Belitung

There wasn’t much sailing from Kumai to Belitung, but Belitung is a great place to refuel if you’re willing to pay a premium. The diesel is kept inside a small browser, from which it is filtered into jerry cans, delivered to your boat, and put in your tank by someone blowing into a tube to start the diesel flowing. It’s a hardcore version of the automatic syphon we sailing softies occasionally use.

Besides diesel deliveries, the people at the Belitung Beach Club are generally tremendously helpful. We didn’t need to pull our dinghy up the beach to go ashore; they did it for us each time. It was the boating equivalent of valet parking at a beach club, which is as close as it gets to the champagne-sailing lifestyle (we are still waiting for this champagne sailing to start).

Surprisingly, Belitung’s attraction is not the diesel from the beach club or the free help up the beach; it is the unusual rock formations that form part of the Belitong UNESCO Global Geopark. I’m not sure the photographs here do the place justice, but the landscape is other-worldly.

Batty 2

Rock formations

Batty 3

And more

Batty 4

And again

Batty 5

The beach

After a couple of days here, we decided to press on towards Batam. Maria had a plane to catch, and we wanted to make sure we arrived at Nongsa Point Marina in plenty of time.

The route to get to Batam proved to be busy even by Indonesian standards. Added to the array of lit and unlit fishing boats, fads, and floating debris were towboats dragging their heavy cargo across the Singapore Straits towards Singapore. I spent most of my time on watch, standing up with my head poking out of the sprayhood, peering into the gloom, looking for anything we might accidentally clobber.

Batty 6

One of the many tows on the way to Batam

Jamala 1 (1)

And finally, at Nongsa Point Marina

Fortunately, we hit nothing, didn’t run aground and were able to get into our marina berth without making total arses of ourselves. It helped that the marina guys were very good at tying boats to the dock. All we had to do was pass them some ropes.