Merry Christmas and all the best for the new year!

For more then four years we are sailing around on DHARMA BUM III now and we have experienced quite a lot. If I look at the globe, I can see where we started and where we are now, both at the same time. And when Aurora Ulani had to do her homework for the Calvert School, we found out that she celebrated her birthday (born 30 December 2003) always in a different country up to now.

1. Taiwan
2. Tortola, BVI
3. Panama
4. Kiribati
5. Germany (Boat was in Whangarei)
6. Indonesia or Singapore

We wonder how long that will continue...

Last year was quite interesting. After we came back from the visit to my parents in Germany, we had a lot of work on the boat to do. We really liked Norsand boatyard and New Zealand in general. Made lots of good friends there and since then it is one of the places where we would consider settling down.

When we left, things got a bit dramatic for after five days we encountered winds of up to 58.6 knots. Our bimini didn't like that and decided to take off without us. It's been repaired since then, but sooner or later we'll need a new one. DHARMA BUM III itself behaved splendidly as usual and by now we think that she can handle pretty much any weather as long as we don't make any serious mistakes.

After 38 days non-stop sailing via Vanuatu and New Caledonia we arrived in Darwin, where we stayed for about a month or so and made many new friends. The main reason was the cruising permit (CAIT) and the visa for Indonesia. These things aren't only a lot of bother, but they are also getting really expensive these days. You can expect about US$ 500 for the pleasure. Australia ain't much cheaper and some countries, e.g. French Caledonia are so much trouble that we decided to forego them altogether.

Our daughter was very much impressed by the Territory Wildlife Park, where you can see many of the animals indigenous to the area. Among the attractions are a big salt-water crocodile, fresh-water whiprays, Wallabies, the aquarium and a big aviary.

We finally decided that it was time for a new fridge and bought a Waeco CF-40 CoolFreeze. We are very pleased with it and are still using the old one as a "vegetable" fridge. It also makes ice-cubes and now our food and drink situation is better than ever. Very important, that! Since we now have two brewing containers on board, beer is no problem anyway.

On we continued to Ashmore Reef, which turned out to be yet another highlight. The boys from the ASHMORE GUARDIAN, a permanently stationed customs vessel, guided us in and we followed them all the way to an uninhabited island, where they picked up a mooring for us. They were extraordinarily helpful and generous and we have to say that we had only positive experiences with the Australian officials.

We explored the island, snorkelled and met a shark and a big turtle under water, as well as numerous other critters. I've always been interested in all kinds of animals and Aurora takes just after me in that respect. Unfortunately we had to leave as the cyclone season was approaching.

So on we went once more, but this time even more slowly than before, as we are not fond of using the engine when it is not absolutely necessary. Almost no wind at all, but at least the current wasn't against us.

When we arrived in Bali, we had a lot of fun with the tidal currents. We made no progress whatsoever, although the engine was running. About six hours later, we could continue and headed for Benoa, which has A LOT more traffic then even the approach to the Panama Canal. Wow! The chaos was hard to surpass, as there were plenty of traditional fishing boats, ships, jetskis, tourist boats and so on all over the place. We zigzagged right through them and I for one found my pulse unpleasantly high.

We stayed only about a month, as we had been in Bali twice before. Again, we made new friends who gave us completely new insights into life in Indonesia. Liping said that now she understands her mother (born and raised in Jakarta) much better than before. Personally, I was a bit shocked about the evident poverty and police corruption. Our new friends Bahar and Hari (both former merchant marines) told us some horror stories about abandoned boats they had found drifting on the sea with nobody on board and everything of value, including the engine, removed. Originally from Jakarta, they fled the terrible circumstances there and live now in Bali.

When we left there, we found ourselves confronted with hundreds of tiny outrigger sailboats. Of course those guys didn't have any lights, so that night-watches became very strenuous indeed. This stayed true for all of Indonesia. Also, plenty of logs and trees and even huge abandoned rafts were drifting all over the place.

We had planned to visit the orang-utans in Borneo, but fate decided otherwise. First we didn't have any wind at all for about ten days, this time with the current against us. Then we had difficulties to get around the Horn of Kumai and finally we came to the conclusion that both visa and cruising permit would run out, if we tried to make that side trip. Too bad, because we really had been looking forward to it.

Next, we encountered the "light fishers", who have mounted powerful halogen lamps all around their boats to attract fish with. Up to 30 of them we counted around us - on top of the regular fishers, ferries, freighters and once in a while also a cruise ship. Our boat was often brightly lit up. Because of all this traffic and wrecks littering the place, we decided to give a narrow and shallow place a wide berth, especially as the currents were also giving us a lot of trouble and the weather was bad.

When we had barely scraped past Borneo, we finally got to enjoy real equatorial weather. Ferocious squalls of up to 45 knots, day after day after day, permanently overcast sky, and, between the squalls, no wind at all. Just what the doctor ordered! I haven't really made up my mind, whether I prefer beating against the monsoon, blowing with 6 Beaufort, for days on end. Which is what happened next. :-)

It almost looks as if we will spend Christmas, Aurora's birthday and the New Year at sea, before making it to Batam and Singapore. Next on the agenda are Malaysia and Thailand, where I plan to renovate DHARMA BUM III quite extensively. My two beautiful girls plan to visit Taiwan and Liping's family and when they come back, we intend to continue to Chagos, Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. We'll see.

Both Liping and Aurora are fine and our daughter is doing very well at school. She is indeed fully tri-lingual (understand, speak, read, write). Mandarin-Chinese is her best spoken language, writing she can do best in English and recently I finished reading her the German translation of "Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings", so that she now talks all the time of elves, wizards, dwarfs, orcs, trolls and balrogs. Funny that!

Now we are wondering what the next year will bring and hope that it turns out just as you wish for you!

Here you can see our current position:

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=WDC7641

News are to be found here:

http://mail.im.tku.edu.tw/~jacobsen/blog/voyage.html

Many greetings from the three Dharma Bums

Aurora Ulani, Liping & Holger Jacobsen
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At 12/21/2009 3:44 PM (utc) our position was 00°13.45'N 105°11.92'E