St. Patricks Day in Indonesia
Two Irish. Two Saffer. Two Ozzie. Six kids from the Channel Islands. A few more scragglers. And a girl.
Lucky, the agent.
Indonesia. Hankering to get to Desert Point…winter, 2003.
“$250 Get’s you Desert Point…one week on beeeg boat. All foood. All driiink.”, goes Lucky. “Whoohoo!”, go me and Roosta.
Jam into tiny vans, millions of boards and the crew grows to full strength of 16, by the time we reach the harbour, where a big dhow will take us to our even bigger dhow – an hour away. So much stuff. So much heat. So much noise. Then peace as we set sail on towards our new home. And there it is. Three storeys of colour and grace. Just beautiful. Huge. Wooden. Home…
By now, Bintang’s are out, ice cold. Chickens are roaming the deck unexpectantly. Food cooking. Music playing. Even surf videos on a tv in the huge dorm like cabin. Bunks. Smells. Just amazingly what we expected.
Three engines, Yamaha Enduros. 40hp Each. 80ft Boat. And a skiff, and off we go. Gently humming along to music and waves. Soon enough though, the first of our problems. One engine splutters to a standstill. A third of our power gone. Not enough speed to get to Deserts. Pull over and parallel park at an enchanting island in the middle of the ocean.
One engine loaded onto skiff, the other tied to the back, and off they go. Getting engine repaired. Hours go by. We snorkel. Talk shit. Swim. I swim to the island. There are people. I rent a bike, and discover that the island is loaded with Arak wine. I buy 5 litres altogether and swim back out to the boat, where the Irish and the Ozzies and us annihilate the 5 litres, ok, over another hour.
Skiff returns, the music is blaring. Engines attached back onto big boat. Skipper says he doesn’t want to cross the deep channel this late, we might not make it by dark. We refuse to accept this prognosis and vehemently demand weighing of anchor and immediate departure.
16 Of us win the argument and next thing we are sailing across this hugely deep channel. A sailfish pops up next to us, fin and all. What kind of omen could that be, I wonder. The Irish brothers proclaim that it’s St. Patrick’s Day and we all join in for a Bintang and a dance on the open deck as the sun bids farewell…
It gets dark.
The boat slows to almost nothing as the crew makes out the headland in front of us. Somebody return flashes a torch, we must be there!
All of a sudden. Lightning and thunder comes out of the blackness. And a torrential downpour hits us, whiting us out completely – cannot see a thing. Just spray. 10 Minutes drifting, the sea getting a bit more interested in us by now. The only girl on the trip has proclaimed lesbianism but I don’t believe her and am on the third floor extolling to her the benefits of male anatomy when out of the corner of my eye, I see…a wave. A breaking wave coming up behind us at 45 degrees. It hardly moves the “ship” as it first strikes, but as it moves along the hull, it picks us up completely and propels us forward and sideways – straight down smack bang onto the very reef that is Desert Point. The outriggers are built from huge logs and are about a half metre by a half metre. They just snapped like matches as they impacted – lurching the huge ship around as we bounced ashore.
Chaos. “Save yourselves! Save yourselves!”, is the cry from the stricken crew.
In a moment of clarity, we all don reef shoes. It’s all we can do as wave after wave batters us further an further onto the reef. The tide is coming in. The chickens are going out! The TV topples out of the window, and then a huge pot of chicken curry leaves the kitchen for a swim. Roosta and stay on the boat as the rest of the gang spread out to make a human chain with which to scuttle the ship. Waves keep coming. Roosta and I got into the cabin to get whatever we could, especially looking for pasports to hand up and off to safety. A big wave breaks, we grab the masts and hold tight as possible to no avail – the power of the impact throws us both around like rag dolls. Get most of the stuff out. Now the petrol. About 20 drums on the stinky stuff that we did not want to allow near the pristine reef.
After midnight, we have formed a laager with the fuel, water, supplies, boards all around us. Small fires are going and no-one is really having fun. The locals had come out in their droves and with no regard for personal space, literally sat on our laps as they pored though our belongings with that envious curiosity so prevalent in these lost outer island communities. Roosta stayed awake and on guard as the adrenalin wore off and peeps collapsed all around. I was almost out when something crawled over my face. And again. My neck. my feet. I grabbed one. Crabs! Millions of crabs made sure I never slept much either.
The dawn broke red and more beautiful than ever. We were shipwrecked. For real. No cellphone signal. No nothing.
May aswell go surfing as the last of the swell enticed us into her arms. Desert Point is a perfect wave, it was much smaller by now, but it is a perfect wave, and has been called the most perfect wave in the world, a few times, before.
Whilst we were surfing, the two Ozzie captains and an Irishman had set off for help, and came back at lunch time with a 4wd truck, that could load us all, and take us through Dengue infested forests on a four day journey, to a port, where we would have to pay more dollars, to get all the way back to Bali! We had no choice, and started loading.
All of a sudden, around the headland, came the apparition representing a three masted yacht of absolute beauty. It happened to be the dude who used to captain the boat used in The Crossing, sea testing his own brand new second hand sailing beauty! Seeing our wrecked vessel he sent a skiff ashore to check things out and then offered to rescue us for $5 each!
The skiff spent an hour loading and off loading kit and surfboards, and by the end of it we were sweating buckets and so decided to swim out to the anchored yacht a few hundred meters off shore. And so we swam. And swam. And were soon whisked away into the deep by the infamous Desert Point current carrying billions of tonnes of water and thousands of tiger sharks through one of the deepest gulfs on the globe!
Only a handful of the group that attempted the swim made, I wasn’t one of them – swimming with a hat on…but the skiff rounded us all up and soon we were drinking ice cold bintangs…
…and sailing away from our shipwrecked crew on Desert Point, Lombok Island, Indonesia.
