sv evi

Jade, Luz, and I traveled back smoothly to re-join Riki and Tomu on board evi. They are both really getting into reading! 🙂

We spent a week in Senibong Cove Marina, getting ready to leave. Riki installed new house batteries (6 of them). We then left on an overnight to Tioman Island, which is still in Malaysia, but East of the Malaysian Peninsula. We anchored near a small island with excellent snorkeling.

For my actual 50th birthday, Jade planned a very special day for me. First, we went for a morning snorkel where Luz and I spotted an octopus free swimming (!), watched a turtle eating from one meter above it for five minutes, and saw a baby black-tipped reef shark. Next, we went to the authorities to do the domestic clearance into Tioman Island. I had a special lunch on SV Nebo, where Chef Koen let me choose from a menu that Nina and Kate had designed. I chose vegetable risotto and pomelo salad — both were delicious!!

Then Koen took Nina and Kate over to evi, while we stayed back…until we were called to come. Then it was a … surprise party! With confetti! and decorations and a delicious cake! So sweet! After I opened my presents, we spent the afternoon playing mahjong in the cockpit. Our friends stayed for dinner on evi. It was a perfect day!

A few days later we left our boats at 7 am to do a hike across the island to the other side. The path was easy to follow, and not too difficult…except for the “suicide plant” or stinging plant locally called “Jelatang”. The leaves, stems, and twigs of these plants are covered in microscopic, hollow stinging hairs (trichomes). When brushed against, these fragile tips break off, acting like hypodermic needles that inject an irritating cocktail of chemical toxins into the skin. Jade and Riki got stung by Jelatang pretty badly, and Koen and Tomu to a lesser degree. Jade didn’t sleep well for two nights, and she needed my big bed to be able to stretch her limbs out.

We saw a Giant Malaysian Squirrel off the side of the road — it was black with a brown tail, about the size of a raccoon! And it was making a really loud chattering noise. We also stopped at a waterfall to swim. Ahh…refreshing cold water.

We finished our hike with a delicious lunch at a restaurant on the beach, then we got a ride back across the island to our dinghies.

Then we did another overnight sail to end up back in Indonesia! We made a beach fire on an uninhabited island, and the kids made shell shops. At shell shops you don’t deal in money, only in trades for other shells or cool beach finds. Tomu organized his shells in rainbow order. Our kids have been making shell shops, often with Akira and Orion, for the past 5 years — since Luz was three years old!

It is so nice to be back in Indonesia — the snorkeling is amazing, the beaches wild, the people are so kind. And it is really fun to use my Indonesian again!

We checked into Tarempa, the main town here in the Anambas. It was relatively quick and easy. Koen and I took the kids shopping at the fresh market while Sanne and Riki finished the check in process.

Of course, things aren’t as easy in Indonesia as in Thailand or Malaysia. The shops don’t have a very big selection of Western foods (no cheese, no butter, no peanut butter…). Marinas are few and far between, so any fuel or water you want to bring on board, you are schlepping it in the dinghy.

We wanted to add some drinking water to our tanks. It took some negotiating, but eventually PJ and his coworker brought us 15 jugs that hold 19 liters each, to the small beach near our boat, a bit outside town. I had to hitch a ride on a scooter to go hurry them up…and as I rode the scooter, breathing clove cigarette smoke and zooming by houses built on stilts, I thought, ahh, Indonesia. 🙂 It’s so good to be back!

We are back in the rhythm of boat life…doing home school in the mornings, and often the girls will take the paddle board, pick up Nina and Kate, and go to the beach for the afternoon. They made bakeries at one beach. Jade used cuttlebones from cuttlefish, pounded them into a white paste, and used it as icing. They used bits of rubbish to decorate their cakes.

The girls decided to do a still life drawing one day.

And they helped me by washing their own underwear! 🙂

Tomu is doing a new subject this year — science. His first experiment was to build a water clock. It was fun for all of us! Today he had to go to the beach and record his detailed observations in an objective manner.

We met a new boat, Anova, with French Canadians Brigitte and Bruno on board (friends of Nebo). Yesterday we reunited with our French friends Clementine, Florent, and their three boys yesterday — we had a big potluck on their boat.