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Dodgy canoe Boys on the trip: Me, Dave, Ben, Jye, Kearns, Robbie and another Dave.
Panaitan is a small island uninhabitied by humans off the west coast of Java in indonesia. It is part of the World heritage listed Ujong Kulon national park. It is basically a coral fringed island covered in dense rain forest. The thin white sand beach surrounding the island is covered by water at high tide which makes getting around the island very difficult. The only option to get around the island is by boat. The reason why it is so attractive to surfers is a break called One Palm Point which on its day can break for 2kms. There are also 5 other world class waves that break more frequently. It is easy to be fooled by the seeminly perfect waves at first glance but all breaks are powerful and break on shallow and very sharp coral reef as Dave found out the hard way.
The trip started by flying to Jakarta from Bali on the 9th of May. In Jakarta we met 3 of our friends (Ben, Robbie and other Dave) strapped all of our surfing gear to the roof of two cars and headed
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Unpacking our gear for the shopping mall. We had to buy all of our own food and water for the 10 day trip in Jarkata and take it with us to Sumur (5 hours by car) where the boat was waiting. Food consisted of boxes of packet mie goreng, rice, tinned fruit, flour for pancakes, eggs and live chickens.
We arrived in Sumur at 2am and loaded the boat with all our gear and supplies using a tiny wooden canoe in the dark... It wasnt much fun!! In true indo fashion the indo crewman had to constantly bail water from the canoe whilst paddling our stuff out to the boat. We left for Panaitan at about 6am.
As soon as we got to Panaitan we went surfing had some lunch and then set up camp on the island. There is an old abandond surf camp which was falling apart (Literally) so we decided to pitch our tents inside two rooms that still had floors that werent rotten. Turned out to be a good idea because it rained heavily everyday for the first week. The first couple of days we got some small waves to keep us all happy but we expected
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Beach out the front of our camp a lot better. The first week seemed to drag on a bit with not many waves, plently of games of chess and cards and the endless supply of mie goreng (which i wont touch until we go to Panaitan again).
The fishing was supposed to be excellent but we came very under prepared with one rod and some old dodgy line on a broken reel. We trawled with lures as we went for surf spot to surf spot and got a couple of hits but the line broke every time. One time, i had a huge bite but the reel could not hold the fish. Line was peeling off the reel at a rate of knots but i couldnt stop it. The fish took all the line from the reel and that was the end of our fishing adventures. So we decided to buy some fish from the fishing boats instead. The fish was so cheap, we paid about RP50,000 per fish for two ~7kg trevelly and barracuda.
Originally, there were 3 of us that were going back to Bali after 7 days on the boat but since we hadnt had many good surfs, i decided to stay
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Tent inside a room and hoped the weather would clear up and the surf would pick up.
The day Jye and Kearns left to go back to Bali we had agreed that the boat would meet us out the front of our camp the following morning. When we woke the next day there was no sign of the boat. Great!! We could see that the surf had picked up but we couldnt get to any of the waves unless we walked ~5km along the edge of the rainforest at high tide. So Dave and I got ready and trudged off for the mission. It wasnt an easy walk with fallen logs everywhere to jump over and climb under with a backpack and surfboards whilst waves were crashing at our feet and groups of small sharks parading the shoreline for breakfast. We were about 1 hour into our trek when out of nowhere a storm comes over us pelting down as much as you could imagine. The wind had changed direction so there was no point in continuing our mission since the waves would be no good anymore. We waited an hour for the rain to pass before trudging back with laughter. Laughing at
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Jye with rice the fact that we came all the way to Panaitan to surf good waves and luck was not on our side. What else is there to do but laugh!! After we got back we spent the rest of the day waiting for the boat. We had minimal water, food and entertainment. Dave made a helmet out of water melon which kept us entertained for ten minutes but the rest of the day was spent waiting for the boat. With such a wild storm we all started wondering if the boat was ever going to come back... we all thought that the indo guys might have left us there with little food and water and stolen all our expensive things that were left on board the boat.
As it got dark we heard the sound of voices in the jungle.. it was our crew!! They explained to us that the ocean was so rough they couldnt get around the headland and had parked the boat around the other side of the island. So we packed up all of our gear and headed for the other side in the dark. Another fun trek walking through mud, thick rainforest and wading though
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Glassy water shallow rivers that the captain said had crocodiles in. Guess thats why he was carrying a huge knife!!
The next day, we woke up and right in front of our boat was a great decent sized wave. We surfed there for a couple of hours then headed around the bay-side of the island. With a turn of luck, Napalms (surf spot) was cranking!! We surfed all day and got many memorable waves (check the photos), the best i have ever seen and surfed!! The following day was the same and the boys were very happy. For me, electing to stay on the boat had definitely paid off.
On the final day, the swell had disappeared so we decided to leave early in the morning and have a night out in Jakarta to top off a great trip. We enjoyed good food and many beers which we had all been dreaming of for so many days. We all thought the trip was not just a surf trip but a mental test that stretched us all to our limits. Its good to be back in civilisation!! All the boys are keen to do another trip soon, but next time we
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The Crew will be a lot better prepared!!
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