Pants!
Casamara
John & Susan Simpson
Sun 20 Oct 2024 05:41
| One of the things I hadn’t realised when planning for this sailing lifestyle was the effect it would have on my pants! Either we wash our clothes on board Casamara or we use the local laundry services which are so cheap that it often makes more sense to use them than to wash on board. So the clothes are either hung out to dry in the intense sunshine on the boat or they’re boiled to within an inch of their lives and then hung out in the sun by the laundry. Either way, elastic in anything degrades very quickly in the UV light and pants seem to fair particularly badly. This wouldn’t be a problem if there were pants to buy to replace them, but Indonesian sizes are very small and then there’s the Muslim dress code.... Fortunately, Bali came to the rescue. We arrived in Bali at the newly formed Bali Maritime Tourism Hub (BMTH). That should probably read 'newly forming' as the new marina with pontoon berths and onshore facilities heralded in the Sail 2 Indonesia rally schedule hasn’t actually been built yet. Not to be deterred, the marina development company had planned an inaugural event to celebrate their great plans and had constructed huge stages for the BMTH opening music festival. Mooring buoys were laid for us to attach our boats to, a dinghy dock put in place for us to get ashore and a whole tented village was constructed to offer facilities that yachties frequent, like a bar (!), laundry service, coffee shop, convenience store, etc. The music festival lasted two days: local Bali bands on the first day and a ‘jazz festival’ featuring well known (in Indonesia) acts. The rally boat crews were treated to a VIP welcome ceremony on the first evening, complete with a Balinese dance show and gala dinner, and were given free entry to the music events. It was a lot fun, particularly as we had Ian and Chris with us and we were meeting up with friends from other boats who we hadn’t seen in a while. Stars of the music show at the VIP welcome ceremony were Ian and John. When asked for volunteers for karaoke they stepped up and asked if they could borrow some guitars. They were soon rocking the stage and seemed to be very well received!  Balinese dancers  John and Ian on stage Following the success of his off road motorcycle day in Australia, John arranged to spend a day off the boat doing a Bali Dirt Bikes tour with Derek from ‘Mary Doll’. They spent the day having a fantastic time roaring on trail bikes along jungle tracks and in the volcanic rock hills. Meanwhile, Chris, Ian and I took a taxi to Kuta Beach. Ian had visited Kuta 30+ years ago and remembered a long white sand beach, crashing surf and a string of local houses along the fringe of the beach. Kuta today was unrecognisable. The beach is still white and the surf still crashes but the land side is heavily built up with a mixture of older ramshackle concrete buildings, newer hotels, souvenir stalls and a glitzy shopping mall with well known brands from the UK, USA and Australia. With the exception of the shopping mall Kuta was a bit tacky and disappointing. However, in mall was an M&S store, complete with British sized pants!!  John and Derek with Bali Dirt Bikes Our nephew Olly and his partner Steph are currently travelling through Indonesia and as luck would have it our paths crossed in Bali. The conditions on the day were perfect for a nice sail from Benoa to Serangan (both on Bali) and I think we convinced them that the sailing life is a good one and not too scary! We hoped to meet up with them again the next day but our sail to Nusa Lembongan sadly took longer than expected and we missed each other.  Olly getting to grips with helming All too quickly it was also time to say farewell to Ian and Chris. Where did those two weeks go? We sailed with them around to Amed on the northern coast of Bali where we were able to arrange a taxi to take them back to Bali airport for their onward flights. Amed was a sleepy little place, just a selection of shops, small hotels and places to eat strung along the edge of a wide bay. It felt much like many of the small towns and villages we had visited across Indonesia except that the five-times daily prayers broadcasting from the Mosques were missing. In their place were Hindu offerings; squares of woven bamboo leaf filled with flowers and other small gifts to the gods. These might be presented on elaborate statue platforms or just laid on the pavement.  A Balinese Hindu offering For hundreds of years Amed has been renowned for its sea salt. In 1578 Bali Amed Salt was appointed as the salt producer to the Kings of the Karangasem Kingdom and the manual production process remains the same to this day. Sea water is scooped into halved and hewn out coconut tree trunks where it is left to evaporate in the sun before the salt crystals are harvested by hand. This photo captures the sea salt drying racks on the beach, as well as the characteristic local boats pulled up behind them. These boats remind us of pond skater insects as they scuttle across the sea on their spidery legs and narrow canoe bodies. The photo also captures the moment we got back to the beach and John, ahead of me as I took the picture, realised that Casamara was no longer where we left her at anchor but was making her own way out to sea! As we’d been anchored in Amed for more than 24 hours without any problems we can only assume that a particularly strong gust of wind must have broken her anchor free on the steeply shelving sea bottom and once into deeper water she was free to go. Fortunately we were able to dash across in the dinghy, climb on board and rescue the situation. No harm was done but it was a scary moment.  Salt drying, local boats and Casamara going AWOL! |