Chicks!

Finally, the Pessblaut-guys are able to use their status as adventurous and travelling, young sailors to pick up some birds.

They were too small to eat, OK??

Kryssord

Etter fire-fem måneder med lesing av bøker som primæraktivitet, ved siden av litt seiling selvfølgelig, bestemmer jeg meg for å prøve meg på kryssord-vedlegget til Norsk Ukeblad nr. 49, 2008 (takk Mamma!). Det går imponerende dårlig. Etter tre minutter finner jeg allikevel mitt første ord.

“Dagdriver” på fire bokstaver: “Boms”.

EQUATOR!!!

The 8th of October we left the southern hemisphere with no imminent plans of returning. We are getting closer to home now 8.000 miles done, 10.000 to go. From now on we are on our home hemisphere. It does actually have a homy feel to it. We celebrated on the foredeck by donning our best shorts and breaking out the bottle of aquavit, which crossed the equator for the third time. We chatted with the stereo blasting and the boat coasting along at a leisurely three knots. We did attract a certain curiosity from some local fishermen apparantly unaccustomed to sailors dressed in their sunday best, waving around bottles of traditional Norwegian liquor.

Close Call

It's about 0530 and we're cruising along the South China Sea at a good 4,5 knots on our way to Singapore. It's early dawn and I've been on watch for an hour and a half, and so far I haven't seen any signs of other traffic whatsoever. A bit out of the ordinary as the maximum depth of the are is 30 metres and you can encounter fishing boats anywhere as well as larger commercial craft headed for Singapore.

I've just turned off the lantern, a bit early as it is still twilight, but there's noone around anyway. I'm listening to my Ipod and looking aft, slumped against the cockpit coaming. They say that you, worst case scenario, have 20 minutes from you spot a ship in the horizon until it runs you down - if it hits you in the vast ocean. Some of the solo-sailors sleep in 20-minute intervals so they can scan the horizon. Others sleep 2 hours, trusting in others peoples ability to steer clear, or just the plain improbability of crashing into another craft. I don't know when I checked forward the last time. Maybe 10 minutes ago, maybe 30.

My Ipod runs out of battery and I head inside to put it on charge. As I'm fidgeting with the charging-cable just inside the companionway I steal a glance out of our lookout globe. I blink once. I cannot believe it. There's a sampan, a traditional fishing boat about the same size as our own, about 50 metres, dead, straight ahead! I hesitate for a nano-second, I do not process the equation that says that at current speed we'll ram the sampan in 21,8 seconds, I do however register that he doesn't seem to be moving. Sometimes these guys will cross just in front of your bow to offload the bad spirits they have accumulated lately. Not the case this time, however we are about to offload heaps of kinetic energy into his flimsy wooden frame.

I frantically jump out of the companionway, scattering Ipod and various accessories in the process. Out in the cockpit i tear off the chain that connects the windvane to the tiller and yank the tiller to starboard, after a hyper-brief internal conference in which the conclusion is that I should pass in front of the fishing boat as they often have nets or lines trailing off the back. The sampan drifts into sight as our bow turns to port and I register there's a person in the back and that the boat is anchored. I barely clear his anchor-rode as we pass four metres in front of him.
I connect the windvane again, not really believing what just happened. I have to turn around and look back at the boat to make sure it was really there. Down below Egil is still asleep.

Somehow my watchkeeping vigilance has picked up considerably the last few days....

Checking in, Checking out

Checking in to country (example used: Indonesia) when arriving by airplane.


-Bring passport
-Walk out of plane, approach customs booth at airport
-Pay appropriate fee, get stamp in passport, go retrieve luggage




Checking in and out of country when arriving by boat:


- Bring passport, cruising permit, cash in US$ for bribes, 11 copies of crewlist, visas procured in advance, a handful of passport-size pictures of crew, clearance-out report from previous country, boat-papers (altered in photoshop if necessary) and ANY paper regarding boat, crew and travel for the last 5 months.

-Locate customs, harbour master, immigration, quarantine and any other necessary officials, in this case navy.

-Get transportation, in this case; hire a scooter (make sure fuel tank is full)

-Start off; go to Immigration. Find the office closed, yet the employees present. Fend of attempts of bribery (“No, we're allright with the stamps already in our passports as we're not ever planning on leaving the boat.” (For Your Convenience; forget to mention your having lived in a hotel-room downtown for two weeks)) Make arrangements to come back next day when office is supposedly open.


-Go down to Customs. Find out that despite your observations regarding Immigration-office being closed, it is in fact open. What's more; find that in order to clear in you need a form which you get at Harbour Master's office. However this is closed.


-Walk over to Harbour Master's office. Find it open. Get form. Observe that in order of form to be valid it needs stamps from Immigration, Harbor Master, Navy, Quarantine and, finally; customs. Explain that you're clearing in today, but tomorrow you will clear out.


-Take form to Quarantine. Explain that you're clearing in, but will be back shortly to clear out.


-Pay fee of 20 000 Rupiah. Not too bad.

-Go to Navy office. Find it closed.


-Decide you cannot do anything more at present, go back to hotel room. Run out of petrol on the way back. Push scooter a couple of kilometres to petrol station.

-Return refreshed next day, go straight to Navy office. Find that navy-officer takes one of your precious two copies of form.


-Go to Immigration. Get notified that you don't have all the necessary forms, and by far not enough copies. Get handed the right form that you supposedly only can get at Harbor Masters.

-Run down to supermarket down the road. Make five copies of each form. Turn out a couple of dozen extra crew-lists just in case.


-Go back to Immigration. Watch Immigration Officer stamp each paper four times and sign once. Do maths. Forty stamps, ten signatures.

-Go back to Navy office for stamp on new form. Find Navy officer gone. Linger until bored.


-Moped over to Harbour Master, explain that, yes, you cleared in with his office yesterday and yes, today you're clearing out. Leave with necessary stamps and Harbour Master slightly puzzled.

-Head over to Quarantine. Explain that, yes, you cleared in yesterday, and, yes, today you're clearing out. Quarantine-guy wants 25 000 Rupiah. Calmly explain that the last three times you visited a Quarantine-office in his country, including his own office, yesterday, you only paid
20 000. Pay 20 000 Rupiah.


-Walk back to Navy office. Wait for Navy officer. Watch as puzzled Navy-guy clears you out two hours after he cleared you in.

-March to Customs office with both forms. Clear in and out with two-minute intervals.


-Go back to Harbour Master's office. Watch officials scrutinize your papers, and, Lo and Behold, find them in order. Wait for twenty minutes while they turn out a paper saying you are allowed to, and will leave their country tomorrow at noon.

-Go back to hotel room by way of the whole town after losing direction. Rest for six days until you can summon the energy to actually leave the country.




Clearing out of country when leaving by plane:

-Bring passport.
-Go to airport, approach customs-booth.
-Get stamp, wave goodbye, board plane.

Anchoring, Bali style

Yeah, Yeah, we know: Check the tide-tables....

The joys of holidaying and needlessness of valid travel documents

Sooookey! We are now ready to leave Bali soon. In fact, officially we have already left Bali some days ago. We have spent more than a week her vacationing. Actually vacationing. We have surfed and drunk beers. Taken time off the boat, staying at a cheap hotel and taken in some hard-core western holiday-culture. We met up again with Joachim who left us in Ambon. We actually met him at sea when his chartered snorkelling-boat stumbled across us as we motorsailed 5 hours out from Benoa. Joachim showed us all the cheesy bars were the swedes and norwegians hang out. But now it's all over and we'll soon head back out to sea. The plan is to make it up to Singapore, maybe stopping a few places on the way. This is of course not kosher since we've already cleared out of Indonesia and the only place to clear in is in Singapore, but what the helioscope; we haven't had proper valid papers for the last two months anyway.

The trip here was sweet. Nice weather for most of the time, calm seas, weak yet steady winds apart for two nights with heavy blows. In the morning of the last one we entered the Lombok Strait which leads to Benoa, where we are now. As dawn arrived we found ourself surrounded by a few hundred (seriously!) local sailing fishing boats with nets and lines out. This made for some interesting navigation for a few hours.

As to our change of plans: We have for different reasons decided NOT to cross over to the Maldives from Bali, now in September, but instead head up to Thailand via Malaysia and Singapore and cross the Indian Ocean as soon as it is safe again in late December. From here the journey will go as planned (maybe and hopefully), only a bit delayed. This means that we will maybe have to stress it a bit after leaving Thailand, but hopefully not toooooo much. On the other hand it also means that we have plenty of time to see Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand where we are hoping to get some climbing done in Krabi.

Some of you dear readers have been asking for more pictures. The rest of you have not been complaining about anything. To the three uncomplaining ones: Thank you for not complaining (thank you mom and dad!). To the two of you who wants more pictures: We are working on it. We have again been experiencing some troubles with our computers, looks like a virus of some kind. Also our waterproof camera seems to have shut down after I accidentally dropped it in 25 metres of water. We were able to retrieve it, and it worked for some time, but now it has given up the ghost completely. In other words; we will post more pictures, we just need to sort ourselves out first!

The value of a few official-looking documents and the joys of hotel-life

We are in Ambon, Indonesia. In fact we're about to leave Ambon. We are actually here rather legally. When we got here we marched over to the authorities with the documents we were able to get our sticky fingers on in Jayapura and cleared in using those. It ran almost without a hitch!

Now we've taken on diesel to replace what we burned going north of Irian Jaya. We've also taken on what can be noted as a pessblaut low in regards of water quality. It tastes like sea- and freswater half-and-half, but it hasn't made us sick when we tried it, so what the heck. Now we're leaving for Bali. We're - at least I am - quite sick of - experiencing other cultures and doing all that grown up stuff. I'm ready for some westernized low-culture. Beaches, beers and bikinis! I shall personally hug the first pale, beer gutted, speedo-clad german I see.

In the "so what else is new slot" of this blogspot the pessblaut-boys report that Jukka had enough of sailing in low winds, contrary winds and unfavourable currents and jumped ship here in Ambon. He has taken it upon him to be our advanced party, take point, and establish a fire-base for us in Bali. We'll hook up there after J has made a visa-run to some obscure asian country so that he can stay longer in Indo. Before he left us though, we grasped the opportunity to invade his hotel-room by the airport and did our best to acomplish an old-fashioned hotel-room drinking binge. It went a little something like this:

-Take taxi to hotel by airport, try and sneak past reception in order not to have to book more than one room
-Book one more room as sneaking-skills are rusty
-Drink, play music and argue
-Repeat above for ten hours
-Enjoy the local hotel fauna: Mice, cockroaches and lizards
-See Joachim off to airport at six in the morning
-Have hotel breakfast (one loaf of white bread, choice of two different jams, tea or coffee)
-Go to extra room which so far has not been touched
-Sleep for a few hours until check-out time
-Check out, make way back to town by local transportation

Soon Ambon and a reason for a pictureless blog

We're now nearing Ambon with the engine running, sails up, an opposing current running under the keel and our fingers, toes, legs -and whatever we're able to cross- crossed that the ambonese authorities will let us stay in the country.

The trip here have have been frustrating. We were able to get away with a load of diesel from Sorong without anyone paying too much attention to our lack of valid indonesian travel-documents. Apart from that we have been battling opposing wind and currents pretty much since we left the windless area just below the equator north of the island of Irian Jaya. Poor Joachim who joined us in Jayapura didn't exactly get the trip he was hoping for: a couple of anchorages, apart from that A LOT of sailing, however in frustrating wind- and current conditions for most of the time. Everything seems to have been taking quite a lot more time than expected.

As the most observant of you guys might have noticed there has not been a lot of pictures on the blog lately. We're experiencing some problems after the harddrive on Egil's computer broke down. We were miraculously able to change the harddrive for the one still in Øyvinds laptop whose screen broke down in Fiji. However we lost a lot of software and drivers and other things with funny names that you apparantly find inside a harddrive. We are going to fix this, but we need a little time and a half-decent internet connection. Until then, please be patient, support us and keep following the blog. We'll get a lot more pictures in there eventually!

Illegal alien cruising in Indo

Tuesday 18th., morning outside the northern point of Irian Jaya, Indonesia.

We're just below equator now. As anyone who knows anything about world-wide weather can tell you this area is notorious for being still and windless. We have -in our infinite wisdom- decided to take our sailboat up here. Furthermore we have not brought extra diesel. Last night the engine coughed and died and we had to fill the last of our fuel on the tank, so now we're down to the last 35 hours worth of engine time. We are hoping to find a town soon so we can get some more fuel. However our papers are patchy at best. We are offically thrown out of the country. We are however allowed to travel in Indonesian waters, but we are not allowed to anchor anywhere, so we haven't done that. We have certainly not anchored two or three places before we reached this point. We have most definitely not stayed for a couple of days at a beautiful beach on Yapen Island. Picking our own coconuts and lime and mixing it with gin for our sundown card-game on the beach.

Joachim joined us in Jayapura, and we haven't grown sick of him and used him for shark-bait yet. In fact it's really sweet to be able to split the night-watches in three instead of two. Also we get some new stories thrown in to our gossip-pool and we get to recycle the stories that the two of us has swapped so many times we're not sure who of us told it in the first place. Jokke has also definitely NOT used his military jungle skills to take us on a little jungle expedition since we haven't anchored anywhere.

Our plan now is to make it to the town of Ambon and try to clear in there. Rumour has it that they're supposed to be more cooperative there. We're crossing fingers.
Peace out.

TROUBLE!!

SHITdamnfuckingshitfuckdamn!!

We just cleared in to Indonesia, the only place we actually have worked getting our papers sorted before we went. Simply because we have heard it can be a bit of a sweat with all the paperwork and because it's a crucial country to be in the clear.

Yup, cleared in and Linked up with Joachim from back home who is supposed to join us for a few weeks. Everything seems supersmooth and we are enjoying a decent dinner and shooting the breeze and catching up when the customsguys comes over to tell us there's problems...

Apparantly we're missing a crucial paper and we have to leave Indo within 24 hours. If that sounds somewhat allright i suggest you check your map. This sucks not only because we've paid some bloody agent shitloads of denares to fixall the paperwork, but also because it might mean we might spend the next three weeks at sea, we'll have to throw all our planning to maasen and that we might not make our deadline across the indian ocean.

Right now we're looking into the option of heading directly to Malaysia, but most of all we're hoping to fix this situation and keep on going as planned. We're scheduled for another meeting with customs tomorrow, but we've also been told that we'll have to leave the country by 2 pm.

Yups, that's it, the show must go on somehow, but we have no idea how, and we don't know whether we'll be able to update you much. hang in there!