Today is Sunday, Tim’s last day in Malaysia. We decided to take the boat out, and possibly visit a posh looking resort about 2 hours sail away. After a few phone calls I spoke to someone in the resort who would let us use their berth there for a few hours, but it was quite a complicated setup and I wasn’t sure if it would work out in reality. Anyway we set off, Tim took us out of the marina and we headed north to look at the two big boatyards there as I had heard one was very good for yachts and was curious. We passed a fishing village, mostly on stilts, then past the boatyards. Soon the wind picked up from almost nothing to a good 10 – 15 knots, this was my cue to get the mainsail and geneo up. The wind was caused by squalls passing by, we could hear advancing thunder and I wondered how big the squalls might be, I wasn’t bothered as they rarely last more than an hour or two, and this boat can take a much bigger hammering.
Once we got the hang of sailing this big heavy beast, we found it was quite fast in just 10-15 knots, however the squalls approached bringing rain and much bigger gusts. At one point there was a rapid wind shift which left the genoa backed and trapped on the staysail stay. I had to start the engine to help recover that situation. I was able to bear off and run before the high winds and we made great speed towards the resort. When we got there it looked full, and rather shallow (in more than one way) so we motored around, took some pics of old boats (below) then headed back to the island south of the resort where we dropped anchor for lunch and a swim. Most of the islands around here are full of dense tropical rainforest vegetation. Look at the picture to the left to get an idea, this was the shore by where we anchored.
Tim had a swim and I checked out under the hull while swimming around the boat.
Will write more tomorrow as it’s nearly 2AM here now
Paul C.
Sadly this huge tuna or maybe even shark, got away
