Sailing Afrikii

First a little history of Banda Neira you may not know

British and Dutch imperialism got it’s start in Banda.

At the time, nutmeg was expensive and if you could control the trade, you could build your empire.

Initially nutmeg was mentioned in Indian texts three thousand years ago and Chinese texts almost two thousand years ago. It became a staple in Middle East cooking in the 12th Century, arriving in Europe via Arab traders through Constantinople and Venice in the 16th Century.

Banda Neira, a tiny island in the Banda Sea, was the only source of nutmeg in the world. The Bandanese voyaged to Java and Sumatra to sell it to traders at spice emporiums but they kept the source a secret. At the time, the European price of a kilo of nutmeg was the equivalent cost of six cows and was coveted for medicinal use to cure, among other things, a ‘feeble liver’. (There are also texts advising caution when snorting it for a hallucinogenic high).

Then by the 1600s, word got out and the Dutch arrived in Banda to seize the supply. With hired Japanese mercenaries, they slaughtered villagers and decapitated and displayed the heads of 45 Bandanese chiefs. Today, Bandanese refer to the event as The Genocide.

The Dutch then had a monopoly on nutmeg, whose worth was much more than its weight in gold.

Off the island of Banda Neira, the British took over and defended the small nutmeg plantation on the Island of Ruhn for a few years. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the British seized the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.

The Dutch, unable to retake Ruhn, and in order to maintain its nutmeg monopoly, agreed to an exchange New Amsterdam for Ruhn. The two empires exchanged territories in 1667 and Britain renamed New Amsterdam New York.

Yeah, that New York. If it wasn’t for nutmeg, New York would be all windmills and bicycles today.

Fixing the boat in exotic locations

We moored in the very deep anchorage of Banda Neira and found that the diving just outside the bay, along the island’s coast was great. The Banda Sea is one of the deepest bodies of water in the world helping it absorb more heat from global warming, making it more resilient for the time being.

Banda Neira, pop. 15 000, has a university and marine research centre, studying everything from tuna conservation to coral health to tsunami early warning systems. As well, they have half a dozen dive shops to take you to the outer islands or just explore the plunging volcanic-based reef walls close by. In August, there is a massive hammerhead shark migration–with hundreds of hammerheads–if you ever visit, that would be the time to come.

We spent most of our time diving and eating, interspersed with boat maintenance. We still had lots of time to make the 1300km sail to Komodo where the kids were arriving for a visit.

One job was to change the impeller of the raw water pump on the engine. The raw water intake cools the engine and without it, we don’t have an engine–so you don’t want it to fail while underway. It was leaking a little, so the normal thing to do was to change the water seal on the pump. Ian found that the replacement water seal was ever-so-slightly too large, and he damaged it when he tried to put it in. Luckily, he had another (our mantra is ‘always have a spare, and a spare for the spare’). He puzzled out strategies to get the seal into its mount. This planning occurred over two days, consulting three other captains in the anchorage. The risk of damaging this remaining seal meant that we’d have to import a new one. Importing a new, rinky-dink piece of metal and rubber into Indo would not be easy, and getting the part to Banda that receives a single unreliable flight a day in a seven-seater plane would take a month. (Our alternate plan for meeting the kids in Komodo was that I’d ditch Ian and fly out, while he’d single-hand it to Komodo once the part arrived–not fair but that’s the stress of having visitors…we don’t always know where we’re going to be and when we’re going to be there).

With the spare seal, he figured out that that if he froze it and heated the mount, the seal might contract just enough and the mount might expand just enough that they’d fit. He tried the cold-heat cycle several times and on the final attempt, he did a Hail Mary and just took a hammer to it, managing to successfully nuzzle the seal into its setting, and it’s worked well ever since.

We then departed Banda Neira, dropped into Ambon for provisions, and headed out for the six day motorsail to Komodo into a light headwind and the current against us, keeping an eye on some gnarly weather approaching.

On the second night, we heard a weird clanging from under the aft floor. Ian lifted up the floorboards, looking for where the sound was coming from and we surmised it was coming from propeller. We turned off the engine and drifted until daylight. The concern was maybe the cutlass bearing or propeller mount was broken.

Luckily, as the sun came up, the sea was still glassy and we were drifting at 2 knots. The plan was for Ian to get in the water and look at what was going on under the boat.

There is a saying that the captain is not expendable (i.e. I should be getting in the water to inspect the propeller) but we decided that whatever little I knew about cutlass bearings and propeller shafts was not enough to assess the integrity of either. So we threw two fenders overboard with long lines off the back in case Ian somehow got separated from the boat and he dropped into the water wearing mask and fins, holding onto a line and knife. He surfaced from under the boat 2 minutes later with a length of fishing mesh that had entangled itself in the propeller (celebration emoiji). There is a lot of debris in these water but we’ll take that over a broken prop. We arrived in Komodo in time to meet the kids.

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