This is the first time
I met someone from a touring boat. I’ve seen several boats anchoring in Krui
bay actually but this is the first time I met the crew in person.
It was a beautiful
Sunday morning. The surfs in Krui was small and there was no surfer in the
water but some local tourists swimming. A beautiful boat was anchoring about
three hundred meters from the shore. I could see the crew walking on the deck,
making the lifeboat, and doing something, I could see them even more clear with
my long lens camera. I took some photos, hoping that I could meet someone from
that boat when he got ashore.
And not long after
that, I saw a guy coming down the boat, paddling ashore with a surfboard. I
waited for him in the sand, hoping that I could ask him a few questions. And
once he got ashore I fired some questions. He was like taken aback by what he
heard. “Good English,” he said. And I was taken aback by his surfboard. I never
seen such a big-big surfboard before. “It’s eleven feet. I usually surf this
board with a paddle,” he said.
His name is Mike Miller. He is the crew of that
boat, named Pearl Hunter. He has
been sailing with the boat for six years. He has been sailing half of the world
so far. He was coming to Krui from Bengkulu with another three guys. One was
his partner, and the other two were travelers who happened to take a sailing
with them. “They are going to Jakarta overland from here,” he said.
“I am going to
Internet café. Do you know where?” he asked, neglecting his big board in the
sand, under a coconut tree.
“Is it OK to leave the
board here?”
I shrugged.
“OK. I’ll tell the
police if someone steal it.”
“Get on my bike. I’ll
show you the Internet,” I said. Then he jumped into my bike. I doubled him to
the nearest Internet café from the beach.
Mike is from
California, but he started sailing his boat from Oahu, Hawaii. And since then
he has been to Micronesia, Tahiti, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Thailand,
Papua New Guinea, Australia, etc, and of course Indonesia. In Indonesia alone
he has been to most parts of the country. Before he came to Krui, he had been
to Java, Bali, Sulawesi, Borneo, Mentawai, etc. “This is the second time I come
to Krui. We came here two years ago, on September, 2010,” he said.
Mike’s boat is made of
steel. And they have to take well care so the she’s not getting rusty. “We docked her in Thailand for
a whole year for repairing,” he said.
“Have you ever happened
to sail in a wild sea during the journey?” I asked.
“Yes, pretty often.” He
named a place somewhere down the sea where he and his partner had ventured a
rough sailing. “It’s not a big deal. We are used to it,” he said.
During the journey
Mike and his partner always spend the night in the boat. They only got landed when
they finished some supply. “Now I can’t stand this noises,” he said, pointing
to someone operating a machine which produce a very loud noise. “It’s very
quiet in the sea.”***
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