We just barely made it to Nongsa Point Marina on early Saturday evening. After calling them on the phone, they agreed to stay a few minutes late for us as we were arriving at 15 minutes past 5 PM. We had to run both engines for the last three hours to make sure we would arrive on time. Otherwise we would have had to anchor for the night only a few miles from our destination. Here’s a map of where we are:
When we got to the southern end of the island of Batam (or Bitam), we knew we were in a new part of Indonesia. There were all kinds of ships, tug boats hauling barges, and fast ferry boats in the area. And, there was even an oil platform in between the islands! There were factories and oil processing facilities on the shore. Lots of population in the area.
We knew we were approaching major shipping traffic. All we had to do was look at our AIS. AIS is a ship identification system that lets you see on your chart plotter the names, position, and course of ships within range of our radio system. The ships are the magenta triangles and the magenta lines are the direction they are headed. The number of ships on our AIS had never been so high. We were approaching the famous Singapore shipping channel. Wow!
Fortunately, we arrived in time and two guys directed us to our slip and helped us tie up Tahina and get our electrics hooked up. We had to change our plug to the New Zealand type to get connected. Meanwhile, one of the guys got our boat paperwork and had me fill out the marina registration. They will be using our paperwork to help us clear out of Indonesia when we are ready.
We spent the rest of the weekend just relaxing and recuperating from our long journey from Bali. My birthday happened on the way from Belitung to here, but we agreed to delay celebrating. Karen was still feeling bad from a cold. On Sunday I took some time off and did no boat projects or other work. Just had fun on the free WIFI Internet connection and relaxed on our boat with the A/C running all day. Karen started feeling better as well and we went for dinner at the hotel restaurant here at the marina.
It’s Monday morning here now. Our main objectives are to investigate getting an appointment with an ophthalmologist for my eye, and to figure out where we want to take the boat over to Singapore. Once we do that, we’ll arrange to clear out of here and go over.
I’ve started to process the photos for Bali, but it will be another day or so before they are ready to share. Sorry for the delay!
