Author: paulcollister

We left Tioman on Friday afternoon, leaving a bit late so that we would be crossing the main part of the route away from land at night. That way when we arrive at the Anambas islands we would be in daylight, there’s much more chance of running down a poorly lit little fishing boat near the coast than offshore. So I was happy to take on the big ships in the dark. Most of them have AIS and proper lights, we were going to be passing through some major shipping routes, as the ships hang a left from Singapore and head up towards Bangkok, Vietnam, China, hong Kong etc, they will be passing in front of us, and of course those returning on that route. The wind was from the SE and blowing a healthy 15 knots, so with all the sails up, and one reef in the main, we shot along, keeping the diesel for another day.
I put a quick post on the boat’s facebook page as we left to jokingly say that, unless we had pirate trouble, it should be a good journey. Just after we left Tioman, I checked the Navtex messages, this is like SMS for sailors, but sent from national governments, we have a special receiver, and it produces telex/teletype displays of brief messages, things like weather, or navigational warnings. I wasn’t to pleased to see the one that said their had just been a armed pirate attack, on our route, we would be passing over that spot about 2AM, the attack had happened a few nights earlier at 11PM, nice.
So we went into stealth mode, AIS Transmitter was turned off, so nobody could see us on that system, I also turned off the NAV lights when there was no shipping around. I kept in touch with SY Matilda and informed them of my new found knowledge, and they also turned off their AIS. I put the radar on so I could keep a good lookout. Matilda informed me that as they were motoring along, a tug, towing a barge, which was invisible, suddenly turned on their lights and AIS transmitter, they must have been in stealth mode too, as once Matilda had passed them, their AIS and lights went off. It’s just a bit worrying, that in a busy shipping lane, we are all turning off our lights and hiding from each other, this can only end badly. As it turned out, the sun rose, we put the AIS back on and sailed into a lovely cove in the western islands of Anambas, to rest for a night before proceeding to the main town of Tarampa on the central group of islands. I mentioned the pirate thing to Kathy then, as there didnt seem much point in worrying her en-route. It had been a great sail, and even though we were close hauled all the way, the boat had sliced through the waves with a very soothing motion, we were making between 6 and 7 knots over water, most of the time, sometimes more.
The cove we anchored in on the island of Jamandja, was just by a small island on the NE called Ayam, it was an idyllic spot, very well protected and we anchored inbetween reefs in 5m of sand.

 

 

I had a snorkel in very clear water and on returning to the boat was slightly startled to meet this chappy feeding on the hull, he’s much bigger close up, maybe 3ft. Later Kathy amused herself feeding him potato peelings, which he (or she) seemed to love.When we left, we headed straight out, and without thinking it through very well, straight into one of the reefs we had carefully manoeuvred around on the way in. Fortunately we were going so slow, we were able to stop and reverse out before we did any damage. From there we had a brisk reach across to the capital, 30 miles, in about 5 hours, again stockpiling the diesel.

Terempa, or Tarampa, is the administrative town of the Anambas island group, a large part of it is built on stilts, it’s very Muslim, and it’s our first time in Indonesia, so we are keen to explore and see how things work here. Arriving in the afternoon on a Sunday, we decided to stay on board and go into town and do the formalities on Monday morning. We raised the Q (Quarantine) flag, which is a yellow flag, to let them know we are clean and waiting clearance. We motored around the harbour, which is very busy, some very large ships here, looking for somewhere to anchor.

Anchoring was fun, The island drops into the sea quickly, but there is a very shallow ledge of coral first, just a meter or two down, next to the shore, coming out some distance, after that it drops to between 10 and fifteen metres quickly, were the sea bed is strewn with rocks, then it goes to 25 mtrs and deeper very quickly. Our first attempt in what looked like sand, was on rocks, and we decided to move, the rocks tried to cling to my anchor, but I was able to motor forward and the anchor came free.

Next attempt was in the corner of the harbour, very close to the quay in 15m, but when we dropped back on the anchor we were close to another boat, so up came the anchor again, I was not to bothered, as that area is though to be ‘Foul’ or strewn with debris the anchor can get stuck in. So now after an hour of pratting around, with the sun keen to push on to the Atlantic area,  we headed back to the deep water. We dropped the hook outside the other anchored yachts in 25 metres of water and by the time the anchor dug in, and with me putting out 60m of chain and 10 m of rope, we had backed down onto a catamaran, just a couple of boat lengths away. Normal boat etiquette would require me to move, but the owner came up, and despite we were almost close enough to shake hands, he assured me that he was happy with the gap, and saw no problems. As long as our anchor stays put overnight, we won’t be joining him for breakfast!.

Monday morning, and we dinghied ashore, we copied the other boats, a bad move as I have found that’s what other boats do, and often there is mass cockups because of the first boats decision. Apparently there is a much better place to tie up to, we will check it out tomorrow, However this one was fun, it was on a wall, with a rickety matrix of sticks tied together to make a climbing frame, to get from the dinghy to a long narrow wall, vertigo inducing or what. At the end was a gangplank arrangement to get ashore. Hat’s off to Kathy for taking that in her stride.

We went straight to Immigration, then the Harbour master, then Customs and finally Quarantine, who weren’t in. Everything done, but we have to wait for customs to come to the boat in the morning and search us for anything dodgy, like Coldplay albums, or anything from the 80’s. 😉

First impressions of Indonesia are very good, the people here are the friendliest we have met so far in SE Asia, everybody wants to say hello, the authorities have gone out of there way to help me check in, despite the fact I was missing mandatory documents. I think I’m going to like it here

Checked in, we had a wander, this town is very water based, a network of canals make up the main area, running between all the stilted buildings.

We found a good range of small shops, some white bread, plenty of fruit and veg, lots of hardware stores, shame I don’t need any, although yesterday, the anchor foot switch got so faulty, I replaced it with two bared wires sticking out through the deck. Does anyone know how wires switching a 12v solenoid can give such a kick, I expect it’s back EMF from the coil of the solenoid, but that was a surprise 🙁 . I don’t expect they have much call for that sort of switch out here. I’m kicking myself for not buying a spare when I saw them on a shelf back in Phuket. I knew then the switch was dicky.
Tonight we will stay on the boat, we had a chunky squall blow through this afternoon, 20-25 knots pushing us towards the Catamaran, but we didn’t budge, my transits are solid, however it feels like we got too close. I have decided to buy 150m of anchor warp to add to my anchoring arsenal, and also investigate anchoring on rock, the locals do it all the time with their fishermen hook style anchors, often flimsy things made out of rebar.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) after getting customs clearance, we will pop ashore, buy up a load of food and head off to explore the islands here. Again wifi may be sparse, we picked up a local SIM that gives us 40gb for 60Days, for about £4, but it’s finding coverage that will be the challenge.  I got out 1.2 Million Rupiah from the ATM today, but with a bag of tomatoes costing 10,000 Rupiah (60p) it wont go far!

Paul Collister

 

 

 

 

 

Well I was offered a few days of programming work last week and it’s going to pay for the new batteries and solar panels, so I decided we could put up with a few more days looking out onto tropical rainforests and cooling down with dips in the sea. However the internet has been a pain and I ended up struggling to deliver and test the work. I’m mostly writing Database code using a language known as SQL, it’s very powerful, but very complicated and ‘does your head in’ sometimes on the complicated multi joined table queries. Still that’s complete so we can look at moving on. But first the repairs must be done.

One of the stanchions snapped off a few days ago, that’s repaired now, the stanchion was fine, it was the bolts holding it to the deck which had bad crevice corrosion and had all snapped off at deck level. We had been chilling on the boat when a ferocious squall blew in, it really went from idyllic sunny calm, to storm in about 2 minutes. I felt the boat lurch, then the wind was howling. I learnt a lot then. Firstly the canopy was trying to escape, and the wind was so strong the knots I tied it down with couldn’t be undone easily and I had to take a knife to some of them, as the rope was so taut, the clove hitches on the guardrail couldn’t be loosened. The dinghy, which was suspended by a halyard so it was out of the water and level with the cap rail was trying to flip over, it also still had the outboard on it so I was worried about that.I lowered the dinghy into the sea, which by now, just a few minutes after the squall started, was quite choppy. I temporarily tied the dinghy painter to a stanchion while I freed up another rope that was attached to it. A big wave hit the dinghy and it lurched, Kathy then spotted the stanchion had been ripped out of the deck. In a way I’m glad, nobody was hurt, but it could have been different if the stanchion had failed while we were making passage and I was working on the foredeck. The reason it failed was lack of sealant under the stanchion base, allowing water to get into the bolt thread  and being trapped there without any oxygen. In these conditions, crevice corrosion is guaranteed and will attack the best  stainless steel.  I suspect it was clamped down too tightly when fitting, it’s good now I have repaired it and I would hope for ten years at least, however, there’s another 15 stanchion bases, all need checking, and probably re-bedding, what fun! During this excitement our anchor was dragging, it moved about 80ft towards the shore, I suspect it stopped when we reached the edge of the coral reef, as it was quite difficult to haul out a few days later when we moved to a free mooring buoy that had just been laid by the harbour master. Also we were being called on the emergency channel 16 on VHF by a neighbour who had gone to rescue a boat that was dragging badly and heading for the shore. It had just arrived and the owners had gone ashore to checkin with the harbour master. He was great and had his motor launch out running around the yachts making sure everyone was ok. He helped get the dragging yacht onto a fixed mooring.

I rigged up the spinnaker pole just before the squall to try to work out how I could use it on a rolling foredeck, given its size and weight. I rigged up a halyard as an up-haul and proceeded to haul it up horizontal, I could get the headsail sheet into the hook at the end ok, and lowered the up-haul, then I tried to haul it up again and there was a mighty cracking sound followed by a spinnaker pole flying around trying to knock me over the side. It would appear that the bracket on the mast it was attached to wasn’t a good match and somehow the pole’s hook must have lodged itself under the hoop on the bracket and when I hauled up the pole to horizontal, it was acting like a giant lever on the bracket, which shattered. They’re not cheap either. So I’m trying to fabricate something I can use in the meantime.

A few nights ago we braved the monkeys on the main (only) road here to walk to the next village, we had a drink in a lovely beach bar, that was deserted, just amazing how quiet these places are considering how stunning the views are.Tonight we came across a few hundred bats hanging around in a tree.

The picture below was taken over in Juara on the east side, this is where a river meets the beach.

And here is the jetty in Juara where we found a tap at the end to fill our water bottles.

I need to fix the spinnaker pole tomorrow, then we can get some provisions and leave. Probably Thursday, as our new antipodean friends in the yacht Matilda are leaving then, having checked out the weather forecast.

There may be little or no internet in the Anambas islands, so we may not be posting a lot while we are there. but I hope that after a couple of weeks we will be back in Malaysia, albeit on the island of Borneo, in Sarawak, where I’m sure we will get good wifi again.

 

Paul Collister

We have just arrived at the small village called Juara on the East coast of Tioman. this is after spending a very relaxing few days over in a lovely cove on Pula Tulai, just a few miles NW of Tioman.

You can see we went round to the NW of the island and snook into a small cove where we found a few other boats and a free mooring, usually used by dive boats, the mooring was a mass of ropes heading down 20 metres to coral rocks we couldn’t quite see. We tied up to this and chilled for a few days, it’s very safe there as long as the wind doesn’t blow from the NW, where it can get dangerous. Internet was very flakey there, in fact most of the time there wasn’t even a mobile signal. The signal isn’t much better now we have moved over to the main island of Tioman. So I can’t upload too many pictures, but I did take some great shots, and the underwater footage around the fringing reefs in the bay are great.

Telok Juara, where we are now anchored in sand in 8 metres looks lovely. We will dinghy ashore later to see if we can find any shops and somewhere to eat tonight, failing on that, it’s back to the boat for cheese butties (again).

Below is a local fishing boat that came in Tekek just before we left on Friday, it arrived with a lot of other fishing boats, just as the wind started to pipe up from the north. The wind is normally from the south here, so I wondered if they had knowledge of a storm coming in from the north. I postponed leaving for a bit to see what the wind did, however after lunch, the fishermen were all washing themselves down before donning their Sunday best, or in this case, Friday best, then a dinghy came and took them all ashore. I’m sure this was for Friday prayers, as they all arrived back in a few hours, changed into t-shirts and shorts and headed out back to sea.

Some coral from our anchorage in Tekek

Below, our anchorage in Pulau Tulai, The mooring you can see was just behind us, and three dive boats arrived and all rafted up on this mooring.

The boat nearest to me comprised of about 20 young Chinese women learning scuba dive,

 

Kathy seemed to like it here and came swimming on the lovely calm beach

Technically I am struggling with the boat, we don’t have enough power and we are reaching the end of the day with our batteries getting quite low on voltage. Consequently we have had to run the engine in the morning to get some power back. Especially if the day has a few overcast hours. I don’t know the history of the batteries, and as they are sealed I can’t test their electrolyte state, I think they were bought in Malaysia a few years ago, so will be of suspect quality. Then the Solar panels are very old, and one has a cracked glass panel and only produces 50% of its rated output, the solar regulator is quite old too, not the modern MPCC type. On top of that the LINK battery monitor, that tells me the state of charge, current in and out , and voltage, is flakey. It might be better when calibrated, but I thought I did that. Also I fitted the new blade to the wind turbine and it was way out of balance, not sure why, but I really should have bought two, so I could balance it better. So now I’m running with 4 blades, not six, and the wind gen doesn’t have a regulator as it was designed to, so I don’t really know what it’s contributing. Finally, the most I can get from the engine alternator is 20A, given that the invoice the PO had for the engine included a 60A alternator upgrade, I’m a bit confused. I think that may not have been fitted and has since grown legs.
Basically I need to review whole power system, replace the solar panels, controller, and maybe the batteries. I will also see about getting an alternator upgrade.
We are also getting low on water, and the only way to get any out here is to lug it in jerry cans, which we only have one of. We are currently going to a tap on the town and filling 5ltr bottles.

We will have a couple of nights here, then back to Tekek to check out of Malaysia and sail over to the Anambas Islands in Indonesia. We will be there for a few weeks I expect, and probably have very poor internet, so don’t be surprised if you don’t here from us for several days on end.

Paul Collister

 

 

 

Had a lazy day today, I did a few basic chores around the boat, and tomorrow will be the same. The outboard is very sluggish now, feels like the petrol is stale, but it’s only 3-4 months old? I’m all tooled up to give it a service, so hopefully we can be back to razzing around shortly.

The anchor is still holding, but it wasn’t tested much today, and tonight it is so calm, I keep forgetting we are even at sea. Last night a big tug boat came in and tied to the jetty we are anchored off. It looked disused, so I didn’t expect any visitors, he stayed for 24 hours and popped off again.

Once the sun died down a bit we went ashore for dinner and a wander.

I snapped this picture of the Sister on our way in, the ominous looking clouds behind never amounted to much, but they do make the hull look whiter than she actually is.

It’s usual to find concrete roads here, Tarmac wouldn’t last as well and would cost more in upkeep.

Above is genuine tropical rainforest , below is genuine tropical monkey

Tropical Kathy, on the beach with a lot of electrical cable, entangled with fishing nets. I expect there is a story there.

Dinner, with a very nice view. And a cat wondering if we left any for him/her.

 

Paul Collister

We had a lively trip up to Tioman from Tinggi, we started with the headsail and a full main, and we were making a nice 5 knots in about 10 knots of wind on a full run (wind directly behind us). I turned off onto a broad reach after a while as the wind dropped and the headsail kept collapsing. This point of sail meant we were about 20 deg off course, but we could jibe half way and reach on the other side, we go faster this way anyway, and it all works out much the same. I have a spinnaker pole which I could put out onto the headsail to help it when we are running, but I don’t know how it works on this boat yet. It’s something I must investigate, but frankly, it’s a little intimidating, the one on the baba was big, and I could manhandle it out onto the sails myself, but this one is another 50% all round, it’s going to have to be hoisted, probably with a winch, and needs to be steadied in several directions, for/aft, up/down. It’s a job I have set for this week. Charts of our route are below.

Not long after the wind calmed, a squall came through, we quickly dropped the main and rolled up half the headsail, this was enough to push us along at 6 knots towards our destination as the squall passed through us, it came from the west, whereas the prevailing wind had been southerly for the last few days, this meant that after an hour we had big waves rolling in from the side combining with smaller ones from behind. This made the next few hours quite ‘rock and roll’.

I hooked up the wind steering, conscious that we weren’t getting any charge from the engine and the autopilot can use a lot of power. Also I need to have confidence in this particular piece of kit. It worked very well and sailed the boat nicely for a couple of hours.
About 3 miles before Tioman, the wind dropped right off and we motored the last bit in quite a rolly sea into Tekek Harbour, the main port on the island.  We anchored in 18m of water, with about 80m of rope and chain, always a worry for me, I had a swim and I think we are outside of the coral, the anchor seemed to set well.

Tuesday morning and the anchor held, but then it was a very calm night. We headed into the port to check in with the harbour master and customs. Then a walk around town. There’s not a lot here, a few basic shops, a couple of duty free stores, as this is a duty free island.

The most amazing thing is that it has an Airport, 

For such a small island, the land rises quickly into rocky hills covered in trees. It must be quite a thrill flying into here.

Managed to spot a couple of project boats in the harbour here.

Back on the boat and another squall came through, when I went up to have a look, there was another boat about 20ft in front of me, close enough to chat to the skipper, he had just moved because the boat by him was dragging its anchor, and he had miscalculated where my anchor was and had laid his over mine, he moved even closer, then decided to head off and try again. All the time I was trying to work out if we were dragging our anchor. I think we are in sand, and that’s not great for anchors, mud is the best. I let out another ten metres of rode, so now we had 90 metres, but when you have 90m or about 300ft, you have a swinging circle with a 600ft diameter (ish), thats a large area, and these boats point one way, and can pull on the chain in another. The upshot is I spend a lot of time wondering what is going on. Since we dragged in Ko Lipe with 100m out, I’m very wary. As I write this the wind has dropped, and we have moved from some distance out to sea, back to where we started yesterday, so I think we are holding fine.

Paul Collister

Quite horrible, a swarm of Flying Soldier Insects, Termites I suspect, left land in their hundreds, if not thousands and landed on our boat. They shed their wings then tried to take over, it was horrible, some of them were quite big. Most of them died on the deck, a few dozen wished they had kept their wings on as they couldn’t get out of the cockpit well, I suspect some found their way inside and went searching for some wood to munch on and make a new home in. This was on Friday evening as we were anchored in Johor Strait, off from a forest/jungle section. I spent the next morning spraying all the non teak wooden surfaces with a borax solution, which should see them off fairly quickly. I’m not going through the new bowsprit route again. I’m pretty confident we wont have any problems though.
We had left the boatyard that morning, and I took these pictures from the boat as we were craned to our launching spot.

From our anchorage a few hours from the boatyard, we headed off early on Saturday morning to put some distance between us and Singapore, and all the heavy shipping that goes with it. It was busy, but we were able to keep out of the shipping lanes and stay inshore, except inshore has mostly become new docks and oil/gas terminals now, and the charts, even though they are up to date in chart terms, they are out of date in reality. It took about 8 hours to reach Jason Bay, a quiet anchorage just up the eastern side of the Malaysian peninsular. We took these pictures along the way.

 

These jack up platforms are everywhere

We weaved our way through lots of tankers like this anchored along the coast.

The predicted wind didn’t materialise, except for a mini storm in the afternoon. It was mostly overcast and cool, which suited me. Jason bay had nothing special about it, it was just a way to break up the journey to Tioman, however it did provide us with another attack from the shore, this time smaller flying ants, they looked like little flies. They managed to fill the cabin while we had dinner. I had anchored a long way off shore in the hope nothing would get to us. By this morning, the ones I hadn’t killed had left of their own accord. I’m hopeful tonight will be bug free, but you do have to accept in this climate, when so close to jungle lined coast, there are going to be lots of living things wanting to join you.

So today we had a little Sunday morning lie in before heading North towards Tioman, we had a few options but settled on a protected area on the southern coast of Pulau Tinggi, The wind had been from the North yesterday and overnight, so I figured we would be safe there from any swell that might have built.
We had only just motored out of Jason Bay, past a dangerous reef, when the wind piped up from the SSE, which was great for us, it put the wind behind us, even though there was only about 10 knots, it pushed us along between 4 and 5 knots towards our goal. The engine went off and we sailed all the way to Tinggi. however the steady southerly built and by the time we reached Tinggi, the waves were getting big, we cut around inside the reef, Kathy Tried to drive us through the reef, and I had to point out that wouldn’t work, and a sharp left was made. Once behind the reef it was calmer but not that calm, especially if the wind increased, so we went for my fallback plan, which was a little cove on the north side of the island. Just 40 minutes motor away. Just as we decided that, a squall blew in causing a lot of wind, big waves and poor visibility,
We got soaked, and I just managed to get the electronics (iThings) hidden away before they got wrecked.

There are a lot of little islands, sixty or so, within 30 miles of Tioman Island, I think they are volcanic, but they all make up a national park, the waters are very clear here, there are lots of coral areas, protected by the state, and great snorkeling. So you have to be careful and not anchor on the reefs. I had the GPS co-ordinates of a sandy spot just on the north, were we were heading to, we arrived in this massive downpour, and found the area a bit deep, so we moved just a little further along and quickly dropped the hook in 7 meters of water. The chart had this as being out from the coral also. It didn’t land in sand, and as we reversed on it, I could feel the anchor bouncing by keeping a foot on the chain as we backed up. Not good I thought and hoped we would be onto sand any moment, pretty quickly the anchor seemed to dig in and we were set. However back in the cabin sheltering from the heavy rain, we could hear and feel vibration from the chain. I went up on deck, grabbed my snorkel and dived to look at the chain. What I saw shocked me, we were in fact over a lot of coral, not much sand in sight, and the anchor chain was wrapped around a few coral heads, whilst beautiful tropical fish swam all around.  I made a mental note of the convoluted path our chain took through the coral and went back up to the boat to try and get us out, without doing any more damage. It took a while of gently pulling on the chain and nudging the boat beyond some of the heads but we did it. I’m going to be a lot more careful from now on. I then went back to the original co-ordinates for the sandy bit and went offshore from there by about 50 metres until we were in 12 metres of water. I dived, and couldn’t see any coral, just a sandy bottom, so we dropped the hook, no vibrations this time, and it set well.

Tomorrow I want to dinghy over to some of the reefs here and have a proper snorkel.

All in all everything is going well, the Cutless bearing seems to be fine, I suspect the engine alignment might be improved on, as there is a little bit too much vibration when I run the engine flat out at 3000RPM, which is not something I would normally ever do anyway.

Tomorrow we will probably head to Tioman where we will explore the island and neighbouring area for a week or so.

Paul Collister

 

 

We have launched and we’re on our way to Pulau Tioman, an island on the Eastern side of the main Malaysian Peninsula, the location for the filming of South Pacific, even though it’s in the North Pacific.

So due to the holiday, and nothing happening on the boat, we popped into Johor Bahru town, I was keen to do a bit of cultural stuff, some Sultan, back in the day, built a lot of amazing buildings and we were keen to explore the main museum, which was meant to be amazing, but finding it was difficult, even the taxi drivers didn’t know where it was, asking them for the cultural sights would elicit the usual ‘No have any‘ response we get for anything slightly out of the normal. eventually we found it , but it was closed. we checked out the ‘happening’ down town duty free zone where all the clubs where, but it was mostly closed, the duty free zone was somewhat disappointing, so we headed over back to a local shopping mall. I left Kathy there to browse, while I jumped into an Uber and headed back to Puteri Harbour, to collect my parcel, the missing blade for the wind generator. then back to the boat.
Thursday arrived and I fitted the blade to the turbine, not very well as it turned out. The guys arrived earlier to fit the new cutless bearing and the engineer amongst them understood exactly what I meant about the stripped inside of the allen screw, I could tell by the groan and look of despair on his face. However after 40 minutes, he had drilled out the old screw, without damaging the thread at all.

 

He instructed his assistant to cut out the old bearing with a hacksaw blade, a tedious job, it took me all day last time I tried this, but he had it done in 30 minutes, and the old cutless removed. The damage was clear, after I had pulled out the shredded rubber on haulout, there was about an inch of rubber missing, that still left 3 1/2 inches remaining, in good nick too, but I think it best to replace it, even if it might have continued working for a long time, I wouldn’t feel confident.

It all went back together fine, however they seemed to have some problems getting the shaft to fit into the collar on the coupling, but nothing had changed, so I think there might be a slight alignment problem. By mid afternoon they had completed everything, and I did a few jobs, mostly cleaning up and we were ready for a Friday morning launch.
The yard informed me I had to pay cash, so an ATM was called for, we decided to get an Uber into a big mall so we could stock up a little more. This was an amazing Mall, I don’t normally think much of Malls, but they had everything here, and I especially like one huge section called the Japanese village, full of Japanese shops, obviously I suppose, but all done very well.

I was up at 6:30 Friday, The sunrise was lovely, the light much nicer than the camera’s false blue haze. I managed to shoot a few good pics, at this time it was low water, on a spring tide, so very low, and there was only a few inches of water on the path we would have to take out. So it was good to be able to work out our exit route.

We launched at 12, Kathy and I stayed on board as the travel lift took us to the launch bay, I didn’t want to, in Europe it wouldn’t be allowed, H&S, but we had no choice they just took the steps away and started lifting the boat! As we lowered into the water, there were several disturbing jerks, where the wire supporting the front of the boat snagged then jumped, I reassured Kathy that we were over the water now so it would just make a big splash if the wire snapped, a very big splash I expect.
I rigged up a block and tackle to the topping lift, and was able to pull the mast back far enough to get the backstay onto it’s turnbuckle. I was worried I might have to slacken the Furlers, which is a major job, but it all went very smoothly, topped off the fuel from a drum raised up on a fork lift truck, (Malay style Fuel Stop) and we headed out. Now we are at anchor 4 hours away, close to the SE of Singapore. Tomorrow we head off towards Tioman, the wind has been consistent and good from the SW for a few days now, I wonder if this is the SW monsoon settling in now, I hope so, as it means good sailing tomorrow. We will find an anchorage half way to Tioman off the coast of Malaysia tomorrow, and maybe another before we arrive.
It’s good to be afloat again. At the moment, our delay has made me think it’s too late to make Japan and then America, so it’s looking much more likely we will do that next year, when we are better prepared. So I’m really looking forward to just chilling in Tioman.

Some pics from this morning before work started

Paul Collister

We are hauled, and awaiting repair.

Not long after we anchored the sun set and the fishnets we anchored off moved a lot closer. I have noticed this before, at night hazards always seem to move closer, not sure if this is an optical or psychological effect, either way, it’s a pain, we moved very close to the nets, and I made a good note of where we are by taking transits around the area, that basically means lining up the edges of the net with something on the land, and making sure they stay lined up. Of course, a few hours later the tide turned, we swung and ended up even closer to the nets, which was odd as I thought we should have gone further away. I told Kathy we might need to re anchor, but I sat on the bowsprit for 20 minutes, enjoying the fading light and watching my transits, only to decide we were safe. After a lovely pasta & pesto dinner, I went to sleep in the cockpit, waking every hour or so to check my transits, until at 3am, when the tide swung us again, back to roughly were we started, then I slept through to sunrise.

Looking over to the yard, I could just make out the route in, but it looked shallow, sticks in the mud showed the way and later I watched a motor boat make its way in which gave me a boost.

The nets looked amazing in the morning sun, they are all different coloured 5 gallon plastic containers, large jerry can size.

These drums above on the right are spares I think, they were about 40ft to our stern. This is what you can see from space, credit to google earth.

So just 30 minutes before high water we headed in, Kathy called out the depth. We started with a metre more than when we went aground, so I was optimistic, however we soon hit 2 metres, but were still going, we should be aground at 2 metres, but I added a little into the calibration of the meter to help, but when we reached 1.8 I was wondering how we were still going forward, whatever was under us must have been very soft, so I upped the revs, and we raced in, I figured if I was going aground I wanted to plough through, into the deeper water in the boatyard. It quickly went back to 2 metres and stayed around that for the short trip to tie up alongside in front of the travel lift.

Once tied up, the first of several disappointments arrived, I was told the travel lift is to small to take us in the normal way, so I had to drop the backstay, remove the wind generator and reverse into the travel lift. I didn’t want to do the backstay as it’s going to be difficult to get it back together without loosening the forestays, which means taking the headsails off and removing the furling drum.  I will have to think of a cunning plan, probably involving rope and pulleys.

I managed to keep the wind generator on, the problem would come later once we were on land, then the travel lift wouldn’t be able to escape without decapitating the turbine, and that’s normally my job, using a fishing rod or forehead. To turn the boat around, a man was dispatched into the water to push it around, A dinghy might have been better, but who am I to judge.

The next blow was that rather than change the bearing and launch in the morning, I was told that they couldn’t start today as planned, as they had to do another boat in an emergency, and that tomorrow is national holiday, but they could start on Thursday. So the earliest we can launch will be Friday, I expect it will end up being Saturday. The tides are good until next Monday, after that we can’t get our for another week or more.

I was able to see that some more rubber had worked it’s way out of the cutless bearing, you can see a strip of it here, I have pulled it out to see better, but it didn’t take any effort, so I’m assuming it’s a bit of a mess inside the bearing.
I removed the blades and vane off the turbine so they can get the travel lift away, then I set about doing the job myself, I thought perhaps I could get the prop off, and pull the prop shaft, making it easier for them, I’m still going to be paying them, whoever does the work, but at least this way I might get away earlier. The prop came off no problem, but the PSS dripless shaft seal won’t come off. This is a device that stops the water getting into the boat through the tube that the prop shaft goes out of the boat through. It seems that the LBM engineer, who was the last one near it, had stripped one of the 2 allen grub screws that holds it in place. This is a tiny grub screw made of 316 stainless steel, inside a block of 316 stainless steel, in the bottom of the boat in a most inaccessible place.I’m at the point of drilling it out, but that might damage the seal, and I might end up having to wait a few weeks to get a replacement shipped in, so I’m going to wait until the yard’s engineer turns up, and get him to sort it. Good engineers know how to sort these things. I once had a similar problem on the baba 30 which required me to cut the prop shaft in half to get the job done, I really don’t want to go down that road again.

I forgot to add this AIS chart yesterday, you can see us as the little boat with the white dot, down in the middle, working our way east and edging across the channel getting ready to hang a left up to the eastern buoy and back into Malaysian waters. You can see it’s busy, each triangle is a boat, mostly big tankers or container ships, doing between 5 and 20 knots.

As it’s a holiday tomorrow, Kathy and I will pop into Johor Bahru and check it out, it’s supposed to be a bit of a party town, so I better get my John Travolta suit out, just in case we go dancing 😉

Paul Collister

 

Now if that isn’t clickbait, I don’t know what is.

So we arrived safely, at the entrance to Dalac Marina, We have to wait for high tide in the morning to get in, we went ashore earlier, well the boat did, we stayed onboard. We were looking for somewhere to anchor outside the boatyard. It’s a bit scraggy here, lots of rubbish in the water, we are kind of out of the way, tucked behind the docks, and opposite a big Singapore port, but the charts don’t cover this stretch, other than to say it’s all mud. When we arrived, we went right past the spot we are supposed to anchor in. All along the coast here for a few miles are fish farms, not a type I’m familiar with, they seem to be laid out in an S shape but with scores of bends. See pics below.

We found a gap, about 100m wide between two sets of nets that leads to the boatyard. We approached slowly as we are only a couple of hours after low water. The prospect looked great, the chart plotter said we were in 1-2m of water, but the depth gauge said 14m. the depth dropped steadily and Kathy called out each 1/2 metre drop every 30 seconds or so. When we got to about 5 meters I put her into astern to stop her as that would be fine, however, we went from 5 to 3 to 2.5 to 2 and aground as quick as Kathy could read them off, It wasn’t a problem, and I managed to reverse back after a few thrusts with the engine, and we anchored in 8 metres. It’s all mud here, perhaps a bicycle or two, but we’ve taken on Thai Granite rocks and survived, so there Mr Mud!

As to the police bit, yes that was a touch embarrassing, to get from One side of the causeway that links Malaysia to Singapore you have to almost completely circumnavigate Singapore, it’s a bit like if they had built a causeway/low bridge from Gosport to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, boats would have to go all around the island to get from Portsmouth to Southampton. I realise that means nothing to many of our readers.
Anyway, the Singaporeans won’t let boats into there waters unless you are visiting and check in with an agent and all that entails, they have police patrolling the island in varying sizes of patrol boats from 30 fast launches, through 60 foot very fast motor boats, right up to Navy Destroyers and frigates. We got the middle size one. Add to this annoyance, there is a traffic separation zone all around the bottom of the island, which is a bit like a motorway, central reservation included, The separation zone ensures traffic heading west is in the lane near to Singapore, we were going East, so we have to be on the other side. This means crossing the separation lane, very much in the way someone on a pushbike might cross a busy motorway, very carefully. There is a little bit in the middle you can be safe in. The lane is about a mile wide. Once across, then we flow with the big ships steaming up from behind us for 30 odd miles, then do the frogger game imitation again and cross back to the other side. Now in most places I have sailed, small boats like me sneak along the outside of the separation zone, on either side, and nobody cares, but that puts me in Singapore’s waters, but I gave it a try. I got about 3 miles along when I accidentally strayed , just a tiny little bit into the traffic zone, it was quite safe because the big boats in the lane all go on the other edge as it’s more direct. I was only there for a couple of minutes before I noticed and quickly turned to head back to the inshore bit, but too late. Screaming towards me with spary gushing from either side of his bow was a Singapore police launch. They looked very much like they were going to escort us back to the nick, as one of them started organising ropes on the side the where they were approaching us. By now I was out of the lane, still no other traffic around so no harm done, but I was told in no uncertain terms, but in a very friendly manner that I could not do my journey in their waters and I must cross the separation zone to the Indonesian side to continue. I also got told off for having my AIS off, which surprised me as I was using it loads. I asked ever so nicely if I could motor through the anchorage ahead then cross the zone there, which would save me an hour, they agreed, but followed me all the way, and shadowed me across the separation zone.  I suppose it’s a bit like driving up the hard shoulder between a couple of junctions on a motorway, but being on the wrong side, and doing it in full view of the police.
I checked the AIS and found I had disabled the transmitter, yes that was right, I had assumed it defaulted to on after a power down, but no, I turned it back on, and a few minutes later the police launch screamed up to us again, just to tell us they had us on AIS and all was ok. Which was nice of them. Once across the zone, we were in Indonesian waters, and they don’t go there. But later we had to make a load more detours just to keep away from their coast. Seems a bit over the top to me.

 

The Johor Strait, which is were we spent all afternoon is full of shipyards and old ships, ferry ports and docks. Very busy really, but some parts had lovely beaches. I’m sure Kathy will have more in her post.

We left this morning at 6:50, just as the sun rose, and just a few hours before my replacement wind generator blade arrived. That’s a good game to play when cruising, “What’s my postal address”.
We arrived and dropped anchor just as the sun set at 7:10.

Paul Collister

Yes, our time lazing around in Puteri harbour marina is up and we head off to the boatyard tomorrow.  I’m hoping to leave at about 06:30 as it’s a good 10 hours+ and I’m planning to pick up some fuel on the way from a barge moored in a river. It’s going to be an interesting passage, we could save an hour or more if we pass south of two little islands, but I have been told we will be in trouble and chased away by the Singapore marine police, so we have to go to the north of them which adds a few miles. We will be motoring through one of the worlds busiest ports, looking at the chart it looks mad, millions of buoys, loads of no entry areas, and exclusion zones. and there will be scores of ships motoring through a hundred odd ships at anchor. It’s good Kathy will be here to help, she can steer while I stare at all the AIS targets on my MacBook, trying to work out which one is which, and is it heading our way. The worst of it should last for about 5 hours.
We will anchor outside the entrance to the yard tomorrow night and wait for the high tide in the morning before we can get in. That should be fun, we need to anchor in-between two fish farms. It’s a very rough looking yard, and we are living on the boat for one, maybe more nights, so out with the DEET (mossie spray), I don’t expect they have much in the way of toilets or showers, so it will be a relief to be back in the water later in the week.
I have been looking into the route to America from here and we will probably not go this year. Lots of reasons, but mainly it’s unlikely we will do this passage again, so I want to do it justice. To get to Japan missing the cyclones, we would have to race there, missing Taiwan, Japan would be rushed, Theres a port in Russia, north of Japan, that I hear is well worth a visit and I have heard Alaska is an amazing place, worth a year or two of cruising. Coming down from Alaska, I would love to spend a lot of time exploring the inner passage around Vancouver Island. All of these places would get crammed into a few weeks, plus the fact that we want to be home for all of September makes me think It’s just too much of a rush.
So I have put our next port of call as Tioman, a beautiful Island about 150 miles north of us, on the eastern side of Malaysia, as our next port of call.
We will spend about 5 days slowly making our way there, it would have been on our route to Japan, so if I revert back to the Japan plan, we don’t lose anything, but I expect by the time we have had a few days there we will have worked out some more destinations. We have a lot of options, which is nice, Staying in the gulf of Thailand is possibly and should provide good sailing during the SW Monsoon season, we can visit Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Or we can hop over to Eastern Malaysia on the island of Borneo, popping into The Kingdom of Bruni, or going to the rain forest music festival in Sarawak. We could head don to Indonesia and travel along those islands heading towards Austrailia. We shall have to see.

Our friends cat came to say goodbye yesterday, they have headed off to Tioman as part of the ‘Sailing east’ Malaysian rally, I expect we will bump into them later.
A lot of people use these air berths for their power boats, I think it’s because the warm waters cause growth under the boat to be accelerated. but they look strange. A small pump fills the big tanks with air to raise the berth, or the tanks are filed with water to lower it.

Here the boat has been driven into a submerged berth that has then been partly inflated

It looks like they have invented some kind of boat launcher

Fully inflated.

Paul Collister.