Passage to Indonesia — Part 3. When the Boat Objects

By the third day of the crossing, our world had contracted, not in distance, we were still covering miles, but in focus. What mattered now was how the boat was moving, how the sea was behaving, and how much attention everything required. Wind and current were no longer aligned, and the motion reflected that disagreement. The bow lifted, hesitated, then dropped, again and again. Not dramatic. Just relentless.

(If you missed part one or two click here.)

A few of the many fishing boats we passed. This time in daylight and they were visible.

Fatigue simplified things. Eat something. Check the horizon. Adjust course. Try to rest. There wasn’t much room left for worry, or imagination either. That, at least, was a relief.

It was during one of those long, unsettled nights that I found myself reading a story about a man who had just moved into a new, unfurnished apartment. He bought himself a dining room table. When the movers left, he planned to do four things, in order: eat a bowl of cereal at his new kitchen table, flop belly-first onto his bed, sprawl across his couch, and turn on the TV to watch a movie.

I lingered over those lines longer than necessary. The stillness of them. The certainty. A room that stayed where it was put. Furniture that didn’t move. A bed that didn’t require bracing yourself. So calm and serene.

A screenshot from our chartplotter,  before it died. I think they meant caution message, but I was definitely ready for a caution massage.

Not long after that, the boat began to object.

The first issue was fuel. We were unable to pump fuel from our holding tank into the primary tank. On its own, this wouldn’t have been alarming, except that we didn’t have enough fuel in the primary tank to complete the crossing. We knew the fuel was there. We just couldn’t get to it.

Then the water gauge stopped working. The gauge that tells us how much fresh water we have simply went blank. We knew we had left Australia with full tanks, and the watermaker was still running, but losing information, especially information you’re used to having, adds a low, constant hum of uncertainty.

Next, the spinnaker pole worked its way free on the mast. Designed to be secure, it now hung in a way that demanded attention, threatening to come down at exactly the wrong moment.

Then the forward hatch. The hatch in the bow, leading to the storage area, was forced open by waves. Not once, but twice. A vent from that locker leads directly into our sleeping area, and seawater made its way through, soaking the bed completely. It wasn’t dangerous, exactly, but it was demoralizing.

The starboard bow light stopped working. Then the chartplotter, the screen that tells us where we are, went dark. Shortly after that, the watermaker stopped producing water. Fuel filters clogged. The list grew longer, not shorter.

One of the cables to our chartplotter corroded causing the demise of the plotter

Finally, something caught on the propeller. Probably plastic. The engine note changed, and the boat lost power. Bob prepared to go in the water to look. I put the engine in reverse, and whatever it was let go. When he eventually checked, there was nothing there.

Nothing catastrophic had happened. Just a long list of fix-it-now problems, but each problem required attention, and attention was already stretched thin. A few of these things were able to be fixed as we moved along, securing the forward hatch and the spinnaker pole, but others needed calmer seas to address.

By then, continuing without stopping no longer felt like endurance, it felt like stubbornness. So we began actively searching for a place to pause. Not because we couldn’t go on, but because listening mattered more than pushing through.

On the chart, a small, uninhabited island appeared: Enu. Protected enough. Quiet enough. Possible. Even though we knew we had not checked into a legal port of entry in Indonesia yet, so stopping at any island could be considered illegal, we made the decision to beg for forgiveness rather than ask permission.

Tiny little Enu Island

By the time we altered course toward it, the decision felt less like a choice and more like a necessity.

The boat had made its position clear.

And we were ready to listen.

Next in Part 4, motion gives way to stillness. Rest and repair and fuel syphons.