sv evi

Our autopilot died about an hour after we left Thursday Island. Riki put the spare one in, and it worked, but it was super loud. It sounded like a pinball machine, and we nicknamed it Pinball Wizard (sure plays mean pinball!). We used the wind pilot when we were sailing, but often there was no wind, and we needed the autopilot when we were motoring.

Riki succeeded in fixing the autopilot by taking a part from the Pinball Wizard (back-up one) and putting it in the one that had failed. The newly fixed autopilot was quiet and got the job done well.

At night we only saw a few fishing boats, and they had lights. However, we did pass through a fleet of more than 1000 fishing boats by day. Luckily most were anchored, and none had nets or lines in the water. We started passing them at 9 am, and finished at 5 pm. Here is a picture of our radar screen — all of those yellow blips are fishing boats.

Here are some snapshots of the crew during one moment on passage — I think during day 4.

The girls were very industrious on passage, re-purposing old math worksheets by coloring them, cutting them, and pasting them into new configurations. This took them about two full days.

Tomu re-read the Fablehaven series en route — 5 novels in 5 days.

We arrived in Tual, Kei islands, south Maluku, Indonesia at around 1 pm. Shortly after we arrived, the skies opened up and it started to pour.

We were getting ready to head into town to visit the Quarantine office. I was feeling proud of myself because I had successfully called the Harbormaster on the VHF radio and had a conversation in Indonesian. Riki called out, “I think Triteia is dragging! Text James. I’m going to row over and try to let out more anchor chain.”

After that Riki put the engine on our dinghy, I donned my foul weather gear, and we went into town to go to the quarantine office.

In the quarantine office, I said good afternoon, asked how the official was doing, and said that we had just arrived from Australia. He told me that I needed an agent. I asked why? I told him I had all the paperwork, I spoke bahasa indonesia, and our friends had done it without an agent. He said, when was that? Now? and that Tual was a port that required an agent. I was frustrated and disappointed, and felt that he wasn’t telling the truth. I asked him his name, wrote it down (off his nametag), and told him I was going to call the police. (I had learned that phrase from my Indonesian podcasts). He just kindof smirked. Meanwhile, Riki was looking at me like, are you crazy?! It wasn’t my finest moment, threatening the Quarantine official. Maybe sleep deprivation had something to do with it. We walked out and went next door to the Harbormasters office, where a nice guy named Jaka told me that it was true, that all boats need an agent. I walked back over to apologize to Umar, but he had gone home for the day.

That evening I texted Kim, an agent, who asked me to send my paperwork to him. He met us the next morning around 10 am, and the Quarantine officer Umar came out to the boat. I apologized first thing.

The rest of the check in process went fine, we all walked to the immigration office, then the customs office. Riki and the customs agent went back to the boat, and he took a photo of the engine number, our MMSI number, the alcohol stores, and the med kit. It cost us $100 to hire the agent, and it went smoothly. We were done in about 3 hours. Welcome to Indonesia! Selamat datang di Tual!