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Dear Friends;

We last wrote when we were arriving at Pulau (island) Friwen, a small island on the north side of the Dampier Strait, near Pulau Gam and off Pulau Waigeo in Indonesia's fantastic Raja Ampat. Friwen village, like most villages here, has a long dock that extends out to the end of the fringing reef that allows larger boats to land, such as the compact-yet-fast inter-island ferries. Most of these docks have a structure, some have two, usually painted blue and lined with benches for waiting passengers. Under Friwen's dock, such as also the case in Arborek, there are schools of thousands of small fish that provide a steady source of protein for villagers. At any given time of the day, three or four children or adults would be fishing with bamboo poles and squid snares from the Friwen dock. It made snorkeling there a bit tricky, so we stayed well away. At Friwen, we had hoped the unrelenting current of western Dampier Strait might be less, but it was not to be the case and Carina looked as if underway most of the time we were at anchor.

At Friwen we were very fortunate to find the Kalabia, a boat seized for illegal fishing that has been converted into an itinerant marine science education center, traveling to all the villages of Raja Ampat and the highlight of the IMAX film we had been entrusted to share. Jumping in our dinghy as soon as we were settled to ensure we would not miss them should their schedule dictate they leave immediately, we came alongside and grabbed one of their large tenders. Dozens of children on the foredeck watched us instead of their instructor who spoke no English but who rushed off to find someone to greet us. Invited aboard, we met English-speaking Menos, also an instructor, who had also been in the IMAX film about the Kalabia. Menos gave us a tour of the vessel, including its library, bunk rooms for kids going to "camp" Kalabia, its wheelhouse, etc. We were given a copy of its workbook - called a passport - that contained songs, exercises and scientific information of the reef and its creatures. When we explained to Menos we had the IMAX film about the Kalabia, his eyes lit up and he offered to show the film in Friwen village that night. Seems they had already scheduled to show marine science and conservation films and our serendipitous arrival with a film about the Kalabia and its mission - that no one aboard had yet seen - was most welcome. Menos also turned out to be the uncle of the little boy, Jawi, "star" of the film and whose journey on the Kalabia and to knowledge of the importance of the reef, is central to the story. After seeing the film, Menos was keen - as we had been - for Jawi to see it and provided us with a telephone number in Waisai, the capital, where Jawi was staying with family while attending junior high. Our mission to reach out to those in the film seemed charmed and we were excited at the prospect of finding Jawi and watching him watch the film.

At Friwen, Simon, whose coming had been foretold by other cruisers, found us. Simon drives a delicate outrigger canoe driven by a Chinese, one-lung mufflerless long shaft gasoline engine that is steered only by Simon's paddle. Still, he negotiated up to Carina in the ripping current with reasonable skill, tied on and hopped aboard without leaving a scratch. Simon had previously made his living capturing cendrawasih (CHAINdra wah SEE or paradise birds) and selling them. Now that it is illegal, he takes tourists to watch them perform their amazing mating dance. There are two cendrawasih endemic to Raja Ampat, the Wilson's and the Red. Simon's tour takes you well into the jungle and high on a hill so he told us we would leave at 5 am but he actually showed up at Carina on the appointed day (of a full moon) at 0430. Luckily we were ready for him. We swung by the yacht Mind the Gap, who had surprised us by showing up the previous afternoon, and picked up Lorna and then went zooming off into the night, towards Yenbeser's lagoon on Gam Island. Short of the shore, we suddenly hit some coral and though Simon gunned the engine, we were stuck hard. Lorna started to get out of the bow and he shouted, "NO", so we all sat tight and watched as Simon grunted and pushed and tugged and we were finally free. This scene would be repeated a dozen times before we would finally glide up to a dock at the inside end of the lagoon, deep in the jungle. The boat ride was glorious though, despite its interruptions. The full moon made the jungle glow in different shades of grey and the throaty growl of the engine was not sufficiently loud to drown out the whoop, whoop, whooping helicopter sounds of huge hornbills flying overhead casting a shadow on the lagoon as they went. Without the moonshine, the jungle was dark and the vegetation dripped as we stepped only where our headlamps shown. Lorna took off her sandals; Simon was thrilled by this! By 0600 we were seated on a bench high up atop a hill with a noticeably bare tree sticking up f!rom the canopy above. None of us talked as Simon watched and waited and sometimes called the birds. In a flurry of wings, the show started. It is impossible to describe the intimate and varied dances the birds made or the intricacies of their plumage. Let us just say this was the most spectacle avian show we have ever seen, and though we were only taking pictures with a point and shoot, we encourage you to visit our website to see the photos.

From Friwen, we pushed onto Waisai and settled in at the new "marina" which is really a short-stay dock for resort, tourist, police, marine reserve patrol and inter-island boats adjacent to the large commercial dock in the bay west of the city. It was Sunday so we were surprised to have a visit from Bergons, an employee of the tourism office who runs boat charters. We didn't know it at the time, but Bergons' small home was in the mangroves right at the top of the dock and he regularly showed up at Carina, hoping for us to charter a boat. Anxious for greens to refill our empty veggie larder, we took off walking to town, a trip of roughly a half an hour in the intense midday sun, including the time needed to stop to talk and take selfies with those along the way. We had no idea where we were going but upon arriving at town, found a hotel/grocery store/restaurant with a bright young receptionist named Mini who sent us just down the street to find the traditional market. Here we found many rough stalls selling just about every vegetable we had been dreaming about. Soon we had our market bags filled with veggies and a nice yellow fin tuna to boot, and hoofed it back towards the hotel in search of lunch. Failing that - the restaurant was closed - we asked Mini to call us a taxi but she said no such thing existed and we would have to pay 100,000 rupiah for a car and driver! When we expressed horror at the price for such a short ride, she offered to call us two motorbikes. This is how we met a nice young English teacher named Aladin, who was one of the drivers and was in Waisai while applying for a teaching job and who became our reliable source of transportation.

During this time we were also actively texting Jajang (or JJ), a teacher of English at the high school, who invites all native English speakers to visit his class and to help coach. Friends had done so and encouraged us to do the same. JJ also took up the task of locating Jawi for us. We settled upon visiting his class on Tuesday and having Jawi attend so we could both help teach English and show the IMAX film - which just happens to be in English.

Monday morning at 0600, already awake and sipping tea, we heard a light knock-knock on the hull. Going topsides we found the smiling Husna (OOss NAH) and Olivia from the tourism office in their Monday uniforms, stylish haircuts and ever-present Samsung smart phones. Seems they were attending to the film crew (and guest chefs) for filming of a story on Raja Ampat for the Asian Cooking Channel and were so apologetic they couldn't help us themselves but, they assured us, Sherly would later. Seeing the filming was on the dock and was to include Carina in the background, we took in our laundry and kept ourselves out of sight until the filming finished and the whole gang - including the lovely tourism gals - got into boats and headed for Arborek for filming there. The following day we would have the chance to attend another of their shootings at the Waiwo Resort which included a whole team of guest chefs ("mommas") from Saporken village who looked magnificent dressed in their finest Papuan batik. The guest chefs - curly haired Toby from Melbourne Australia and highly polished Maringka from Jakarta - were interesting to watch as they perked up from their apparent ennui for each take. Surprisingly, as fastidious as the director and his (comical, animated, effective) assistant were, they never did correct Toby's pronunciation of Raja Ampat. Most all exchanges were in Bahasa Indonesia - except the script - but still we learned a bit and enjoyed the experience of being behind the scenes.

Sherly eventually arrived at Carina later on Monday morning - after much texting - and quickly ascertained we would all need a car and driver to accomplish our provisioning tasks. A soft-spoken kind lady, we trusted her immediately and let her orchestrate our shopping. In time, a small, well used mini minivan arrived bearing Erwin. We had no idea what Erwin would cost us, but we knew we would not be unfairly charged with Sherly directing the operation. Erwin spoke little English but with Sherly riding shotgun, we quickly negotiated through the backstreets of Waisai, procuring cash from the third ATM we tried, diesel and gasoline siphoned from barrels at a small, dirt-floored family-run kiosk, purified water to be delivered to the marina from another family-run operation not currently in operation (0.75 USD/5 gallons), laundry service and groceries. When we inquired about lunch, Sherly directed Erwin to a Padang restaurant, where we fed all four of us a fantastic feast of spirited food for about $9 USD. (The only other foreign tourists we would see in all of Waisai over the week we were there was a couple at this restaurant.) Back at Carina, Erwin drove out onto the dock and then carried more than his share of our loot down to Carina, hoisting the heavy jerry cans over the lifelines to Philip. When all was aboard, Erwin quietly asked for the equivalent of $21 USD for his services over three hour's time.

Tuesday was our day at school and JJ arranged a car to come for us. Running a bit late, we still had time to pick up Jawi at the junior high and make it to the high school in time. Our help consisted of reading dialog aloud and then coaching groups of two students through the same lesson. (We ended up returning to school the next day and visiting two other classes as JJ said the other classes were jealous.) After lessons, JJ set up a projector and the students used their study time to watch it. Jawi was both excited and embarrassed at see himself, much younger, in the film. That is until the final scenes where he is swimming with a whole pod of whale sharks and he beamed as his peers were awed by the scenes of Jawi feeding them and swimming alongside. Until we left Waisai, it seems like almost everywhere we went we would see Jawi and he would come up to us, smiling broadly and shake our hands heartily.

Replenished in Waisai, we went west once again and tucked up into Kabui Bay which is formed by the proximity of Gam to Waigeo. At its western edge, is Kabui Pass, a narrow, shallow pass where the jungle literally tumbles into the sea and currents run swiftly, lending itself to a healthy environment for marine life. Some yachts take their big boats through, but we were much too cautious for this and anchored inside the bay and only ventured into the pass by dinghy and only then on a flooding tide when the current would take us back towards Carina should we lose propulsion with the dinghy. Adjacent to a rustic homestay run by a man named Daud Mayor, we spent a glorious 8 days at Kabui Bay, watching hornbills and many varieties of other exotic birds, putting around finding hidden nooks, snorkeling, and then settling in to watch the sunset and wave to the fishermen coming by in massive multi-hulled canoes who would fish all night with their nets in the pass. Kabui Bay may be the best snorkeling we will ever have. Massive fan corals, brilliant soft corals and filtered daylight shimmering in the shallows illuminates gem-like colored growth on rock, coral or on tree trunks. These are not waters to be taken lightly so one of us snorkeled while the other followed in the dinghy. On our first visit, a highly poisonous sea snake came swimming by the dinghy, hunting along the limestone crevasses where we were settled as Philip suited up for snorkeling. Immediately upon getting in the water, Philip saw a massive creature partially buried below. It did not move. He thought at the time it was a walking shark but on later reflection is fairly certain it was a small crocodile because of the lumps on its body. He did not get a photo, unfortunately.

From Kabui Bay we made our way back to Friwen and anchored this time near NW corner, about two boat lengths from the beach. The current was still strong here but not quite so and we were so close to shore, our birdsong serenades were lovely. Dive boats and local families would stop for lunch and the island's kids were our frequent visitors, playing and swimming, climbing trees and doing a lot of laughing. It was nice to see these kids being just good silly innocent kids.

It was at Friwen that we decided to investigate why our engine did not always start the first time. We thought it might be due to low battery voltage in the morning but when the problem manifested itself when the batteries were 13.65 volts, we knew we had to look further. We had a brand-new spare starter so we thought we would pull the old one and if necessary swap it out. When we pulled the starter off, we found the pinion gear was worn away and there were filings scattered inside the nose housing and beyond. This probably explains the metallic rattling noises Leslie claims to have been hearing since Waisai. Easy fix, huh? Put the new starter in and fire up the engine. Nope. When we put on the new starter, it failed to fire and then when we bypassed the switch, it fired, and then made a horrible noise. Removing it, we found that the cast metal nose housing was broken. This was a "compatible" starter which was clearly not so compatible. (As for the failure to fire, that would turn out to be a separate electrical issue linked to poor quality wire used in the Yanmar wiring harnesses.) Immediately we made the decision to go to the city of Sorong earlier than we had planned, since we were in the wild without a starter. Replacing the old starter on the engine, we readied for an overnight passage south across Dampier Strait to arrive at Sorong the following morning. Thankfully we got at least one more successful coupling of the worn pinion and the engine and at supper time we pulled anchor and made a leisurely and uneventful motorboat ride to Sorong on a calm starry night.

Sorong, means something like "deep flowing water" but the harbor is anything but that. It is a repository for garbage. Filled with monstrous liveaboard dive boats, mostly of the distinctive and elegant wooden Phinisi design and destined for Raja Ampat, and dozens of fishing boats temporarily in port, the city is rapidly growing, chaotic, dirty, smelly and a harbor for thieves. We anchored nearby the pier used by fishermen on the southern end of the bay rather than near the main pier, or Ushamina Dock, where many outboard engines had gone missing of late. A cacophony surrounded us, produced by the dozens of rafted fishing boats coming and going, undergoing construction or provisioning and a nearby mosque blaring out a call to prayer starting at 0445 each day. Our dinghy was relatively safe left along the wall there, though kids would often play in it. One day, it was clear the kids had been active, but we'd also had a torrential rain and we came back to find things moved around but the dinghy neatly tied and bailed. We did lose a jug of gasoline off our side deck one night to a sneaky thief, which was our own fault since we owned locks for our jugs and did not use them because we thought them sufficiently hidden by a canvas cover. Someone had been watching; they went right to the gasoline jug and stole only that.

There are wonderful people in Sorong, thankfully, and one of these was a young businessman named Victor. He is a friend to all visiting yachties and hopes to realize his dream of someday soon building a marina in Sorong. In the interim, his company provides services and supplies at moderate prices, and Victor, educated in Singapore and Australia, provides amazing support. And he's a heck of a nice, hard-working, young man and we enjoyed getting to know him. Without Victor, we would be writing to you from Sorong and probably despondent. Our starter was taken away and brought back two days later miraculously repaired by salvaging parts. Victor's team also provided fuel (albeit dirty fuel, though not his fault) and other supplies such as Racor and Yanmar fuel filters and would have provided propane if we'd needed it.

Procuring fuel is an interesting challenge in Indonesia so the fact we got dirty fuel is not surprising. The fact we got clean fuel at Waisai is actually more amazing. Fuel is subsidized and rationed, so as foreigners we can't just go to the pump and buy fuel. Nor will a fueling station dispense into a jug without a special permit. So, there is a whole subdivision of the fuel business for non-subsidized fuel. Thus, when we gave over our jugs for filling, they were taken away, not to the Pertamina station, but to some "sub-station" where the storage receptacles were probably makeshift and dirty. Profit between the pump and redistributed price are shared by the various "distribution" layers in between the pump and our jugs. Even with this, the net price we paid for fuel was still relatively moderate in our opinion. We're are not versed in the subtleties of the law in Indonesia, but there are hundreds of small kiosks selling fuel from recycled water and pop bottles throughout Sorong and other cities in Indonesia. During rallies to Indonesia, it is common to offer free fuel as a benefit. This is generally provided by the regency (government) hosting the rally. Additional fuel is purchased at whatever price the hosts can negotiate. In one city, the Navy sold us some of their allocation.

In Sorong we also had the opportunity to show the IMAX film to Mykee, the young musician and sound man who worked three years on the project with the team from California. A sincere and talented young man, it was great fun to watch the film with him over lunch and get a narrative of events and characters involved in its production. For instance, Mykee told us that the voices of Jawi and his father in the film were not their own and that in certain scenes, the voice was actually his own. We laughed at the stories of Jawi's fear of the whale sharks and the efforts necessary to get him into the water as cameras were ready to roll and dive masters waited below.

It was in Sorong that we checked out of the country, almost an easy task and devoid of any hint of corruption we had half expected from the rumors. Thrilled to be ready to go, we thought we were through with Sorong but as it turns out, Sorong was not quite through with us. At 0530 and with a long day ahead of us, we pulled up our anchor and found that it was wrapped in a mass of toxic muck, plastic bags, 30' of 1" nylon three-strand line, bits of crap polypropylene line and a huge fisherman anchor made partially from rebar. A number of local boats came over to help - and get the anchor - and the poorest of them in a canoe was the first to claim the prize. After a long job of freeing up the anchor, he also asked for money. If we had had any more - we spent our last rupiah the day before - we would have gladly given it to him. As it was, we gave him some food and the anchor and turned Carina's bow north, to begin the long journey back to Appletree Cove, 6100 nm as the frigate bird flies.

Happy Thanksgiving from Momfafa!

Your friends of the yacht Carina,

Philip, Leslie and fat cat, Jake

website: www.sv-carina.org

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At 11/24/2015 and 6:59 UTC (GMT) our position was: 00°17.96'S / 131°19.78'E