The passage from Thursday Island to Debut in Indonesia was fabulous. Conditions were excellent- decent wind for the majority of the time, relatively flat seas, and just a few clouds in the sky. For the first 24 hours we had the spinnaker up –just lovely. We heard later from a couple of the more experienced cruisers on the rally that conditions don’t get much better for passage making.

After an earlish dinner on the first night, Phil went to bed until about 10.30pm when he relieved me as he couldn’t sleep very well- no argument from me. He actually went right through to about 6.30am having cat naps – he sets a timer for 15 mins. I got up at one point thinking I would need to relieve him and stayed up for a while, but he was enjoying himself so much, he sent me back to bed – again no argument from me. It was a warm night, flat seas and starry sky with sliver of moon and it was reminding him of 30 years ago when he was on the boat from the Phillipines to Australia. We settled into a good routine and the four days it took to get to Indonesia seemed to pass relatively quickly after the first day. It was good to have prepared the meals before we left Thursday Island, as that made things much easier and also reduced the amount of rubbish we had to deal with.

We arrived in Debut on Sunday 26th July exactly 96 hours after leaving Thursday Island, averaged 6.9kts for the four days. It was an exciting moment when we hoisted up the “Q” flag (to signify we were wanting clearance) and the Indonesian courtesy flag as we entered the harbour. We passed a small fishing boat on our way up the channel and when I called out “good morning” in Indonesian, they all waved madly with big grins. The locals had organised small powered boats (nothing like you might see in Australia) decorated with flags to come out into the channel and lead us into the harbour. Then just after we were anchored a boat full of children was going around the anchorage waving at everyone, cheering and singing- very cute at the time, but little did we realise that this was just the start of a lot, and I mean a lot, of attention we were to receive during our stay in Debut.

Overwhelming is the best way to describe our first few days in Indonesia. There was a bit of a pause while we waited to be cleared by customs and immigration which took until late on our second day in Debut. This meant that we had to stay on the boat for that period. On the Tuesday we had a welcome ceremony at the harbour. We were asked to all wait in our dinghies until the appointed time (although time is somewhat elastic here) and then to proceed slowly to the dock while a variety of decorated local boats accompanied us in, playing music.

After the ceremony (lots of handshaking and smiling) then we had a visit to the local school to sing songs with the children, then off to a market area for traditional dancing by the locals and lunch, and finally to the local water hole for a swim. The day was topped off with dinner with the local community (feast for probably over 100 people) at the school and more traditional dancing, that we were invited to join.

The Debut villagers had gone to a lot of trouble to welcome us – there were coloured flags flying outside most of the houses in the village, they had clearly done a rubbish pick up as there was almost no litter on the streets, and they had built a new public toilet at the harbour.

The next afternoon, we piled onto buses to go to Langgur for more traditional dancing, then a parade around the town in which we were the participants – this was a very long walk on a fairly warm afternoon. Lots of waving, smiling, being touched, and photographed, accompanied by very loud music.

Very relieved to get back to boat for shower and some medicinal brandy. Then comes an announcement on the radio that the local mothers had put on another feast for us at the harbour paid for by the government- I was over it by that stage but Phil went and had a great time – even got up and danced! Apart from having a quiet early night, I also managed to escape a very nasty tummy bug that Phil and a few others seemed to pick up at that dinner.

After all of this attention, we were looking forward to moving on to the Banda (Spice) Islands where nothing had been organised and we would be free to do our own thing. We decided to break the trip there with a couple of nights at a little island (Walir) just to the west of Debut, which also gave Phil a chance to recover from his tummy bug. After an overnight passage, we arrived at the Banda Islands- the main group consists of three islands clustered together, one of which is a volcano (Gunung Api). We are currently anchored at the foot of that volcano. It is quite pretty here – lush and green due to the volcanic soil which is quite a contrast to Debut, which is on a coral island and has poor soil.

Our few days here so far have been just fantastic. We have done a tour of a spice plantation which was very interesting and found ourselves sitting in the shade of a nutmeg tree eating cinnamon biscuits. I had to pinch myself – after learning about the spice trade and hearing about the Spice Islands in primary school, I was actually there.

In the afternoon- more snorkelling. Yesterday, we had another rest day as this time Phil had caught the nasty cold that was also doing the rounds of the yachties. Last night we went for drinks with pretty much all the other boats that are anchored here (about 20), and then onto dinner at a most beautiful old house that is a hotel and restaurant. The food was really good. After dinner, the owner showed a couple of short films that covered the history of these islands and reminded us of how significant they were to world trade at that time, with the Dutch and British, and Portuguese all vying for a monopoly on the spice trade. I am going to do a cooking class at this restaurant tomorrow.

A few boats have had some troubles here- one had their anchor inadvertently pulled up by another boat anchoring nearby, which caused them to drift onto the rocks (they were not on board at the time) and sustain some minor damage. It would have been worse except that as soon as people realised what was happening, there were three dinghies milling around and they managed to hold the boat off the rocks until the owner could get back to it. Another was anchored on the other side of the harbour to us, and got rocked about badly by a massive wave caused by a rather large ferry docking nearby. The yacht ended up with some damage to their rudder and propeller, and an upturned dinghy complete with outboard on the back. Again lots of people came to their assistance and they were soon re-anchored on our side of the harbour “licking their wounds.” There is no shortage of help when needed, and everyone is looking out for the safety and wellbeing of others in the fleet. This is a great group of people to be exploring Indonesia with.

We expect to stay here until early next week before moving onto the next location – Namrole on the island of Buru, an island that has only just been opened up to visiting yachts so I expect that we will again be the centre of lots of attention!