Kumai - Orangutans!

We finally arrived at Kumai, said our farewells to the French ticklers, and found Shane . Shane is Alon's friend from New-Zealand and he flew in to join us sailing to Thailand. He flew in Kumai three days earlier and waited for us for without knowing where we were and what happened to us... as we got into Kumai, everybody around was telling us that Shane's waiting for us, including other yachts over the radio and indo-lubas in town...

Kumai is a very small, one street town, with not a lot to see other than the Orangutans. We spent a few days trying to fix our auto-pilot, order parts for it or even order a new one, but no joy whatsoever. So after a few days we decided to just keep going without it to Singapore and hope to be more lucky there. We went to see the orangutans for a day on a speedboat and the experience was just out of this world. We're so happy that we did it, and the way we did it...
We just had a laugh all day with our quirky guide and caused mayhem in the national park...

Shane's feeling comfortable on Spider's Web

Going down the river in the jungle with a speedboat...

...and lighting flares and smoke bombs as we go...

John working his charms on the local beauty

Some more fire works...

Our guide Dodgy playing guitar for us, trying to distract us from the fact that he's not taking us to see any monkeys...

We're both going extinct...

A Gibbon

The big brother

Going for John's coffee...

Get in there lad!

Tom, king of the orangutans

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The French episode

From Makasaar we picked up Joe and Chloe, a young french couple, and sailed towards Kumai with them. We had some good fun with Joe and Chloe, although it wasn't all nice all the time and it was hard for everyone to adjust to the new dynamics. We had a lot of adventures on the way, including an autopilot that broke, a full on storm and a tuna quiche...

During our time together, we learned to perfect our french and even recieved Indonesian lessons from Joe. After asking him how to say "What's your name?" (="ce apa nama, bapak"), John coined the phrase "Have a banana, backpacker!", which is now used throughout Indonesia.
They French wanted to learn to sail because they have a plan to sail from Bali to Australia around November. Best of luck to them...

Formerly known as "Rude Bruce", "Jerard" received his Bere, mustache and onion to become truly french...

John and Chloe cleaning the boat...

...while Alon is playing with the kids and sinking their canoe.

On one of the islands we were invited to a wedding. The bride and groom were so disinterested and just looked liked someone took a dump in their cereal bowl... The ceremony consisted on the most horrible band alive playing while the bride and groom sit on a couch, the bride keep passing gas and the groom waving it away...

The band at the wedding. We didn't realize such bad noise was possible. It seemed that every guy there was playing a different song and the sound man fell asleep and pushed all the knobs to the max...

Chloe's poor attempt at fishing...

Whoop whoop!

This is how it's done, son!

Mr. Anda, sticking around like shit to a blanket...

On the last run, two night sail to Kalimantan, our autopilot broke. From there on we had to take shifts and steer the boat around the clock. Chloe is demonstrating the clever steering system rigged up. "Au cocotte!"

Steering with the emergency tiller while john is working on the autopilot

Just before arriving to Kumai, a ferocious storm caught after a night of very little sleep. The winds were so strong, we were sailing backwards with the engine on full revs and no sails up. After a while of fighting it we decided to shut the engine, go down, have a cup of coffee and wait it out. Turned out to be a very good solution and we only drifted about 4 miles away from our route. What remained of our Indonesian flag is a testimony of the howling winds...

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