Ned and Kathy left us in Bali, after a wonderful whirlwind four weeks together. We had one day to rush around getting jobs done before leaving Brother Wind in the care of friends Dave and Vicki on Papillon, who kindly ran our generator for two hours daily, in order to keep batteries charged, and the freezer running!



We meanwhile flew off to Jogjakarta on Java to meet up with Emily and enjoy a bit of culture! We had a day in town, to wander through the Kraton, or Sultan's palace, built in the mid 18th C, and then to the wonderful remains of the water palace, designed in the same era by the Portuguese. The wonderful pools where the Sultan watched his concubines swim, selected his choice of the day, and then bathed with her in his private pool, seemed like a pretty good lifestyle!



We went to a badly supported shadow puppet display, which somehow still managed to be very atmospheric, perhaps due to the evocative sound of the gamelan orchestra. A trip to Jogjakarta would not have been complete without it.



To visit the huge 9th C. Buddhist temple of Borobudur was the real purpose of our trip to Jogja. For me a trip down memory lane to 31 years ago, when I was last here!

Happily restoration was in progress then, and is now complete, so that this massive symmetrical stupa of six square terraces, topped by three circular ones, with 5 kms of stunning carving on the pilgrim's walk, can now be enjoyed as a whole rather than in pieces as it was then!



The top levels have small latticed stupas within which buddhas sit in different stages of wisdom, and look out on the beautiful surrounding hills, known as the sleeping giant, for obvious reasons once you see him!



It truly merits its claim to the eighth wonder of the world, and has the huge advantage unlike the Parthenon of having retained all its carvings!



We were immensely lucky to have the whole place almost exclusively to ourselves, we were unsure if this was because of Ramadam, the Bali bombings or last year's earthquake.



Our delightful driver Bowo took us back to Jogja by a scenic route of rice paddies, and rural Java, which gave Emily a good insight into Indonesian life. That evening we ate in front of the floodlit temples of 9th C. Prambanan, and later went to watch the dance of the Ramayana performed in front of the temples, a wonderful stroke of luck that we happened to be there at full moon, when it is performed for four consecutive nights, and not again for another month.



We went back to visit the temples of Prambanan the next day on our way to the airport, and once more were blessed by no other tourists, but we were shocked and saddened by the sorry and precarious state the candi were in due to the earthquake last year. Sadly they are in a much worse state than on my last visit, and are now fenced off for safety reasons, and while funding is being sought.



So then back to Brother Wind and Bali with Emily, and next day a bit more Indonesian retail therapy for Em, as well as a provisioning trip. We went to watch Bull Races, which consisted of bulls bedecked in colourful headgear ploughing a paddy field and then running back as fast and elegantly as possible in knee high mud! This was a Sail Indonesia event, and Giles accepted the inevitable challenge of having a go - no he didn't end up in the mud, but he was carefully chaperoned by the driver of the bull and was still pretty muddy at the end of it!



Then we had to make tracks, or waves perhaps, and set off to meet Poppy some 320 miles away! We cleared Bali in the last of the light, we have tried wherever possible to never leave or arrive at an anchorage in the dark, there are far too many unlit hazards along the coast in the form of large bamboo rafts (fish traps), buoys linked by a series of lines etc, not to mention at sea barges towing unlit tugs quarter of a mile behind them, and unlit fishing boats everywhere.



We were pleased that we had stuck to this rule of a daylight approach when dawn broke two days later as we sailed along the coast to Jepara on northern mid Java. Not only did 50 or more fishing boats emerge in the light, but the approach to the town was thick with huge spider like bamboo fish traps, all driven into the sea bottom!



We were way off the beaten track for yachts here, so were greeted by friendly waves, and then a small fishing boat acted as our escort, and told us where to anchor, which turned out to be next to a giant turtle building on shore!! When we got ashore the friendly security guard insisted on showing us around the cavernous inside of the turtle, which is destined to be a giant aquarium!



After a becak ride (bicycle rickshaw), we eventually found a hotel where they managed to find us a driver, to take Emily and I to the airport of Semerang, a two hour drive away, and meet Poppy. Our hearts sank when Poppy rang to say her plane was going to be two hours late, but we decided that we would carry on regardless, and spend some time in Semerang, which the Lonely Planet informed us had a selection of Dutch colonial buildings. We have chased off to see other towns with allegedly colonial buildings, and been very disappointed, but Semerang lived up to expectations, and although our driver thought we would want to go to the mall in Semerang, we persuaded him to let us out in the old part of the town, where we wandered along the grubby canals, and crumbling facades and warehouses of Dutch colonialism. A huge night market was in full swing, so as the sun set we had still plenty to amuse ourselves with.



Not for the first time we were struck by the charm and kindness of the Indonesians, Em and I were clearly the only tourists anyone had seen in a long time, there is no particular reason to come here, but they accepted us in their midst, helped us to find our way, and laughed with us not at us, greeting us as ever with 'Hello Mister', surely the sound of Indonesia, almost as much as the call to prayer, the roaring motorbikes, and the gamelan!



We sat and waited for Poppy in a crowded smoky airport, our driver and hotel friend sat with us, and were almost more delighted than us when Poppy, head and shoulders above everyone, and of course the only European, beamed into view.



Next day we were off early, weaving our way out through the fishtraps, and heading for the tiny island group of Karimanjawa some forty miles offshore, a nice shake down for Poppy our reluctant sailor, and a pleasant day sail, or motor as it turned out.



Although this was a rally stop, we were as ever on a tight schedule, and couldn't stay for the celebrations a week later. Because we were some of the first people to go ashore, we were presented with a lovely ikat scarf for Giles, and some engraved 'bling' bangles for the girls. We were very touched. There are only two restaurants on the island, and we chose to eat at the nearest, a generous meal for four of us and soft drinks, came to 40,000 rupiah, or ?2! You can see why we eat out whenever we can!



We spent two nights at anchor on the main island, a beautiful spot and fabulous clear water. We had had alternator problems on our trip to collect Poppy, and a boiling engine battery. Giles managed to enlist the help of Keith a Kiwi in a workmanlike ocean motor boat called Voahangy, and together they managed to sort out where the problem lay, a faulty diode on the isolator as it turned out, so we are now just charging the house batteries, and will manage until Singapore.



Our third night in Karimanjawa was a tiny island with a big reef 10 miles north, which turned out to have very good snorkelling mostly for the variety and size of all the fish rather than the coral, and from here we made a night time exit in the small hours, to make certain that we should arrive in Kumai at first light 2 days later.



We cut the engine as soon as we had cleared the islands, and sailed all the way across the Java Sea, close hauled, but able to lay our course, a bumpy ride, but to our delight we caught three fish, a Mahi Mahi , and an albacore tuna, were not huge, but then a 17.5 kg wahoo.



All yachts have repeatedly been moaning that Indonesian waters are fished out, and there is nothing to catch, so word spread like wild fire that Brother Wind had caught three fish.

So on to Kumai with our heads held high!!