Christmas in Raja Ampat - Making friends and Making Music

Christmas day was fast approaching and we were all getting into the Christmas spirit.  We made our way to Waisai for last minute Christmas shopping and a taste of the local street food which was a real treat. 

Our tour guides were our long-time friends Tristan and Weendy, Sv Pangaea.  They were old hands here and knew all the best places to stop.   With our taste buds satiated and our shopping bags filled with Fireworks (organized by Tristan for New Year’s) we all set sail for a well-protected anchorage a few miles west and since we saw no name on the charts we christened it Christmas Bay.

 Over the next couple of days the bay filled up with cruisers from all parts of the Globe.   We were all busy decorating our boats and Kaija baked her famous Double Bumpty Chocolate and Oatmeal Raisin cookies. 

We had fun on Christmas morning as we went from boat to boat caroling and delivering these tasty treats.  It was a full fun day shared with with Murry and Carol, Sv Jams (NZ), Matt & Annie Sv Cavalo (US) and Tristan and Weendy Sv Pangaea (SP) a number of other yachties arrived.   We enjoyed meeting new friends Jon & Sue & their daughter Amanda Sc Ocelot, (US) who have provided so much good information on their website for other cruisers and also kindly hosted a lovely Christmas Potluck dinner.  We also met Sc Indigo, Chris and Liz (Oz), Sv Berserk, Craig and Pam (NZ), Sven and Sarah and puppy Papeete (German vessel) and Mike & Liliane, Sv Meikyo (CAN). 

It was great to see Mike and Liliane who we first met in the Caribbean in 2007 and it was sure great to spend time with them and their new puppy Scupper.  They are a lovely couple who enjoy singing and playing music and we enjoyed hours making music together playing the old standards and hearing their latest compositions. 

We spent our final day hiking a local trail to the top for the million dollar view of the bay.  This is an ideal anchorage...soft water, protected from all sides, occasional wifi from neighboring Air Borek, and large enough to accommodate a crowd with feeling crowded.

Sorong - Raja Ampat. - Red Birds of Paradise!

We harbour hopped for a couple of days finding soft water anchorages to rest then hoisted sails for an overnighter arriving mid morning in the Selat Sele channel to drop our hooks in a mud bottom river at Seget.  This was a perfect rest stop for a day before motorsailnig 40 miles up the channel to Sorong.

Sorong is a large commercial port including an international airport.  Mode of transportation is either BIMO which are small 6 seater van, typically dressed out according to the style of the driver or you hop on a motor scooter and pray.  The harbour is very active with shipping traffic from small cruiseliners, to cargo ferries and a full complement of local Phinisis.  

These old style vessels are each quite unique and are the large livaboard dive boats that ply these waters bringing passengers to the remote islands of Raja Ampat and dive spots of this area. 

We enjoyed our time in Sorong meeting other cruisers and re-provisioning.  With ships stores restocked we sailed the final 40 mile leg to Friwin Island and our first introduction to one of this worlds premier diving locations, Raja Ampat.

Our introduction to this quiet place was an early morning hike with guide Simon to see the Red Bird of Paradise.  This gentle soft spoke man picked us up before sunrise and ferried us up the long and winding river inland.  As we all booted up for the hike, I was impressed to see him lead bare footed.  This was not a well laid path, but a combination of slippery rock face, roots and wild bush. After a spirited climb lasting the better part of an hour as daylight was dawning we arrived at a place he had obviously been before. 

We didn't know where to look but as he started calling the birds using his own voice and a recorded loop on his phone, the birds appeared. We recommend the use of a good set of binoculars.

They were certainly impressive doing their mating dance and clucking and singing to each other...at times it was all quite frenetic.

Some were content to sit and watch their mates do the dance as they swished their long tail feathers.  This was a real treat  and a must do if you get the chance.

While there are other guides, we highly recommend Mr. Simon!

Kaimana - Cruisers helping Cruisers - That's what they do!

We sailed north and west to Kaimana.  This was to be a provision stop and we found this busy port community active and quite well stocked with stores and Mosques. 

We were traveling in company with Murray and Carol (Sv Jams) and our new friends Matt and Annie (Sv Cavalo) whom we had met in Triton Bay.  This young couple, from the US, were avid surfers and we enjoyed their youthful energy.  It was great to see them enjoying the cruising lifestyle.  As with all cruisers…there are good days…then there are those other days when things don’t go as planned.  We all have them…and unfortunately for them, their number came up the morning we departed Kaimana.  Jams and KaijaSong were already underway when we heard Matt on the radio saying they had lost all forward propulsion.  After a brief discussion, we determined that they had neither forward nor reverse.  This sounded all too familiar to us as we had a similar experience some years back sailing to the Galapagos.  In our case, we still had reverse, and it was a matter of the transmission ‘steels and plates’ wearing out.  However, I learned from that experience, that if you lose both forward and reverse, it is more like a case of the ‘damper plate’ failing.  This is the piece of hardware that connects the engine flywheel to the transmission input spline (see picture upper right). 

As it turns out, their engine and ours is the same…a Perkins 4-236 and despite having different transmissions, we at least had a point of reference.  By the end of the day, Matt (with a little assistance from Murray and me…that’s what cruisers do) had  hoisted his 1000 pound engine, unbolted and removed his 400 lb transmission and accessed and removed the damper plate and confirmed that in fact the spline on the damper plate was stripped.   Ok on the best of days with a good Perkins dealer close by, you are looking at a couple of days to get the part needed.  However, we were stuck out in the middle of Indonesia in a small port town miles and miles from any major center, in this case Sorong.  We contacted Wick, who is the cruisers best friend in Sorong who said that he could fly a mechanic down and perhaps jury rig something that might get them close, or fly back with the part and try to effect a repair to keep them going.  All of this news was positive, but time consuming and expensive.  In the back of my mind…I believed that I had a spare damper plate…really???  We had learned over the years…that you almost need a spare yacht to carry all the spares needed to keep your yacht running.  I woke in the night convinced that somewhere in the bowels of our boat I would find this needed spare.  As morning woke, I located an old broken damper plate and with failing memory almost convinced myself that this was what I had imagined…but Kaija, bless her heart, said she had one final ‘secret stash’ location to check…VOILA, EUREKA, she cried and out she came with a brand new damper plate, the correct spacer plate and a set of long bolts to affix all this in place.  Murray picked me up and together we went to share the good news.   Despite my attempts at starting off showing them my old broken damper plate which I offered them, and watching Matt in deep concentration trying to figure out some magic fix to marry it to their broken unit…

I couldn’t contain my excitement for long and pulled out the new damper plate and accessories with a twinkle in my eye happily handed it to Matt.  It was like seeing a kid at Christmas…his eyes lit up and he immediately disappeared into his engine room…only to proclaim minutes later…”IT FITS”.   By days end, the tranny and engine were re-united and it all worked. While we boys were busy being grease monkeys, the girls went shopping.  The market was awesome for fresh fruits and veggies.  Stocked up again, and all parts running smoothly, the morning of December 6 departed for Sorong.