Archipelago love - Indonesia to the UK
Toby is a surfer / windsurfer / sailor; in fact his feet never stray far from water. On this trip he will help deliver a 24 year old 40ft Classic Swan from Indo to UK . Being such an old boat with its classic lines; 3 people is about its limit; water is at a premium and communication is ‘line of sight’. Suffice to say everything is very basic. Due to the basics of the boat posting this diary on the web in real time became an ‘impossibility’. The only way of getting online was through a mobile phone and laptop – this soon became expensive and unviable is various countries. Hence this diary is being posted in real time, but after the event. As to how it reads we’ll leave judgment to its readers; suffice to say it turns out to be an adventure of a lifetime....Storms, sinking, breaking down in middle Indian O, Pirates, Tornado - you name it it happend..
Hot Tip: Try 'cutting and pasting' the daily GPS Co-ordinates into Google Earth and see exactly where we are!! Gives you a sense of what a crazy long journey this is. http://earth.google.com/
(NB: Diary reads Back to Front!!! Start from 'DAY 0' bottom of page.....Toby)
Day 1 - Somewhere between Semarang and Karimun Jawa 0200 hrs
My first watch. 0200 till 0500 hrs. Bloody hell nobody told me about these hours!! Amazing light. The moon is half full, the wind is South-westerly, our heading is North to a place called Karimun Jawa. I got up and said hello-goodbye to Rupert and he grunted, the next grunt l heard was him snoring. So I'm on my own on deck. I am keeping this boat from harm, and pointing it in the right direction. I am in charge. Someone forgot to tell me what I'm supposed to do?? It's not that bad, I do know how to sail; it’s just been a while that's all... What's that It's a squall Lots of wind it will rip all the sails off.. will we all end up in a watery grave? It's just the moonlight playing of the water. It's all OK I can put the radio down and stop calling S.O.S. now. Shit I had better get back at the helm I'm on watch!! What am I doing next to the radio? I am at the helm, I'm still in charge and all is still O.K. Was I dreaming? Was it my imagination? Am I going mad? Shit I’m going mad and it's only my first watch!! I've got about another 3-4 months of this. Its O.K I keep telling myself, maybe I should wake Rupert up and get him to check that squall out for me….
These are only some of the jumbled thoughts that go through my mind while I'm on watch. They are the ramblings of a 25 year old blond guy, who is trying to grow a beard and moustache, which has left the London life for a few months, which doesn't have to jump every time the bloody mobile phone rings, who doesn't have to worry about the rent money this month, which is stuck on a boat smiling!!
Day 0 – 01.05 am Dubai Airport - Duty Free
Well here I am. Where do I start? I suppose I have started what some people would call an epic adventure. I have decided to write a few words per day for a number of reasons. These jottings are going to be a collection of words nothing more. I don't know what purpose they will serve, but these words will only be a very loose collection of words that describe my situation and feelings at the time. These words shouldn't be looked into too hard, they should simple be read. I have promised to e-mail these jottings to various friends and colleges here there and everywhere, I'm not sure how I feel about doing this. Firstly I find it hard to express my feelings very well, so by just doing this scribbling is a good start for me.. So then to go e-mailing them of to people is probably a step further than where I want to go!! ENOUGH!!! I'm babbling to myself.
So here I am sitting in Dubai Airport waiting for my connecting flight to Jakarta , which will be followed by a flight to Semarang , which will be followed by a lot of sailing. Its funny why are we obsessed with travel? Here I am travelling half way across the world to pick up a boat to then travel back "the way I came; this time on the sea. The way I see things at the moment; we do it for the challenge and to prove to ourselves we can do it, maybe this view will change over the course of this journey. Much in life is routine, adventure is getting harder to find, the world is getting smaller and smaller, adventures are getting easier to accomplish. What will the adventurer do in 100 years from now? A hundred years ago main travel was by ship, maybe a 100 years from now you won't be able to just jump on a plane; maybe we'll finally have wasted the last few drops of cheap oil. Maybe by then only the very rich will be able to fly because of the cost, will adventure be a little different? Anyway all these things are flying around my head in anticipation of my journey. I have no idea how far I will get or how it will turn out, to me that is unpredictable and that to me is exciting. I was on the plane listening to some quack babble on about relaxation (It was a radio channel on the plane head phones) and how everyone has stress, she was telling the listener to take that stress on board and turn it to your advantage. Maybe I'm not explaining myself very well? She was saying not all stress in negative.
Imagine you are about to do something you are not very keen to do, say a bungee jump, you get stressed before the jump, but on completing the jump you feel exhilarated, on reflecting on your experience you may feel now you could do it again. But in doing the jump you have learnt what that stress is like and learnt by it. What the quack was trying to say was; you can take these experiences and try to deal with your other stresses, try and learn from them and use them to your advantage. Anyway, as this is my first entry I have gone off on one. It is early in the morning I have three hours to kill before my connecting flight and I have a lot of mixed emotions running through my brain. I have left family, friends, dog and a lovely girlfriend behind to get on a boat with a lunatic I have known all my life to travel half way round the world!! But I am also leaving behind the hectic London life, that not so long ago I thought was the dog bollocks life style, which I now have no qualms about leaving behind. So; mixed emotions.
God help me if anyone gets to read this, I have suddenly had thoughts of putting some kind of password on this computer so no one can get into it. Who am I kidding; I promised I would e-mail a few of these entries away. I have a feeling by day forty these entries will probably be two lines long!! What a joke. Here signing of for the first time possibly the last time...