Sailing Indonesia

We hurried past some very attractive islands and towns to arrive in Makassar
on the island of Sulawesi for the finish of the regional Sandek Races.
These local trimarans were just finishing a 300 mile coastal race,
that's done in several legs. These trimarans were EXCITING!!

The Sandeks "raced" against a handful of yachts - those who were willing to be "embarassed" by
these local craft - and the 10 meter Sandeks showed their sterns to everyone!
Onboard Naga? We carried a reef in the main throughout and no spinnaker.
The Sandeks overtook us on the off the wind leg
. . . and showed us their sterns.
But going upwind? We left them all behind
and I was told they were asking if we were using a motor aboard!

We had the pleasure of sailing against the Sandeks with this Sandek captain
named Hamsah. He was a great bowman, and a very nice fella with whom
we shared only about 5 mutually understood words.
But we shared a lot more than words.

Beautiful attention to detail, and lovely paint work characterized these splendid craft which showed real devotion and love in their every aspect.

That's the rudder swung up there with outlandish paintwork.

Sails are the usual polypropylene.

The boats are all from local woods, with some bits chosen for their naturally grown shapes, and there's a lot of bamboo used too - as in the outriggers: extravagantly long straight bamboo poles. And as you can see, the Sandeks are largely lashed together.

Spindly, light, simple, and fast: a Sulawesi Sandek!!

from Chrissi's story of our Rally experiences -

Makassar on the island of Sulawesi . . . . we stayed for about 2 weeks. We arrived in time to watch the finish of the annual sandek race. Sandeks are narrow hull trimarans with bamboo poles for outriggers and spars, huge polypropylene sails and at least 8 crew members to help the shrouds hold the mast up. Every year these spider-like work boats put away their fishing gear and battle it out on a 300 mile race course. After the finish of the big event, there was a fun race between the yachties with our modern boats and the sandeks. We swapped crews just to make it a little more interesting, so when Naga raced against the sandek fleet, we had 2 Indonesians aboard. We had an excellent start, and stayed ahead of the fleet all the way to the downwind mark. The sandek crews were shocked, they had never seen a modern yacht that could give them a challenge, and it was looking like Naga was going to walk away with first place. Too bad for us, and to their glee and delight, the speedy little sandeks passed us on the downwind leg, tacking downwind with their huge sails and ultra-lightweight hulls, and although we werent first across the line, we put up an impressive show. Needless to say, all those modern monohulls saw nothing but our transom, tee hee hee.

There were other things going on too. Like huge parades down the main drag on the waterfront.

And a little personal touring of the area,
with some spectacular Sulawasi houses .

And the birds you pay to set free each represents a prayer answered!

Use these Links to Continue:

Indonesia page 1

Indonesia page 2: Lembata to Makassar

Indonesia, page 4 - Makassar to Lombok, the accident

Chrissi describes our Indonesia / Malaysia Adventures

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Indonesia!!

page 3: Makassar