BALI

On Sunday, October 5, 2014 we departed Medana Bay Marina for the Royal Bali Yacht Club on Serangan Island, Bali (08-43.085’ S x 115-14.520’ E).  The purpose of the trip down Selat Lombok (Lombok Strait) was to effect a repair to one of our stainless steel stanchions that had broken off its base.  Serangan Island is a good place for most repairs and the Royal Bali yacht Club has all the contacts will make arrangements.  We were travelling in company with our friends, Ken and Lil Bardon, on “Moonbean” that needed engine work done on their cooling system.  If it were not for that, there would be no reason to venture down the Lombok Strait as the crossing can be very rough and difficult to sail back North against the South setting current which can run more than 8 kts during Spring Tides.  The Wallace Line runs through Selat Lombok, marking the division between the Asian and Australasian fauna.  With all this in mind, we departed Medana Bay Marina at 0600 hrs.

Selat Lombok is a major shipping route from the Indian Ocean to the China Sea and Pacific.  It is wide so there is more than enough room for everyone but the tidal streams run ferociously at 6 kts or more.  During the SE Monsoon, the current is, mostly, South setting so the voyage over to Bali, about 60 nm, can be made during daylight.  There can be a strong wind blowing out of the South at 25+ kts against the South setting tidal stream and this makes for an uncomfortable passage.  We experienced a 20 kt wind, no wind, eddies, overfalls, whilpools, big sweels, errant currents that set us off at more than 45 degrees, flat water and other bizarre events in the crossing.  We have never experienced anything like it.  The South setting current was running at about 5 kts.  At 1630 hrs we entered the channel leading into the Serangan mooring field.  There was a dinghy from the Royal Bali Yacht Club that met us at the entrance and directed us to our mooring along with “Moonbeam”.   Picked up the mooring (08-43.067’ S x 115-14.511’ E) at 1700 hrs.  Lots of moorings here so there seems to be room for everyone.  Also, it’s possible to anchor. 

This is the part of Bali that is close to Denpasar which has an international airport, hospitals, dental clinics, ATMs, internet services, telecommunications, international restaurants, and everything else a vibrant modern city would have.  It has some of the most sophisticated shopping malls we have seen outside of Brisbane and Cairns, AU:  Starbucks, Duncan Donuts, KFC, MD, it’s all here.  The traffic is incredible and what appears to be a chaotic interweaving of cars, busses and motor bikes is well orchestrated with no accidents that we have seen.  Denpasar is as much a part of the “real” Bali as the beautifully terraced rice paddies just a short distance away.  Religion and sacrificial offerings are the overriding theme everywhere in Bali.  Small sacrificial offerings are placed on the sidewalks, outside modern sophisticated businesses to the lowly “warung” (small Indonesian eatery).  The Balinese are unified in their uniqueness and religion.  Being Hindus and embracing  Hinduism, they have, nevertheless, developed a special form that is complex and difficult for an outsider to understand without a thorough study of the underlying concepts.  They have a caste system that seems to work for them and, similar to India’s, one is born into it.  It is not possible to “upgrade” your caste in this lifetime.  There is no “untouchable caste” in Bali.

In the 1930’s there was an active expat community of artists, poets and writers living in Ubud – 20 miles North of Denpasar.  Two of the leading artists in that community, Walter Spies and Berly de Zoote, once said, “The Balinese people have “a suppleness of mind which has enabled them to take what they want of an alien civilization and leave the rest”.  When one looks at the influx of modernism in Bali today, I questions if that is still true.

We made a day trip to Ubud which is the artistic and cultural center of Bali.  It is here that the modern world looks onto the traditional one.  The city is a vast complex of temples and ancestor worship with the Balinese carrying on their traditional worshiping ceremonies: ritual sacrifice, song, dance and gamelan music.  While this is happening, thousands of tourists are gaping at the incredible gracefulness of the dancers and musicians. The city of Ubud is like an endless warehouse of Balinese artwork: The repository of items to be shipped worldwide.  It staggers the imagination to figure out how so much stuff can be found in anyone place.  Then, just a 10 minute ride outside Ubud, are some of the most beautifully terraced rice fields we have seen.  Once again, they are being “loved to death” and the small communal town of Tegalalang has collection agents at each end of the town that collects a small fee from each car that enters.  The one street town is a hodgepodge of restaurants, overlooking the terraced rice fields, and tourist shops selling Balinese ware.  It’s the kind of instant gratification that the average tourist needs and its nearness solves the time factor.  One hour to the West or North and there are beautifully terraced rice paddies are everywhere.

Then, there is a town dedicated to producing silver and gold jewelry.  Shop after shop and then one so huge and garish that it looks like a composite of Mardi Gras floats from New Orleans.  It’s called “Sweet Dragonfly” and houses some of the most hideous jewelry we’ve seen amongst a few tasteful pieces.  It must be doing well for a huge new addition is under contruction that appears to be bigger than most convention halls: white glaring alabaster figures similar to gargoyles on medieval churches and Bacchanalian revelry.  Truly bizarre!

The “Four Seasons Resort” where a cheeseburger costs US$37.50 and the guests are so wealthy that it’s just another item on the credit card.  It’s all a Bali that can accommodate every lifestyle.

Now we come to the difficult part:  How to extricate ourselves from Serangan Island to Lovina Beach on the northern coast of Bali.  The sub-strait – Selat Badung – has powerful currents, eddies and overfalls running at 8+ kts during Spring Tides.  We won’t encounter anything that strong but timing is critical to getting out of here.  If we leave at the wrong time, we’ll be going backwards!  The best we can hope for is a counter-current running up the East coast of Bali during part of the tidal stream cycle.  This, combined with a favorable wind coming out of the SE-S and engine, might give us enough speed to make forward progress.  We plan to leave on Thursday Oct 16^th around noontime.  We have friends coming from Thailand that will be sailing with us to Karimun Jawa (05-52.22’ S x 110-24.89’ E) over 400 nm to the West.  They will be with us for ten days or so.

Item of interest:  There is a coffee produced on Java and Sumatra called “Luwak”.  It is dependent on an animal called a “Luwak” eating the coffee berries and then passing them through its digestive system and defecating them on the ground: a shitty berry.  They are then gathered and hygienically processed into one of the world’s most expensive gourmet coffees.  Statistics indicate that only 300 kg of this specialized coffee are produced per year but, I suspect, a lot of it is just regular coffee with the “Luwak” label.  The other possibility is that there are thousands of Luwaks, held in captivity, eating and defecating coffee berries like a scene out of the Mad Max movie “Back to Thunderdome” where the pigs are producing methane gas!

One more item of interest that happened while we were on our mooring at Serangan Is.  The Paolo worm surfaced on October 8^th at the full moon which coincided with  the full lunar eclipse.  These worms figure in Animistic ceremonies, which are headed by shamans, and are considered a delicacy – similar to caviar, so I’m told.  Our friend, Lil, on “Moonbeam” took several pictures of the event.

"The Pacific palolo worm (Eunice viridis) and its West Indian relative (E. fucata) exhibit one of the most incredible examples of reproductive behavior on record, which is intimately linked to the lunar cycle. These two annelid species are polychaete worms, and normally remain secure within tubes excavated by them in coral or under rocks, with their heads at the open end of their tubes - until the breeding season, that is.

"When this period approaches, the rear half of each worm transforms dramatically, developing fast-growing reproductive organs. The worm itself reverses its position within its tube, so that it is now pointing head-down, with its highly modified posterior half-projecting out of the tube. Once the reproductive organs are fully developed, the posterior body half breaks off from the rest of the worm, and swims up toward the sea's surface - almost as if it were a separate animal in its own right. Indeed, it has even developed a pair of eyes to assist it in locating the surface.

"As it swims, the worm's posterior body half undergoes a further transformation, its internal structures and segmentation breaking down, so that when it reaches the surface it is nothing more than a writhing bag of either sperm or eggs (the sexes are separate in these species). At the surface, the bag bursts, releasing its contents - and, bearing in mind that millions of palolo worms have all undergone this radical metamorphosis at precisely the same time, the sea is soon awash with a mass of sperm and eggs, yielding a vast bout of communal, random fertilization. What makes these worms' reproductive behavior even more extraordinary is the exact nature of this event's timing. It occurs twice a year on the neap tides of the last quarter moon in October and November for the Pacific species, and the third quarter moon in June and July for the West Indian species of palolo worm." (Shuker 2001:94-95)