The lost Time at the Mecca of Paperwork and The unsuspected Captain

I just woke up with prayer songs of multiple mosques filling the air with chants and moaning.
The sun has still not risen and the morning is beautifully cool, amplifying my nostalgia for home.
I have put on a brew of Coffee Senang, the local grind from Sorong in west Papua, and sat down to write in an attempt to catch up on the many adventures we have had in the last few weeks.

Yesterday morning we arrived at Sanana after another night at sea. It was hard leaving Obi unexplored, for it enticed with some of the most inviting landscapes I have ever seen. With tall, green, mountainous terrains with big valleys and hill sides covered in thick jungle enmeshed in lianas so dense it looked impenetrable, it almost persuaded me to give up the ocean for a life in its fantastical lushness, as wavy as a windy day at sea. Clouds seemed to be permanently stuck in the valleys, the misty air adding a tranquil sense in the morning, a mysterious sense in day and an eerie sense in the evening. Who knew that clouds can elicit so many moods.
But with time at our heals, we woke up with the sun and wayed anchor once again, this time headed for Sula, another Island which we knew nothing about except that it might have a tiny harbor which would provide good shelter for the westerlies, which were forecasted for the coming day.

We have drawn a route from Sorong to Lombok, staying as far north as we can for as long as possible while going westwards, to avoid the strong westerlies which blows through southern Indonesia in the Northwest Monsoon.
But to avoid stopping at all the same places we have been on the way up, we have chosen a route through various islands which we have been able to find no sailing information on. This has made it feel like we are truly exploring, in charge of finding our own anchorages, towns big enough to reprovision and refill diesel and figure out the local weather patterns and currents. And that in itself has been very satisfying.

The passage from Obi to Sula was only of just over a hundred nautical miles, a stint we would normally do in less than twenty-four hours. But that is with good wind, and through the squally nights of equatorial sailing we keep the sails reefed slowing our pace considerably, allowing the person who is not on watch to stay asleep even at the approach of a squall.
Soon after we left and cleared the islands around Obi, a kind, steady breeze set in, blowing just forward of the beam, and adding the staysail, we were moving at a good pace, elated with the feeling we in the past few months have missed so terribly.

But our circumstances changed soon, when Riley thought to do a check of the rigging, which we, with all the motoring we have been doing, have not been watching closely.
With a look on his face as if he was a child being told that Christmas was cancelled, he told me to have a look at our mast which appeared to be pumping considerably under too much strain from an overtightened backstay and too much slack in the fore, causing the mast to bend in a way which is only suitable for a racing boat.
Everyone with a yacht knows the feeling of observing a physical injury of a boat, it makes you sick to the stomach just as if you were watching an injury of a living being. It makes it even worse when you are the cause of such injury, as the feeling of compassion are mixed with the guilt of making such incompetent mistake.

We tried to adjust the rigging on the way. With Riley at the helm, I clipped in my harness and tied strings to the necessary tools that I might not lose them overboard and went to work at the bottle screws on deck. But it was soon obvious, that the only solution was to tighten the forestay, which has most likely stretched a little since we installed it, and for that we would have to be in port as the turnbuckle, which allows us to adjust the length to a degree, had been bottomed out.
So, to our utter misery we decided to reef the sails to a bare minimum and motor through a perfect sailing night, calming our upset emotions with statements such as “at least we noticed before the mast came down” and “we are not the first to be stupid fools”

Nonetheless the night was beautiful, and unlike most nights we have had in Indonesia, we seemed to dodge all the squalls, granting us a considerably quiet night, yet sleep still managed to escape us.

The next morning around eleven, we arrived at Sanana, the biggest town on the Island of Sula in the region of the North Moluccas.
Entering between the channel markers we realized just how small the harbor was, and with a huge ferry wharf right in the middle, anchoring space was greatly limited.

First, we anchored right in the middle of the bay, but after a chat to some friendly locals we took their advice and moved into a snug little spot between the ferry wharf and a fishing boat. We then tied our stern line to a smaller jetty ashore and sat nicely in place without swinging.
It was just as well, as only half an hour later an enormous ferry arrived, making us rush to turn on the engine, slacken the stern line and motor out of the way, while it maneuvered with admirable skill onto the wharf beside us.
I tell you, some seamen in Indonesia are extremely competent and dock huge ships, which in Australia would be assisted by tug boats, singlehandedly, sometimes cutting it so close to other boats that you could pass a cup of coffee from deck to deck.

Okay, we thought, be better go and apologize to the captain and ask when he will be on his way again, so we can make sure to be out of his way in time.
But on the wharf there seemed to be no ill feelings, we were in a fine spot, “Tidak apa apa” no worries and welcome to Sanana. But when a man pointed to the building onshore and told us we could have a chat to the ships office, we thought that was a good idea and went completely forgetting what it means to visit the Harbor Master in Indonesia. We walked willingly, happily, smiling right into the trap.

If there has ever been a paperwork religion, this office is the mecca of it, where countless officials gather to bow over documents while servantly lighting cigarette after cigarette in a loyal attempt to keep the flame alight.
When we handed in our green book (a quarantine book sailors get when they enter Indonesia, which is meant for collecting sailing permits at each harbor master office, though rarely actually used) it was still shiny and smooth from the lack of handling, but when it was returned to us, it would barely have passed the sorting at a second hand book store and had to be brushed for the ashes of the eternal flame.
It is impossible to be overtly impatient when everyone are so very friendly, smiling and making pleasant conversation and offering you cigarette with sweet papers and cloves. But drained from the lack of sleep, it was a painful four hours of waiting, for that is how long it took to get a stamp and a signature in our green book.
I could not help thinking of the matador and the bull repeatedly running headfirst at a red cloth. If the harbor master was a bull, that little green book was his muleta.

Anyways after having smoked half a pack of cigarettes, eaten a big portion of delicious nasi goreng, made by an old man who were happy to share a few of his cooking tips, having our picture taken with us half asleep and a woman who was so concerned with looking fat that we had to redo it about twenty times, we finally had our green book returned to us and were wished a good night.
And when we finally got in the dinghy and rushed back in the water afraid that they would think of another stamp to add to our book, we broke out in a rant we had suppressed for the last four hours.

Many people are of the conviction that this is standard Indonesian procedure, but it is important for me to state that for us it is the first time that we have experienced this level of inefficiency., though it seems to match the reputation of Harbor Maters.
But as painful as it is to wait for nothing, it is an interesting thing to witness, for in a place like Denmark where the public routines run like clockwork this level of ineffectiveness would be considered an offence to our devoted order of time scheduled to the second. Yet here there seemed to be no scruples about our documents being half done at an outdoor smoker’s lounge in the parking lot and half done at the office each page being turned by the hands of four men simultaneously, in a workplace with numerous officials seemingly spending the majority of their workday watching YouTube videos with their feet up.

And as Riley pointed out, it is an odd experience to observe this whole procedure done as if boredom does not exist.
What in the culture is so different that it seems that people are unaffected by boredom which back home effects people like a plague? And could we possibly achieve an existence of both efficiency and contentedness with unfilled time fully, for that to me sounds like a wonderful way of being.

The best thing that happened was on our last day in Sanana, when we went ashore to buy chocolate from a local chocolate factory, after a productive day of tuning the rigging.
As we were filling up a couple of jury cans with water from a little Warung (café), it started raining heavily, and we were shoed inside for a cop of hot Mocha and Cigarettes.
Here we were so fortunate to meet the captain of the ferry which had made the impressive maneuver onto the jetty the day before, despite us being a little in the way.
As soon as I realized who he was, I immediately apologized and explained as well as I could, how scared we had been when we saw the huge ship come towards us. He just laughed and took out his phone and showed us a video from that very moment.
The video was of the bridge deck and the person at the controls. Driving the 55-meter ship with perfect precision was a girl in headscarf, who the captain let us know, was only 19 years old and in training to become a Captain of ships. He also told us, that she had only been driving for six months.
I nearly dropped my Mocha!

And just to make our day better, we had a last visit from three boat loads of kids, who were stoked to come onboard for an inspection of our foreign vessel. Talking to kids is probably the fastest way to learn Bahasa Indonesia, and the enthusiasm that they have for speaking and understanding where we are from and what we are doing is fantastically infectious.

After a good look around and a group photo in the cockpit, they jumped back in their boats to row back ashore. One boat holding three kids were only a couple of centimeters above the water and required a team effort to keep balanced. The bigger boat held about six and were paddled by a single guy using a shovel.

Once again we leave port warmed by the exceptionally hospitable reception we always get when going ashore, a hospitality which is so customary of this fantastic culture.

Thank you Sanana!