Exploring the Caves At Belitung Island & Dealing With A Dead Lithium Bank in Indonesia

Exploring the Caves At Belitung Island & Dealing With A Dead Lithium Bank in Indonesia

[Music] Hello friends, my name is James and this is my 1965 Albert 30 sloop SV Trita. I have been slowly sailing around the world since leaving Los Angeles in 2021. Since that time, I’ve covered more than 17,000 nautical miles. From the Hawaiian Islands to French Polynesia, New Zealand to Australia, and more. I crossed the largest ocean on the planet solo. Join me as I continue my way through Southeast Asia, exploring its jungles, seeing its wildlife, and experiencing cultures far different from my own. This is the magic of seeing the world by sail. [Music] [Music] [Music] For this morning’s adventure, we’re going to head to this small close by island. I’ve heard from the crew of Shameless that there’s some really cool like caves, boulder stacks to explore. They told me how to get there. So, let’s head over to the island and check it out. All right, we’re entering the little path that’s supposed to go to the caves. Pretty neat. All these little food stalls. But this is this tree is crazy. I think I I think I went the hard way. I just found the real path. Wow. Really cool. [Music] bats. I don’t mean to scare them, but I think they’ll go right back to sleep. There’s a lot of people that come here in the daytime. Try not to disturb them too much. The gradient on these stones is so crazy looking. Definitely looks like someone painted it. And it goes from like this crazy like orange color down to a lighter orange to like a olive green to like a deep purple. This is so cool. [Music] Unspeakable beauty. Just really remarkable. Most beautiful place I’ve seen in Indonesia, hands down. between like all the rocks out on the water that we drove by in the dinghy and this place. Bellatong is next level for sure and so unique compared to everything else I’ve seen here. And I came early in the morning so there’s no one else here. On the weekend there was like 30 tourist boats here with local tourists. So real blessing to get to be here by myself and just enjoy the peace, the bird song, the bats. Really amazing. Good morning. The batteries are offline. Uh, the battery, I guess I should say. The boat is totally dark. I heard I heard an alarm going off about an hour ago and I thought it was this Indonesian fishing boat that was starting up because it happened right before he started his engine. So I thought maybe it was like his panel or something. But it must have been this low low power alarm for the battery. The batteries had 90% when I went to bed. or the battery had 90% when I went to bed all night. All I ran was a single fan and the anchor light. Nothing else was plugged in or there’s no draw on it. So, there’s no reason the battery should be dead unless that battery is also failing. Um, so I had planned on doing like a 200 mile push today to try to get us like halfway out, but now there’s there’s no way I can trust the batteries to do overnight stuff. So, I’ll be doing day hops, which is going to stretch out this nightmare. It’s also worth noting that this is like two days after I discovered like Navionics had wiped all the charts for Indonesia, which they still they are on my iPad. So, at least I do have them. We’ll see to what detail when I zoom in and use them. But, um, when all that happened, well, yesterday I posted in real time. So anyway, we’ll see. Hopefully the battery I’ll just wake up. I don’t want to fire the generator up right now cuz it’s like 5:30 in the morning and there’s other boats sleeping. So once the sun’s up, I’ll get the generator out and try to jump start the batteries. Get the house bank back online. And then I guess we’ll push. [Music] So my guess is it’s doing that because the sun’s coming up and the solar woke it up. [Music] We’re going to hook up uh the generator. I was actually getting it out when it started making sound. Now, check it out. And I suspect what’s going to happen, which is what happened with the other one or when the other one was hooked up, is I’m going to hook the generator up. It’ll start charging and it’ll instantly say that the battery is full and go into absorption. Strange business. [Music] I was just noticing how clear the water is and I was looking at my anchor chain. I went to the bow and check this out. Really fun surprise. There’s a whole gang of squid hanging out with the anchor chain. Their eyes are glowing. So cool. Check out the chain though. You The water is so clear. Squid gang. That is so cool. That I’ve never seen that. That is really neat. Makes me very happy. My friends Rick and Shantel on Shameless who helped me with the water the other day and the petrol. Move it back with their dinghy. They just saved my ass. When I was in Bor, we were all in Borneo at the same time and I lost my wallet. They came by the boat and was visiting with me and I was talking about it and they offered me they said they had like a bunch of cash, Indonesian cash on board if they if I wanted to they wanted if I wanted to borrow the cash so I had some and I was like no it’s okay I appreciate the help but I think I can pull enough out with my credit card and in Borneo I was able to pull out money with my credit card from the ATM so I really appreciated their offer but um I try to not you know it’s really hard for me to ask for help and I try to to just be self-sufficient when I can, but I was very grateful that they’re of their kindness to offer. So, at the time, I was like, “No, it’s okay.” And I made it work fine until I got here when I went to try to buy the battery the other day and my credit card wouldn’t let me pull any cash out here at any of the ATMs I tried. So realizing the situation I was in this morning, I texted him and said, “Hey, can I take you up on that offer or could you like come with me to town and like buy this battery for me?” Cuz the battery is only $120, which is like 2.3 million R. Like, can you come to town? Like, I’ll wire you the money as we talked about um and I’ll pay for the car and all that stuff. and they texted back and said um they said, “Oh, we’ll just drop cash off over to you.” So, they just brought me 3 million uh R so I have more than enough to cover it plus what I already have so it’s not totally wiping out all of my cash when I’m like having trouble pulling out cash altogether because I also have to pay the dude to drive me another 500,000 to drive me into town and back. Um, so grateful for those guys. Uh, make sure you check out their YouTube channel. I’ll put a card in the top and there’ll be a description down below. They have a YouTube channel and Instagram account, so make sure you go give them some love and tell them I sent you and thank them for helping me if you will. Um, yeah. So at I booked the car again with this guy Ringo. 11:00 we’re going to head back into town. Buy the battery I was not able to purchase last time we were there. It’s a 12vt 120 amp hour battery. I’m just going to wire it up like under the chart table. And um basically I just unhooked the lithium and wire it up. So, it’ll be charged by the solar panels and if the alternator is working, the alternator and um I’ll be able to run and I’ll be able to run, you know, my nav off of that and the anchor light and that sort of stuff just like critical systems just to get me to Malaysia. So stress gets heavy at times. Uh right now is one of those times. I’m pretty good at managing it, but it gets heavy. Right at this very moment, I have no house bank that’s reliable, which means I have no galley, so I can’t cook food other than on a camping stove I bought. Last time I checked, my alternator was not working. Well, it charges the starter battery, which is all that matters. But, but I did change a fuse the other day, so maybe that fixed it. We’ll see. But alternator is not working. There was a diesel leak that I repaired. We’ll see if it holds. There’s a leak in my exhaust hose that I’ve partially repaired to slow down the leak that I can’t fully repair till I get to civilization. Um, I was forced to clear out of the country because they wouldn’t extend my visa. So, I’m here illegally technically. Um, what else? There’s no I don’t have a fridge. Fridge doesn’t work. and the engine’s been having a really hard time starting. So, it builds up. Um, and like if I had been able to make it out of Indonesia last year, I would have already done my mid-circuit navigation refit, which what I was supposed to do last October in Malaysia, which I plan on doing this October in Malaysia. So, a lot of stuff would have been refreshed and sorted out and fixed and all that stuff at that point. But things happen. you get delayed. It was all out of my control. Nothing I did prevented me from going forward. So, it’s just part of it. Um, but it can be very, very challenging to deal with at times. And I’m so grateful for Shameless for helping me out, taking a little bit of the stress off, a lot of the stress off. And also, shout out to Victoria, my girlfriend Victoria who’s in San Diego. Um, she insisted this morning. She’s like, “Ask shameless for help. They offered your help. They offered to help you. Just it’s okay. Ask for help. Don’t don’t be stubborn. Don’t try to do everything by yourself. Like she was like, “Wouldn’t you help them?” I was like, “Oh, absolutely. I would be happy to help them.” She’s like, “Okay, then what’s the issue?” So, Victoria really sort of like pushed me to not try to figure it out on my own and to just like ask for help, which is very difficult for me, but I listen to her. So, thank you, Victoria, for pushing me out of my comfort zone on that. And thanks again so much to Shameless. I love this community. audio. So, it was 2,300,000. So, like 120 bucks or something like that. So, get it done. [Music] [Music] Don’t worry about it. [Music] There we have it. Our emergency house bank, 120 amp hours. Got the fittings, cables, and all that stuff. Um, he said I need to wait eight hours before I hook it up. So, I’ll hook it up tomorrow. I don’t know what the solution was he was putting in. I know like you top up batteries with like distilled water usually, but flooded batteries, but um maybe that’s what he was using. I’m not sure. But there we go. So, that’s my solution. Um, best I can do in the middle of nowhere and hopefully it gets us safely to where we need to go. Now, it’s time to chill out for the rest of the day. Maybe go for a swim. If you enjoy the content on this channel and would like to contribute, you can consider joining the Patreon crew. Thanks for watching. Fair winds until next time.

Episode 439 : Amazing Jungle Caves, Dead Lithium and Solutions

Hello Friends,
On this episode I head ashore to the small island of Kelayang to explore its towering rocks and caves. It was like stepping into the movie Plant of the Apes! The jungle, moss, ferns and rocks meeting the sea and coral rubble!!!! Remarkably beautiful!

The next morning I awoke to my last remaining battery glitching out, likely its BMS also damaged by the near lightning strike. I then accepted the kind help of my friends on SV Shameless https://www.youtube.com/@sailingshameless5672 who kindly lent me some cash allowing me to get a back up lead acid battery.

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Fair Winds,
James

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#sailingIndonesia #alberg30 #southeastasia #solosailing #circumnavigation