Perancak is a village that has more than 10 hectares mangrove forest. There is a spot in the mangrove forest developed into trekking area. People could experienced walking on a bridge throughout the forest. This was the place I went to on my motorcycle one afternoon.
When I got on the road to the mangrove forest, I noticed there was nobody around. There was the ticket post by the road where people buy entrance ticket to the mangrove forest walk but there was nobody either there.
I saw a wooden bamboo gate at the start of the bridge. It was locked.
I peeked from above the bamboo gate. The wooden bridge across the gate seemed to be a pleasant route to walk. It looked deserted because leaves from the mangrove trees were scattered on the bridge.
So, there was no way I could pass the gate, I left the place.
Being by the sea, Perancak village has about 4 kilometers long beach. This was another option for me to go that day. I decided to find an access toward the Perancak beach.
Riding for about 7 minutes, from the main road, I entered a small alley which I thought it was going to lead me to the beach.
Arriving in the beach, I parked my motor cycle, ready for a beach walk.
It seemed to be a good idea to walk to the beach since I could not do my mangrove forest walk. Hmmm, but I could also ride on the sand. There were some motor cycle tire prints on the sand.
Then I took my motor cycle and ride it along the sandy beach. It was slippery to ride, since I was not used to, or my motorcycle is not designed to ride on this type of ground. Well, it was part of the adventure.
At a distance, I saw some sailboats by the sea. In fact, the sailboats were very close to the beach. I thought it was only in the middle of the sea, or at least not by the beach.
I rode closer to the sailboats. It was then apparent that these were only
small sailboats. They were toys. But some serious toys, since it was played by adults.
Two men were standing by the sea looking at the sailboats. I politely asked them if this was a race. Their excitement was clearly shown as they explained to me. This is merely for fun, but some times they had race between friends.
What's the prize of the race? I asked. There was no prize. They were happy when they could play with their little sailboats. Lately, however, there was a guy with camera who took video of them. He took initiative of providing prize for the race. He must have been a youtuber or content creator like me.
They wanted this race to be known to the island that many people will be interested in developing this unique "sport."
There was another guy who just came with another small sailboat. He squatted by the beach and assembled his little boats.
"Why did you just came?" he asked me while tying the sail of its sailboat. He must have thought I was the camera person that took their video before. I replied, I did not know.
On the mean time, the other sailboats were ready to race. They had taken their stance at the starting point. Each sailboat was held by one person. At the finish point, other people were also ready to catch the incoming boats. Otherwise, those unmanned boats will crashed into each other or to the sand.
The sailboats, to my surprise, moved very fast against the wind breeze. The sailboats use the same principle as the real sailboat. The main difference is that this sailboat only have one sail.
There is one problem though. As they move forward, after some time, these sailboats will turn left. Because of how the sail works, they could not sail straight.
In the real sailboats, the boat men would manipulate the second sail to keep the boat move straight. In this little boat, the people put a big outrigger in one side of the sailboat to prevent them from turning.
"It's much harder to control," explained the man by the beach. "In a real sailboats, there are boatmen who control the sails. In this boat, there were no men." He smiled. "So, we had to test them a lot on the water."
I said thank you to them for explaining about the sailboat and took my leave. They said there are a race every Sunday afternoon. And there would a lot more sailboats coming. They invited me to come again to take video and photos to make this sport well-known. That sounded fun!
I continued riding my motorcycle a little bit more along the beach. All there was black sand, coconut trees, and fisherman boats parked by the beach. I can say the most exciting thing I saw that day was the small sailboats race.