleanest, DEX Lite being questionable and Solar which I doubt even qualifies as diesel. It certainly doesn’t smell like it. I truly hope that I can get away with only using DEX as I’ve had first hand experience with poor quality diesel back in the Mediterranean. But just in case, I only fuel using my own cans, through a filter funnel and I’ve loaded up with lots of primary and secondary fuel filters.

Now, problems with getting spare parts and clean diesel is a small price to pay for all the good things that come with Indonesia. I’ve been here a month and a half now and can see how people get stuck here. It has beautiful scenery, the food is great, it’s probably one of the best dive spots in the world and it’s relatively cheap to live here. It’s also a secular country that recognises and protects the right to practice six different religions. Or indeed, none at all. Indonesians are primarily muslims and you have to get used to getting woken up at five every morning from calls for prayer, often from several competing mosques. But I find every local I meet to be tolerant, kind, timid and interested in where I come from. Which is more than I can say about the general population of that world.

Another early observation is that there are very few cruisers here. That means that there’s no real infrastructure when it comes to things like getting fuel to your vessel, hauling it out, buying boat parts or checking in and out of the country. When I arrived from Australia with my buddy Mike from Picasso, we had to hire an agent/yacht club owner to get the Customs and Immigration officials to come from the airport to his restaurant and check us in. At the expense of feeding them both breakfast and lunch. They were very pleasant though and more interested in taking selfies behind Saoirse’s steering wheels than to search her.

There may not be that many cruisers here, but at times it feels like everyone in Indonesia is out fishing. Particularly at night. There is a myriad of floating fish aggregation devices (known as FADs), fishing boats and floating nets that you have to look out for. These are rarely lit and hardly ever equipped with AIS so your only option at night is to stay well off shore and keep a close eye on the radar. Most boats and FADs are also small and made of wood which makes it really hard for the radar to detect them, so solo sailing at night comes with additional challenges in these waters. And from what I hear, it’s not going to get easier further north as I’ll be getting closer to one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. But that will be something to worry about in a month or so. For now, I’m really enjoying my first taste of Asia.