My birthday this year started in a quiet anchorage beneath the beautiful Nila volcanic island. The sun was shining, and we had had a good and uninterrupted night’s sleep to recover from the 36 hours that brought us here from Tual. Nila is part of the ring of fire, a loop of isolated, little developed islands in East Indonesia. In other words: the perfect place for social distancing during Corona times.

My family welcomed me with a heartily performed rendition of “Happy Birthday”, and I had to blow out the candles on the birthday cake. We had a slow morning, enjoying the view of the volcano, sipping our coffees and tidying up the mess that always accompanies a longer passage through wavy seas. Around 10:30 we raised the anchor, picked our way through the coral shallows, and sailed for an hour to Karang Dusborgh.

This is a reef in the middle of the ocean, probably on the rim of a long extinct and sunken volcano. The reef is always submerged, there is no island, but the rim is very shallow with approx. 1m of water and many waves washing over it. From the satellite images we had picked the spot with a pass through the coral ring into the interior of the reef, and with Ute and Nyala as lookouts we managed to carefully maneuver ourselves into the reef. The shallowest depth that we measured was 7 meters, we need about 2 to be safe. Outside of the ring the sea drops to a thousand meters deep, inside it is 40-60 meters. We slowly motored along the rim and found a spot to anchor that was not too deep, yet far enough away from any coral we might swing into. Lunch time, surrounded by clear water of a myriad hues from deep blue to glassy turquoise, with the lush green volcano Nila towering on the horizon. I could not have wished for a more extravagant setting!

After lunch, sufficiently sure that our anchor would hold Rainbow Safari in place, we suited up, grabbed fins, masks, snorkels and lowered the dinghy to set off and explore. We found the coral on top of the reef beaten up by the incessant waves, but on the outer wall, where the reef started to drop from shallows into deep blue, we found the coral to be healthy and plenty of colorful reef fish. It felt amazing to be snorkeling so far away from any land, just water all around. Sticking our head up we could of course still see Rainbow Safari, and Nila in the distance. As a highlight we spotted a black tip reef shark patrolling the reef below us, and later on two turtles. The larger one disappeared into the deep blue depth, but the smaller one was feeding on the reef and we could observe it for a while. When we got back onto the dinghy Robin sported a big smile: “This is the first time I saw turtles while snorkeling!”

Back on Rainbow Safari we rinsed and cleared away the gear and prepared to raise anchor again. This time we knew the pass was deep enough for us, so without any issues we left Karang Dusborgh and sailed off into the golden sunset, for the next 24 hour passage to Pulau Romang.

(This would have made for a lovely wrap to my birthday, but of course sailing being what it is the peaceful moment lasted about 5 minutes, and then our mainsail came crashing down because the halyard snapped. It’s certainly not all champagne on the aft deck, and don’t let anyone tell you it is! 🙂

About four days after leaving Sorong we made it to Biak, when PNG announced the full closure of all borders. All other island nations on our planned route had already shut down or were in the process of doing so. Slowly it became apparent that our plan of heading East would not work.

We anchored in Biak and contacted the local Indonesian immigration office, to see if they could let us re-enter Indonesia (we had officially cleared out and left the country, a day before our Indonesia visas were due to expire). We had heard that Indonesia was now offering some kind of emergency visa to those stranded in the country, and allowing tourists to overstay their visas without the usual hefty fine ($100 US/person and day!) The officials asked me to come to the office, so armed with face mask and hand sanitizer I set off, hopeful that we would be allowed to return to Indonesia. That turned out to be a false hope. While friendly, the officials insisted that since we had officially already left Indonesia they would not be able to issue any new visa, and that we would need to leave the country. The fact that no other country within 2000 km would accept us did not concern them. The officials allowed me to fill my Diesel jerry cans at the gas station and to buy groceries at the supermarket, and then escorted me to our anchorage to make sure we left. So we loaded everything on board in the pouring rain and raised the anchor, destination unknown, trying to keep up our morale and thinking through what we could possibly do next.

It was early afternoon and there is a group of small islands about four hours from Biak, so that is where we headed. We had heard that the islands still have telephone network coverage, so we planned to do more research on our options and decide what to do there, while giving the kids a chance to get off the boat for the first time in 10 days. We had an uneventful sail and anchored as the last daylight turned into night.

The next day was Ute’s birthday! Nyala and I got up at six to bake a birthday cake and decorate the salon. There was coffee in bed for Ute, and we had a pleasant, sunny birthday morning, making plans for a beach BBQ in the afternoon. We did not yet know the day would take a different turn. We got everything ready in the morning for a beach outing to look for a good BBQ location and give the kids some play time. But just as we were getting ready to go to the beach a small police boat arrived in the anchorage, some distance from us.

We debated whether to wait or to go ahead. Since the police boat made no sign of approaching us we took the offensive: we piled into the dinghy with our beach things, and headed straight over to them – all officials we have met in Indonesia have started to smile when they saw our kids. The police boat had nine or ten people on board, some with face masks, but their English, if that’s possible, was worse than my Bahasa. So we said hello, smiled a lot, and headed off to the beach – making sure to go to a shallow end where their bigger boat could not approach. This bought us about ten minutes, just enough for the kids to get off the dinghy, splash about and start digging in the sand. Then the police pulled up about 100m further down the beach, and those on board clearly signaled that they wanted to talk to us. I did not want to aggravate them, so picked up Hero (for the kid bonus), and headed over to talk to them. They made it clear they did not want us on the beach. I told them that we had self-quarantine on the boat for 10 days, and the kids needed some time to stretch their legs. At least one of them seemed sympathetic, so we seemingly agreed that the kids could have 10 minutes, and then we would go back. The less-sympathetic must have won, because two minutes later they came across to our bit of beach and told us to leave. We gave up and headed back.

Back on Rainbow Safari I tried to contact the German Embassy for advice, but could not get through on their 24 hour helpline. From earlier alerts I knew they had on that day scheduled flights to take stranded tourists back to Germany, so they must have been over-busy shepherding Bali package tourists through the airport. I also contacted PNG immigration again to get written confirmation of denied entry (something the Indonesia immigration in Biak had asked for). I also contacted sailors on a boat in Palau, about 500 miles from us, to see if the country would still accept us. All this time the police boat hovered a few hundred meters away.

Just before noon the situation became more serious. A small boat arrived, and both it and the police boat approached us. On the small boat I recognized the Biak immigration officer who had sent us away. Surely enough he started the conversation with: “Why are you still here, I asked you to leave Indonesia?”. I explained again that PNG had closed its borders, that the Indonesia central immigration in Jakarta had issued a letter saying it was ok for tourists to overstay their visas, and told him we had contacted our embassy to get advice. This went back and forth a while, but for some reason he did not want to change his position. I finally managed to get through to the German embassy in Jakarta on the phone. They were immediately helpful (despite what must have sounded to them like a very bizarre situation: a German family on a sailboat in the far reaches of Indonesia, asking for help in talking to the local immigration officer?) I was able to pass my phone to the immigration officer and the consular lady from the embassy spoke to him in Bahasa for a good 5 minutes. It seemed friendly, and I was hoping she would be able to buy us some time for sorting things out. But when the officer returned the phone to me she said that he would not bargain, and that we would have to leave, while she would try and arrange help through the central Jakarta officials. After a last, very unfriendly verbal exchange with the immigration officer we gave up, readied the boat and raised the anchor again.

On our way out of the little bay we discussed what to do next. Continuing East towards PNG was futile and would just get us into more trouble. So we took the difficult decision to turn around and head West, the end of our ambition to go into the Pacific. We felt defeated: we had battled boat fixes, a lightning strike, worked our way East for 6 months through Indonesia, and finally were stopped by Corona.

As we left the police boat trailed us a few hundred meters away, making sure this time we really left. We prepared ourselves to sail through the night if needed, back in the direction of Sorong, moving away from Biak as quick as we could. In the meantime we had several more calls with the German embassy and connected on WhatsApp. They were really very good. Within the hour they had escalated to the Indonesian foreign ministry and received a “sympathetic response”. They asked us not to leave the Biak region just yet, in case the ministry could sort things out with the local immigration. Two hours later it turned out this would not work: due to the special regional status of Papua (with some autonomy to appease the Papuans who dislike being part of Indonesia, there are still active guerilla movements fighting for independence) the foreign ministry would only be able to help us once we left Papua. She asked where we would like to head to – a difficult question, as it would determine our near future, that had just abruptly changed completely.

Back in February we had spent a fun week in Raja Ampat with three other kid boats: Zig Zag, Family Circus, and TOC. These had headed West to an island called Roti, near Kupang in Timor. A good 2000 kilometers away from us, but it seemed that given the virus situation, the border closures and uncertainties, this would be a good destination, half way back to Singapore and also close to Australia. So we asked the embassy for Kupang, and the Indonesia foreign ministry arranged for a “warm welcome” by the Kupang immigration office once we reached. To make sure our journey would go safely and since we were traveling by boat the good embassy lady also connected us to someone at Indonesia’s maritime search and rescue agency. She told us that their first reaction was to “send a rescue helicopter for them”, something we all agreed with a smile would not be needed at this time!

As the sun set we began our long journey, which would see us go through Sorong once again, and then new parts of the archipelago we had not yet seen. A quiet, unceremonious end to Ute’s birthday as we faced our new reality.