Today's photo, Log Jam, illustrates why the Batang Baram riverboats carried spare propellers.
Obviously one of the industries in the jungle is hardwood logging. Since there are no roads, the logs are corralled down the rivers. After the trees are cut, they are trimmed on site and dragged by machine to the river bank. When they have enough they rope them together and float them downstream.
This is all well and good until a log escapes. You might not be able to see it in the image below, but at 100% you can see there is a cable that runs down the outside of both sides of the log raft. Dead center of the photo there are two men in a small boat trying to push a log that has slipped outside the cable back into the raft.
In addition to losing cut lumber like this, nature also plays a role with storms felling dead trees that also float down-river. Then add the constantly shifting sand bars as the upland rivers scour away the mud and rock and send tons of sediment down stream and there's a wealth of hazards to run into.
The boat trip takes about three hours so travel at about 20 miles per hour. While that might seem slow, it's pretty fast in a river boat and there's not a lot of time nor space to take evasive action when you spot a log floating down-river, and no time at all if it's gained neutral buoyancy and is floating just below the surface. With the sediment load at this stage of the river, it's impossible to see anything below the surface.
Thankfully we didn't hit any submerged hazards and the trip to Marudi was as unremarkable. The interior of the riverboat was like an aircraft of the day – two seats abreast each side of a center aisle with overhead TVs every few seat rows. The TVs only seemed capable of displaying kung-fu movies.
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