Position 02:56S 111:43E

 

After saying goodbye to Liz, Ruth and Jim, and welcoming Julian Hitt and Chris Arbenz aboard, we left Bali with a

favorable current of more than 4 knots - at one point in the tide rip, Moonshadow's autopilot had to add about 40 degrees

of leeway to keep us on course! We saw speeds over the ground in excess of 12 knots.

The passage to Borneo was pleasant but the wind and current did not cooperate after we left Bali. More often than not, we

encountered 1.5 to 2.0 knots of current against us, but progress was steady. We encountered some large ships and fishing

vessels, using our Mini Automatic Radar Plotting Aid (MARPA), we kept an eye on them through our night watches. Julian

did the 2100-0000 watch and David takes the 0000-0300 watch. Peter came on at 0300 to 0600 when Chris got up and

stayed until someone took over for him around breakfast time.

After three days crossing the Java Sea, we joined two other boats at anchor at the mouth of the Kumai river at 2200 hours

amidst a massive thunderstorm and lighting that interrupted our watching "The Bucket List" in the cockpit. We did some

skillful navigation to get there and get the anchor down. The other two boats illuminated themselves for us to guide in on

the very dark beclouded night. Somewhere in the voyage we crossed the equator, but none of us noticed it, so we didn't get

dressed as women or sacrifice anyone from the crew to Neptune.

At sunup, we hauled the hook and made our way 14 miles up the river - and you guessed it, 2 knots of current against us.

We anchored off the coast of Kumai where we got some diesel fuel, and made plans for a two-day trip into the Orangutan

reserve.

Our tour was quite relaxing for the four of us and we were taken care of by four crew - a tourguide, two boat guys and a

cook. We saw dozens of Orangutans feeding on bananas when called by the rangers. We saw a water snake and beautiful

birds flying through the forest.

Other Blue Water Rally crews were touring also and we would exchange waves and shouts as we passed them on the river.

These tour boats have large single-cylinder diesel engines that are reminiscent of the "African Queen" movie with

Humphrey Bogart and Catherine Hepburn. Some of us wore earplugs to lessen the effect of the pop, pop, pop of the engine

all day long. That night, it rained buckets and Peter and Chris were close to the open end of the shelter on the deck of the

tour boat. None of us got much sleep but we napped while underway on the river, so we weren't sleep deprived. 

We came back from the tour and they took us right to a riverside market for some fresh veggies. We planned a dinner

ashore but were rained out - and stayed aboard for a steak dinner by David that couldn't be beat.