Panaitan Island - Off the Beaten Path
I went to Panaitan Island off West Java a couple years back, where Timmy Turner camped out and shot Second Thoughts. Panaitan Island is part of Ujong Kulon National Park. It was inhabited before Krakatoa blew up and killed everyone on the island in 1887 or so, now a National park in a very natural state. I'm not exposing or promoting anything here, just wanted to share my experiences and you can judge whether or not the island is off the beaten path for a reason or if you're dying to beat a path there.
The island has some very strong points going for it, but the cons will become apparent below. For now, here are the pros:
Easy transportation logistics - fly to Jakarta with nonstops from most Asian cities, a few hours drive to your boat.
very light crowds with few boats and no land-based surfers
some spot variety
Overview
A lot of what you don't read about surf spots concerns consistency - are they mysto waves or do they do their thing every day? The spots on Panaitan generally need specific conditions and more-than-background swell. Surfing all day every day is conceivable but unlikely, even if your endurance permits it. Also, all but one spot are exposed to the trade winds that prevail during peak swell season.
No trip to indo is complete without a little reef rash but the spots on Panaitan are pretty much for experienced surfers only. There are plenty of novice-friendly waves in Indo but only one on Panaitan and it's not worth the trouble. Either you are comfortable in the tube or you should head elsewhere.
Here's a breakdown of the spots. I don't think I'm revealing any super secret info here, this stuff is in the world stormrider guide, wannasurf.com, and that other indo surf spot book I reviewed. Some of these spots are called "Inside Left" or "Inside Right" elsewhere.
One Palm Point
This is the main attraction, an absolutely world class machine-like left that reels for hundreds of yards. It produces one of the best lineup photos in the world with 3 waves in the same picture all barreling perfectly. If you watch Second Thoughts, someone at the end of the DVD (Travis Potter I think) gets a 48 (!) second barrel at One Palm, and then gets worked on the reef. You get occasional glimpses of the shallow reef in the DVD, but really only if you're looking for it. The funny thing is that it actually IS really shallow, from start to finish, and you actually will hit the reef very hard most every time you mess up, and sometimes even when you do everything right. The upside is you'll get the longest barrel of your life there, period, end of story. I paddled out with three buddies and our guide in a 3mm fullsuit and Gath Helmet, we had it to ourselves under ideal mid-tide conditions and a swell that was showing shoulder to head high. I got four waves there, pulled in four times and got one ten second tube and four car accident reef beatings. I'm not talking about grazing the reef or scraping my foot or getting a little raspberry on my back, but hard impacts that could cause major joint damage or remove large chunks of skin. I've got One Palm scars on my back even through the wetsuit. On my last wave I was flying down the line in the barrel when, without warning, a completely dry coral head showed up about five feet in front of me. I mean like 4 inches out of the water dry. My board thunked into it, I flew off the front and got rolled hard on the reef like grandma pasting a pie crust with the rolling pin. While getting rolled if I hadn't put my hand in front of my face I probably would have torn the end of my nose off. I was pretty shaken up when I got back on the boat, not tired, not happy to be alive, not in need of a beer, just totally shaken up, like PTSD thousand yard stare mentally shocked. Such an unreal mix of rush, danger, and pain.
One Palm needs a decently big swell and a mid tide, and is the only spot on the island that won't blow out with strong SE trade wind. It's experts-only, and even insane chargers like Timmy Turner wear wetsuits & helmets there for reef protection.
Napalms
Napalms is the photo slut spot on the island. The boats park in the channel looking right into the eye of this reef-pass like left. The wave looks beautiful in photos, and any jerk can get good shots here from the deck of the boat drinking a high-formaldehyde "Anker" beer. The wave barrels from start to finish, and the guys
Perfect wave 2, Indonesia (YouTube video embed)
who have it wired will stall on the outside, pump two or three times through the slower section in the middle, then race through the inside barrel and kick out. At a couple feet overhead the wave slows down and requires some stalling, and at shoulder high or below the inside barrel may not really be makeable.
For lesser riders, blowing the takeoff is forgiven but getting too far back for the inside barrel or failing to kick out can be problematic. You won't necessarily hit the reef when you fall, but if you're not on the last wave in the set, you'll get pushed into knee-deep water on a very uneven and sharp reef with cuts to follow. The reef at Napalms is pretty much dry at low tide, yet the wave won't be breaking much further out. Experts only under those conditions, otherwise advanced with Gath recommended.
Illusions
This right breaks on W wind and can be quite shallow, yet doesn't really get hollow. Pretty fast down the line though. Call it a hotdog wave with consequences.
Apocalypse
This is the too-fast-for-pros Backdoor Pipe lookalike featured in Second Thoughts. Watch Koby Abberton try really hard to make this wave in that DVD. He's pumping, not stalling. If you're reading about surfing on a blog then there is a 99% chance you wouldn't make it either. There's probably a reef down there somewhere but I think the beatings here are more about high speed and heavy water. Like most rights in indo, it needs glass or W in the wind, so don't expect to find it doing it's thing on a July or August afternoon. It's way inside the bay, but has some kind of trench of swell amplification going so probably holds the most size of any spot on the island.
Ted's
Ted's is a fun, hollow-but-forgiving low tide left that picks up more swell than Napalms or One Palm but handles less wind. Glassy or N wind best, but light trades might be OK. Ted's has very makeable left tubes, and despite the visible dry reef on the inside and trying tons of dumb stuff on the outside, I never even touched the bottom here. As you get the wave wired you can take off further and further back, maybe even backdooring the initial peak. The wave ends in a bumpy rip section that conveniently flushes you away from the reef and back towards the lineup. It's really hard to tell what's happening at Ted's from a dinghy or the channel at Napalms, but if it's glassy and low tide it's probably good. I surfed four or five sessions here from shoulder high to overhead and had a hell of lot of fun. We saw some bomb sets come through but the spot doesn't really handle much over 8 ft faces very well, generally closing out. So figure on a 6-7 ft 14-15 sec swell Ted's would probably be maxing. This wave is very photo-unfriendly - our cook took a couple of water shots but given photo-ready spots elsewhere on Panaitan you will probably never see photos of this wave published anywhere.
Pussy's
A long, slow longboard type wave that picks up a lot of swell, handles trades OK and oddly will keep you inside and make you paddle a whole lot for some of the slowest waves in Indo. Low tide might be better but seriously, longboards only. It's a nice place to relax and screw around, especially if you can get the dinghy driver to ferry you back out to the top of the point.
How to get waves
The Camp
This guy who owns a surf camp at Grajagan wanted to start a camp here inside the point at One Palm. He bribed some officials, chopped down some trees, and started to build a surf camp in what was a totally pristine national park, including blowing up reef to build a dock, and hired some indo guys and a crappy boat to hang out there. This camp may or may not be running but the entire industry seems to have coalesced around the idea that the camp is a BAD THING. Nobody is willing to accept advertisements for the camp and their web site doesn't work. I'm not going to buck that trend by posting any info about who owns it or how to book it, if it even still operates. I will say that having been to the island and seen the layout of the spots, a boat big enough to sleep on and prepare food is essential. Being abandoned in the sun for 3 or 4 hours across a three mile wide bay or having to go back to the camp for a meal in the middle of perfect wind or tide conditions would defeat the entire purpose of coming to the island, and also could leave you in a bad spot if you got injured while surfing.
Boat Charters
A boat charter is the way to go and the best option for a boat charter is the Nomad. The Nomad also had one of the cheapest boat charters in indo when we went in 2005, $140/pp/day. Without the need for a long crossing or lots of motoring these charters can be shorter, like 7 or 8 days. The website for the Nomad is www.nomadsurfindonesia.com but the owner Todd is trying to sell his boat/business. He'll be running trips for early season 2007. If you book directly with Todd it will most definitely save you money. He pisses off surf travel agencies that book the Nomad by undercutting their prices but he's the best game in town for West Java so the agencies have to grin and bear it.
The other boat is Just Dreaming but I think it's a notch down from Nomad. It looked smaller and more crowdedand kind of ghetto. It may also be bookable directly on it's website, but Google it to find the URL or check the major online surf travel agencies.
A third boat option is that from time to time boats will transit from Timor area to Sumatra and on their Bali to Southern Sumatra leg they will often stop at Panaitan. Indies Explorer (big white two-masted sailboat) and Indo Jiwa (another 100ft+ sailboat) offer such trips in the early season.
A fourth boat option would be local feral boats. If you really want to do this then perhaps hanging out in west java fishing towns like Anyer or Labuan would be the way to arrange it. This assumes that your time is cheap and your tolerance for hot sun and bare-bones sleeping arrangements is high.
One of the best reasons to take a boat to Panaitan is the chance to go climb Anak Krakatau in lieu of surfing on your last day. It's a unique chance to see the remnants of one of the greatest natural disasters ever and smell the sulfur of an active volcano to boot.
The Locals
There's a hardcore crew of Jakarta expats that will take a boat out to the island for a long weekend when the swell is up. If they are there they will take off deeper and emerge more often than the visitors, thus by default getting the set waves. They have seen their share of drama and visitors but overall are nice guys with a great attitude.
Overall - it's a go.
It's worth going for Napalms and Ted's alone. Panaitan should be a go for early season (late March-May) or late season Oct-Nov. This will give you max odds of good winds combined with good swell. It's a no-go for June-Sept unless you're really focused on scoring One Palm as consistent trade winds will ruin other spots.
The island has some very strong points going for it, but the cons will become apparent below. For now, here are the pros:
Easy transportation logistics - fly to Jakarta with nonstops from most Asian cities, a few hours drive to your boat.
very light crowds with few boats and no land-based surfers
some spot variety
Overview
A lot of what you don't read about surf spots concerns consistency - are they mysto waves or do they do their thing every day? The spots on Panaitan generally need specific conditions and more-than-background swell. Surfing all day every day is conceivable but unlikely, even if your endurance permits it. Also, all but one spot are exposed to the trade winds that prevail during peak swell season.
No trip to indo is complete without a little reef rash but the spots on Panaitan are pretty much for experienced surfers only. There are plenty of novice-friendly waves in Indo but only one on Panaitan and it's not worth the trouble. Either you are comfortable in the tube or you should head elsewhere.
Here's a breakdown of the spots. I don't think I'm revealing any super secret info here, this stuff is in the world stormrider guide, wannasurf.com, and that other indo surf spot book I reviewed. Some of these spots are called "Inside Left" or "Inside Right" elsewhere.
One Palm Point
This is the main attraction, an absolutely world class machine-like left that reels for hundreds of yards. It produces one of the best lineup photos in the world with 3 waves in the same picture all barreling perfectly. If you watch Second Thoughts, someone at the end of the DVD (Travis Potter I think) gets a 48 (!) second barrel at One Palm, and then gets worked on the reef. You get occasional glimpses of the shallow reef in the DVD, but really only if you're looking for it. The funny thing is that it actually IS really shallow, from start to finish, and you actually will hit the reef very hard most every time you mess up, and sometimes even when you do everything right. The upside is you'll get the longest barrel of your life there, period, end of story. I paddled out with three buddies and our guide in a 3mm fullsuit and Gath Helmet, we had it to ourselves under ideal mid-tide conditions and a swell that was showing shoulder to head high. I got four waves there, pulled in four times and got one ten second tube and four car accident reef beatings. I'm not talking about grazing the reef or scraping my foot or getting a little raspberry on my back, but hard impacts that could cause major joint damage or remove large chunks of skin. I've got One Palm scars on my back even through the wetsuit. On my last wave I was flying down the line in the barrel when, without warning, a completely dry coral head showed up about five feet in front of me. I mean like 4 inches out of the water dry. My board thunked into it, I flew off the front and got rolled hard on the reef like grandma pasting a pie crust with the rolling pin. While getting rolled if I hadn't put my hand in front of my face I probably would have torn the end of my nose off. I was pretty shaken up when I got back on the boat, not tired, not happy to be alive, not in need of a beer, just totally shaken up, like PTSD thousand yard stare mentally shocked. Such an unreal mix of rush, danger, and pain.
One Palm needs a decently big swell and a mid tide, and is the only spot on the island that won't blow out with strong SE trade wind. It's experts-only, and even insane chargers like Timmy Turner wear wetsuits & helmets there for reef protection.
Napalms
Napalms is the photo slut spot on the island. The boats park in the channel looking right into the eye of this reef-pass like left. The wave looks beautiful in photos, and any jerk can get good shots here from the deck of the boat drinking a high-formaldehyde "Anker" beer. The wave barrels from start to finish, and the guys
Perfect wave 2, Indonesia (YouTube video embed)
who have it wired will stall on the outside, pump two or three times through the slower section in the middle, then race through the inside barrel and kick out. At a couple feet overhead the wave slows down and requires some stalling, and at shoulder high or below the inside barrel may not really be makeable.
For lesser riders, blowing the takeoff is forgiven but getting too far back for the inside barrel or failing to kick out can be problematic. You won't necessarily hit the reef when you fall, but if you're not on the last wave in the set, you'll get pushed into knee-deep water on a very uneven and sharp reef with cuts to follow. The reef at Napalms is pretty much dry at low tide, yet the wave won't be breaking much further out. Experts only under those conditions, otherwise advanced with Gath recommended.
Illusions
This right breaks on W wind and can be quite shallow, yet doesn't really get hollow. Pretty fast down the line though. Call it a hotdog wave with consequences.
Apocalypse
This is the too-fast-for-pros Backdoor Pipe lookalike featured in Second Thoughts. Watch Koby Abberton try really hard to make this wave in that DVD. He's pumping, not stalling. If you're reading about surfing on a blog then there is a 99% chance you wouldn't make it either. There's probably a reef down there somewhere but I think the beatings here are more about high speed and heavy water. Like most rights in indo, it needs glass or W in the wind, so don't expect to find it doing it's thing on a July or August afternoon. It's way inside the bay, but has some kind of trench of swell amplification going so probably holds the most size of any spot on the island.
Ted's
Ted's is a fun, hollow-but-forgiving low tide left that picks up more swell than Napalms or One Palm but handles less wind. Glassy or N wind best, but light trades might be OK. Ted's has very makeable left tubes, and despite the visible dry reef on the inside and trying tons of dumb stuff on the outside, I never even touched the bottom here. As you get the wave wired you can take off further and further back, maybe even backdooring the initial peak. The wave ends in a bumpy rip section that conveniently flushes you away from the reef and back towards the lineup. It's really hard to tell what's happening at Ted's from a dinghy or the channel at Napalms, but if it's glassy and low tide it's probably good. I surfed four or five sessions here from shoulder high to overhead and had a hell of lot of fun. We saw some bomb sets come through but the spot doesn't really handle much over 8 ft faces very well, generally closing out. So figure on a 6-7 ft 14-15 sec swell Ted's would probably be maxing. This wave is very photo-unfriendly - our cook took a couple of water shots but given photo-ready spots elsewhere on Panaitan you will probably never see photos of this wave published anywhere.
Pussy's
A long, slow longboard type wave that picks up a lot of swell, handles trades OK and oddly will keep you inside and make you paddle a whole lot for some of the slowest waves in Indo. Low tide might be better but seriously, longboards only. It's a nice place to relax and screw around, especially if you can get the dinghy driver to ferry you back out to the top of the point.
How to get waves
The Camp
This guy who owns a surf camp at Grajagan wanted to start a camp here inside the point at One Palm. He bribed some officials, chopped down some trees, and started to build a surf camp in what was a totally pristine national park, including blowing up reef to build a dock, and hired some indo guys and a crappy boat to hang out there. This camp may or may not be running but the entire industry seems to have coalesced around the idea that the camp is a BAD THING. Nobody is willing to accept advertisements for the camp and their web site doesn't work. I'm not going to buck that trend by posting any info about who owns it or how to book it, if it even still operates. I will say that having been to the island and seen the layout of the spots, a boat big enough to sleep on and prepare food is essential. Being abandoned in the sun for 3 or 4 hours across a three mile wide bay or having to go back to the camp for a meal in the middle of perfect wind or tide conditions would defeat the entire purpose of coming to the island, and also could leave you in a bad spot if you got injured while surfing.
Boat Charters
A boat charter is the way to go and the best option for a boat charter is the Nomad. The Nomad also had one of the cheapest boat charters in indo when we went in 2005, $140/pp/day. Without the need for a long crossing or lots of motoring these charters can be shorter, like 7 or 8 days. The website for the Nomad is www.nomadsurfindonesia.com but the owner Todd is trying to sell his boat/business. He'll be running trips for early season 2007. If you book directly with Todd it will most definitely save you money. He pisses off surf travel agencies that book the Nomad by undercutting their prices but he's the best game in town for West Java so the agencies have to grin and bear it.
The other boat is Just Dreaming but I think it's a notch down from Nomad. It looked smaller and more crowdedand kind of ghetto. It may also be bookable directly on it's website, but Google it to find the URL or check the major online surf travel agencies.
A third boat option is that from time to time boats will transit from Timor area to Sumatra and on their Bali to Southern Sumatra leg they will often stop at Panaitan. Indies Explorer (big white two-masted sailboat) and Indo Jiwa (another 100ft+ sailboat) offer such trips in the early season.
A fourth boat option would be local feral boats. If you really want to do this then perhaps hanging out in west java fishing towns like Anyer or Labuan would be the way to arrange it. This assumes that your time is cheap and your tolerance for hot sun and bare-bones sleeping arrangements is high.
One of the best reasons to take a boat to Panaitan is the chance to go climb Anak Krakatau in lieu of surfing on your last day. It's a unique chance to see the remnants of one of the greatest natural disasters ever and smell the sulfur of an active volcano to boot.
The Locals
There's a hardcore crew of Jakarta expats that will take a boat out to the island for a long weekend when the swell is up. If they are there they will take off deeper and emerge more often than the visitors, thus by default getting the set waves. They have seen their share of drama and visitors but overall are nice guys with a great attitude.
Overall - it's a go.
It's worth going for Napalms and Ted's alone. Panaitan should be a go for early season (late March-May) or late season Oct-Nov. This will give you max odds of good winds combined with good swell. It's a no-go for June-Sept unless you're really focused on scoring One Palm as consistent trade winds will ruin other spots.
Labels: apocalypse, indonesia, jakarta, sin, singapore, surfing, travel, waves
posted by Bill Kotzman at
6:31 PM
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