The Jakarta Offshore Sailing Club

Cruise Reports Thousand Islands

• Christmas Cruise Dec 2000 by Thierry Powis on Terus
• Idul Fitri Cruise 1997 on Mata Hari II

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Thousand Islands 25 - 31 Dec 2000 Thierry Powis on Terus

The month of December between Christmas and New-year is usually not the best period to visit  the Thousand Islands as  you could expect  a lot of rain with strong north-western winds.  Previous attempts to go to the Thousand Islands in 98 and 99 were aborted due to the reasons mentioned above. Genevieve was not so much enthusiastic about my idea to try it again in 2000. Nevertheless I decided that we should not give up. The day before our planned departure things were not looking that great,  the wind was heavy but no rain. Fortunately when we looked on the Singaporean weather Website things looked much better for the following day . Winds were going to be moderate and the sky clear of clouds. It looked like there was a window of opportunity coming up the day we planned to leave.  I was mostly concerned by the weather for the leg towards the Thousand Island. Going back was probably not too much of my concerns as we could expect winds pushing us.

On Christmas day we started our trip to the Thousand Island happy to leave Jakarta with his bomb attacks etc…. The wind speed and direction was in line with the forecast and we moved in a comfortable way but rather slowly towards our destination. Around 3pm we started the engine on, as we wanted to arrive before dawn. The target was the Island of  Bulat , it is a small privately owned island that we know had a nice pier. Two years ago on our first trip to the Thousand Island we thought we had reached Australia, as we were greeted at that time by a Kangaroo. Unfortunately the residents of the island informed us that  the kangaroo had died.  We docked Terus on the south pier and enjoyed a beautiful dawn.. As the tide was lowering one fisherman took a canoe and caught a few sea cucumbers  that were destined for the Japanese community. Everything looked perfect until the mosquito’s decided that it was feeding time.  There were likely as many mosquitoes as stars (it was new moon). The night was horrible and we spend more time trying to kill the mosquitoes than to sleep. So for all purposes an insect repellent is a must if you want to go to the Thousand Islands.

Finally to sun went up again and the surviving mosquito’s joined their sleeping quarters (be reassured there are enough left if you wish to try). After the breakfast we raised the sails and moved towards Pulau Sebaru. This island is very likely one of the few that has not been altered to much by the people as it’s position very north of the Thousand Islands has made it less attractive. Many mangroves are surrounding the island and only a small resort is located on the West side. There are also a few local people who are living there. Strangely enough for such a low densely populated island with no reasons to visit we found on the southern part a big, freshly build, concrete pier. There was also some construction going along the pier and the local people had been told that it will become a restaurant. But in view of the size of the pier it is very likely that some other projects exist than just a restaurant and the people of the island are not well informed. The layout of the construction did also not correspond with that of a restaurant reinforcing our idea that the people of the island had no idea on what was really going to be built. We took our lunch and a cup of coffee and enjoyed the quietness. Some slight breeze relieved us from the heat and we hoped that this would not allow the mosquito’s to get the take off permission.  Early in the afternoon a noisy fisher boat came next to us and dropped a uniformed person on the island. The boatman showed us proudly a red plaque indicating that he was on an official mission. The uniformed man took pictures of the construction and then later disappeared on the island for a few hours. In view of the number of habitants on the island it is more likely that he had a nap instead of doing some work.. Amazing Indonesia even in the most remote areas the administration is always present. The driver of the boat aware that he will have some free time decided to go fishing.  He jumped into the water with a knife and a small floating net but did not seem to catch a lot. Curious I decided to look at what he was catching. In the net there was a white mass that I could not immediately identify.  Only a few minutes later did I see an empty shell of a freshly killed giant clam. The systematic destruction of the fauna was even more evident when we dived.  The whole submarine landscape was just  a  field of debris proof  that dynamite had been used extensively on this part of the island to remove all life.

The night was a delight, with the pier being  far away from the mainland  no mosquito’s seemed to have to courage to visit us. The sky was full of stars and we could see the lights of the  petroleum platforms. The only unexpected event that disturbed our sleep was a little rainfall that forced us to retreat inside the boat, but otherwise is was a very good night.

The trip of the day was planed and we decided to continue northwards.  At a speed around 5 knots we moved towards the far end of the Thousand Islands and turned around a petrol platform before heading south towards Ringit . While we dropped the anchor south of  Ringit  we were greeted by a dolphin. With a limited number of scuba tanks on board a first exploration by snorkel was conducted, as we did not want to waste our air on a dynamited places anymore.  Underneath Terus laid a wreck of a cement boat. Nothing was left of the boat except the regular pattern of the solidified cement bags but otherwise the place did not look that attractive so we decided to try our chance elsewhere and reached before dawn  Pulau Kelor Timur. What impressed us upon arrival were the brand new tires that surrounded the pier. When we asked the guardian of the island how come the tires were new he told us that the owner of the island controlled a tire factory. He also added that for the owner of the island times were hard as three of his banks were closed, but luckily Ibra had not taken control of his island.

Our biggest surprise came when we put our heads under water. The place was superb with beautiful corals and fishes. It was clearly one of the most beautiful places I dove so far and I was relieved to see that dynamite had not been used. We started to regret not having taken a compressor with us to refill the tanks.  We thus carefully planned the use of our tanks and managed to conduct three dives on this beautiful place and each of them we was a delight.   The mooring was nice and the people friendly so we decided to stay there for two nights.

On Thursday morning we had no precise plan where to go however we moved northward towards the island of P. Pantuk Timur and P. Pantuk Barat. Someone had indicated on our map that the island should be named “Japanese islandsâ€