Sorong Benzine

The harbour at Sorong in West Papua is a popular place for replenishing food and fuel on the local boats, whether these are the local fisherman or the phinisi that carry tourists around the islands of Raja Ampat.

West Papua is a little troubled with civil unrest, as there appears to be much discrimination between the Indigenous Moi Papuan people and the recent immigrants from the rest of Indonesia. I’m not sure if this civil unrest is at the root of the problem of visiting yachts being boarded at night, with many reports of theft. For that reason we stopped at the marina at Tampa Garam both times we visited Sorong, but that requires hiring a car to take drums to a fuel outlet in order to get more petrol on to SeeBeeZee.

We chose to leave from Tampa Garam early, so that we had the time anchor in the harbour near a fuel outlet on the waterfront near the Star, that we had previously surveyed by bike, but then be able to move on and anchor for the night away from the threat of boarding.

This fuel outlet is used by the local fishermen. The area is very busy, with literally hundreds of long boats anchored and coming and going, so we were lucky that conditions were so calm as we had to manoeuvre in amongst the boats, and then scramble up and over the masonry wall to get our drums filled. There was a bit of a queue for access to the bowser, with locals filling diesel fuel into larger boats, and kerosene for some of the outboards, as well as the high quality benzine that we needed, with lots of buyers and only one pump for each fuel, so it took some time. Time enough to grab some photos.

In typical Indonesian style, the locals insisted on carrying the filled drums back to our dinghy, and were not looking for any payment for their efforts. It seems that they felt honoured to have handled our drums!