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All safely anchored in Pangkor, although a bit rolly, hopefully that should reduce as the wind shifts overnight, but I’m so tired it won’t matter, neither will the Bangla blasting across the bay affect me. Hopefully it will stop around midnight.
I was up just before the sun rose, making a coffee and checking everything was ready to go. It took a while to get the anchor up, 40 meters of chain, totally caked in thick mud, making the chain look like it was about 2 inches (50cm) thick. Need to standardise on a measurement system. Difficult on an American 40ft boat to use metric. I had to clean the chain with the deck wash, and every 10 metres in, pop below and flake the chain in the locker. I was away at 7:30, and set the controls for due south.Because I was starting from offshore, there weren’t too many fishing boats around, however I passed over several banks, 4-6 mtrs where the fishing boats gather. I came across a lot of pairs of boats like these two – 

I was a bit confused at first, but I quickly worked out they had a net strung between them, I could see the rope, however both boats often seemed to be struggling, black smoke galore, and lots of wash from the prop, as if they had a very heavy load. I wondered if the net could be very full.
A little later I scooted round the back of one of these pairs, not totally sure how far back the net extended, and was rather shocked to see the water a different colour where they had been fishing and where I was heading. Usually when the water changes colour quickly, and in this case it was very brown and muddy, it means a change in depth, we were in about 8 mtrs, and I wondered if there was a bank I was about to hit, and they were fishing there, as fish often like shallows. I slowed down and as I passed through the muddy water the depth didn’t change. Then I realised that these nets were dragging the sea bed, a particularly bad way of fishing in my mind, they kill everything in their path, and trash the sea bed. Besides that, they may be trashing my future home, where I will while away the hours with Davy Jones. I must look into this method more, a lot of fishing techniques used in Asia, especially Thailand have been made illegal.

So ten hours after leaving, I could clearly make out the island of Pangkor, very wooded, and full of holiday resorts apparently. Enclosing the anchorage I’m in is a small island called Pangkor Laut, which is home to a 5 star luxury resort, and a marina. I was going to haul out here  originally, but they couldn’t fit me in.

I looked in the first bay I met on the island, my problem is that the northerly wind last night, didn’t come from the north, but from the west, and although there was little wind today, the wind from last night was sending a big swell into all the exposed bays on the west of Pangkor, This bay was fine, but for the swell. It looked like it once had, or nearly had a resort there, but it all looks abandoned now.

I have tucked in behind a very small islet/rock but the swell is still making its way in, but it did make for a nice sunset picture

The engine/prop worked great on the way here, I was able to run the engine at a much higher revs, less smoke and I think the fuel consumption is looking ok. I was able to manage 7-7.5 knots through the water with no problem at about 3/4 throttle, more was available if needed. A lot of that is down to a smooth bottom and a shiny prop. Stop sniggering at the back please!
Tomorrow I’m going about 35 miles south to an anchorage just off the coast with no shelter at all from the sea, so I’m hoping for a calm night, otherwise I might have to backtrack to here. This stretch of coast is quite difficult to do in day passages. With each day I get a little closer to the equator. I’m just about 4deg North now, and about 100 deg East. Also the Malacca straights are narrowing as I proceed south. Shipping is going to increase a lot, after tomorrows anchorage, I will proceed to an anchorage near Port Dickson, that’s very close now to Kaula Lumpar and the main shipping port of Malaysia.
I read yesterday that the advice I got in Langkawi about checking out was wrong. I was told that I don’t need to check out until I leave Malaysia for Hong Kong, however, Langkawi is different it seems and I should have checked out of there. I may have to go back to check out, which will be a major pain. I will throw myself on the mercy of the harbour master in Port Dickson, and see if something can be worked out.

Paul Collister.

 

 

 

 

So we launched this morning, a little delayed, but that’s how things work here. All in all I’m very happy with the work they did in the yard here. They hauled me out within an hour of me phoning them, and we were back in the water a few days later. 

I’m getting quite blasé about the whole launching thing now, however, they had a guy helping who didn’t understand boats much and they almost scratched the boat when it was lowered, as the current tried to take it away before they got the shore lines on. In the end it went fine, and I reversed out into a strong current, I had swung by 45 deg before the bow sprit cleared the dock, so I had to reverse fast and whack the bow thruster on full power. It looked quite normal from the dock, but was a bit hairy from the helm. I also hadn’t realised that the dinghy was blocking my view, as I had lifted it up high onto the foredeck.

From the dock I motored down to Pulau Kendi, which is just an hour or so to the west. Lots of nets to dodge on the way. I was extremely pleased to find the new propellor pitch works well. I can now get the engine up to 3000RPM and the hull speed was nearly 8 knots, in calm water. I also burnt off a bit of soot on the way here which is good. I need to see how the engine performs on a longer run now.

This little island anchorage is my home for the night, I have cleaned the decks, and tidied up the boat, when you are on the hard, you can’t use the toilet, shower or the sinks, as the drains go out the side of the boat. The sink was particularly messy as I kept the old coffee contents in it 🙁

A lot of fishing boats are anchored here,  it seems to be the place to come for a nap, well protected from the big sea to the west and NW winds. The weather forecast is for light winds with a few thunderstorms, so nothing too exciting.

I will leave for Pangkor tomorrow morning at 7AM ish.

 

Paul Collister

The boats all ready to launch now, but the yard were late getting the paint on, so we slipped a day, but I’m more than happy as I gained two days hauling early.Once the hull / keel was properly cleaned and rubbed down in the damaged areas, it was clear that there was nothing to fill really, the gouges were in the crud mostly. So we applied primer and then another coat of antifoul and she’s ready to go. I made adjustments to the propeller, as it can be changed so that the angle of the blades can be finer or courser to the water. The exact setting (pitch) is critical to get the maximum power transfer from the engine to the prop and provide drive. It was obviously wrong, as the engine could only get to half the revs it should. This is typically caused by too much pitch, or too aggressive a propeller. The last engineer to take the prop off, didn’t put it back on properly. So that’s sorted, I’m hoping for a good improvement, but expect more fine tuning will be needed when the boat comes out next.

The keel, that’s the thin bit hanging down, is actually solid, and part of the boat. It’s made hollow in the mould, with walls that are very thick, I think more than 4cm, then the void is filled with iron crud, could be anything, but it weighs several tons. Once it’s all stuffed in, a polyester resin is poured in to seal and fix everything in place. So effectively it becomes one solid, very heavy piece that is part of the boat, with no joins that can fail. This I think is one of the strengths of this type of construction, and is why I suffered next to no damage in the grounding, not that I will be doing that again in a hurry! More modern yachts have an all metal keel, bolted onto the bottom of the boat, this makes them faster, lighter and much more manoeuvrable, but they occasionally lose their keel and sink. The bolts also fail or leak, but I think they are a lot better these days.

I got to use my new grease gun on the prop with some rather expensive grease I shipped out here. I’m no expert with grease guns, and suffice it to say, the prop, boat, me and quite a bit of the yard is well greased now.

From this angle the boat looks deceptively fast, shame that’s not true.

 

Above you can see the corner I’m tucked into and below the mass of mostly decrepit boats around me.

There was a big fishing boat blocking me in, it came in right after me, one of the propellor blades had fallen off, but when I got back to the boat it had been launched. Every day in the yard is a day of bills, and a day not catching fish, so they tend to turn around very quickly. I took the pictures below just before they motored off. I’m quite fascinated by these boats, they truly are working boats, there’s nothing fancy on them, and despite their crudeness, I expect there’s a lot you can learn from their minimalistic approach.

What’s with the fish?

Can you see the wheel?, is this where they wind it up?

Theres another old boat in the yard that intrigued me, it looked like the worst fiberglass boat I had ever seen. I wondered how the mould could be so bad, but then I worked out that this is probably a wooden boat and it’s been encased in fiberglass. Please tell me if I have it wrong, I can’t believe someone could actually turn out a boat this bad. The very thought that there is a wooden boat rotting away inside the fiberglass shell is just as worrying.

On an aside, I’m not going to name names, but if anybody wants to leave a bottle of vegetarian mushroom/tomato sauce bottle in the fridge, horizontally, could they please close the lid first!

So up early tomorrow, I need to clean the log before launch, thts a little propeller thing that sticks out of the bottom of the boat and revolves as we go along and sends pulses to the speedo, or log as we call it. This gives me the speed though the water, which is different from the spped on the GPS, which is the speed over the land below the water. The water either adds to my seed or takes away from it, depending on the flow of the tide.  It’s called a log, allegedly, because it used to be a log, thrown over the bow, and someone would count how long it took to get to the stern of the boat, from this the speed could be calculated. Not sure if this is the same log as in data logger, but I expect the log book was where they recorded the readings.
Then I need to fit the windvane steering rudder and vane, get rid of the rubbish and pay the bill. I expect I wont be away much before eleven, which is a problem, my next anchorage is by Pangkor, which is 60 miles away, which could take me more than 12 hours. The tidal currents get stronger now as I head south down the Malacca straits, so 5 knots seems like the best I can hope to average. I don’t want to sail solo in the dark, so I’m going to do a two hour motor around the corner to a little island called Palau Kendi I, have a lazy time washing the boat, and passage planning the rest of the trip south, then at 7AM Saturday as the sun rises I will be off to Pangkor, not the marina, but to an anchorage, just for the night then push on further south. I need to get close to Singapore for when Kathy gets out here.
The plan to sail to America from Japan in July is getting serious now, this is going to be the most challenging sail I have ever done, so I have a lot of prep to do. It’s a long journey for two people, could be 6 weeks or more!

Paul Collister

So after leaving Langkawi, just outside the main harbour area I saw this boat, I had mentioned her before,  She was from Grimsby and had a rich history as a working boat.

This was the picture I posted last October. Very sad to see this, she has been on the rocks for six months or more now, so I can’t see her being salvaged, but who knows.

I headed off in very calm seas, but thunderstorms were forecast and I could see lots of them on the horizon, however they seem to like the land, Langkawi, behind me was covered in heavy cloud, and the mainland to my port side was the same, yet it was quite sunny over me for most of the trip.
This particular cloud set was heading for me, or so it looked, by this time I was well on my way and the winds were picking up to 15knots, so I rolled in the headsails a bit. I wanted to put a reef in the main, but by now the autohelm was not able to steer the boat. I had let her get unbalanced, with a full main, and not much headsail, she had a lot of Lee helm, or was it wetherhelm, and would veer widely off course. So I was left to hand steer for the last two hours of the passage. I could have started the engine, turned into the wind and sorted it, but I was enjoying the ride, regularly hitting 7+ knots. The wind had started off on the beam, but was now behind, and the waves were causing me to surge forward, almost like surfing, but at 16 odd tonnes, she takes a lot to surf. Not to many obstacles, but I got close to these fish sticks. These are big sticks, the water it 25ft deep here, the idea is that barnacles grow on them, things eat the barnacles, bigger things eat them and even bigger…. Then the really big fishermen come along and catch the big fish.
Talking of fish, I did catch one, honest, it was massive, well I reckon it must have been, but of course it got away, but the manner it did was amusing. I was trawling a line behind from my fishing rod, the lure was a big squiddy thing, big enough to catch a small whale, anyway, as usual, the reel started running out at speed, just as I was doing some other critical job, probably furling sails, by the time I got to the rod, and put the brake on, a lot of line had gone out. I took the rod out from its new holder on the very back of the boat, (Spoiler Alert) right next to the wind turbine, I could feel the pull from the fish, it was very powerful, I raised the rod high and then a bang, clunk and twang as the line snapped, First thought that the  fish had broke it, but no, I had got the line caught in the wind turbine and it had snapped at the end of the rod. Now, a little like my kedging cock up, I looked up to see the line was taught from the turbine, all the way back to the fish, so not all was lost, what was even more impressive was that the turbine was winding in my catch, the fishing line had wrapped around the blades and was now accumulating on the axle as the strong wind kept it turning. I thought this could be very cool, it would haul the fish right up to eye level, and then stop, I could just lift the fish off and dispatch it, if the turbine hadn’t already, I think there might be a market for something similar out there. A quick reality check, and I thought there’s not enough room for all the line on the axle, and like getting something wrapped on the prop, when it does come to a stop, the force of it can do some damage. So I stopped the blades tuning and slowly removed the line. By now the fish had bitten his way through the line and buggered off. While hanging off the back of the boat, high up, one hand on the turbine, one on the solar panels, and the cutters between my teeth, I thought one slip and it’s bad news, the autohelm would have just took the boat on it’s merry way, leaving me to pray for a fishing boat to pass! I must make a rule to clip on when on my own.

There were quite a lot of big fishing boats, and two of them had a massive net enclosing them, I thought I had left enough space to pass behind them, but as I approached I could see the top of the net, buoyed, and covering the area of a football field around the boat, incredible, I can confirm my gybe preventer does work!

I was making such good progress, I passed my first destination, and my second and went for the third and last possible stop before Penang, it was a very small island Pulau Bidan, but when I arrived the wind was blowing 20-25 knots from the north and the sea state was getting quite rough, perhaps 1.5-2 mtr waves and coming from the NE and NW at the same time. I found a corner where the waves were a bit subdued, but still rough, and within an hour of setting the anchor the wind shifted making it very rolly. It was now getting dark, so I just hunkered down, had a butty and an early night. As I have done the last two times I anchored, I set the Drag Queen App up to alarm if I move more than 300ft from my anchored spot, but forgot to press the activate button, so that was a waste of time. The winds dropped through the night, I checked every hour or so. Finally I woke at 8am to a calm sunny day, looking out the cockpit it was hard to match the image below with the harsh weather from the night before. But it was a gorgeous start to the day.

From here it was 4 hours down to Penang, I had had an email from the boatyard that they could lift me out in 2 days time, then I got an email from Pangkor marina that it would be ten days before they could haul me, so I decided to head to the boatyard and anchor and chill for a day or so.
Penang was busy, lots more land reclamation going on, I went through a restricted area by mistake and realised when I saw a giant loch ness monster style pipeline sticking up, that explained the big yellow and black cardinal buoy on my port side, that should have been on my starboard side. These things aren’t on the charts as they happen so quickly, but no harm done.

This yacht was huge, the crew all waved to me as I passed, which was nice.

This next bulk carrier was even larger ,you can see the barge next to it being filled. I don’t know what the cargo was, but possibly powdered land they use so much of here.
So then there was the old bridge to pass, I wasn’t too worried about this, I had been under it a few times now, and knew we would fit.

The second bridge is a bit lower and really doesn’t look so easy, I really thought I might hit it, even though we have been under it twice before.

So as I approached the second bridge at the southern end of the island, near the boatyard I gave them a call on the off chance they had an opening, and sure enough they said to come over and they would haul me. Brilliant, but a bit scary as the entrance to the travel lift dock is fraught with jagged concrete obstacles, and a strong cross current is hard to handle. However the timing was perfect, we are getting into neap tides now, much milder, and I was 3 hours before high water, where the tidal flow is less. I got in with not much trouble. I could have done with my fenders a lot higher, but we didn’t scratch anything, the steel rub rail might need a polish.

So it was with great interest I watch the boat lift, and sure enough the damage from the grounding was superficial.

Scrapes on the bow where we hit the rock, gelcoat damaged, fiberglass intact.

After she was washed, the hull looked great, the antifoul has lasted the last year well.

I thought there was a bit of vibration from the prop, this explains it. This is just 6 weeks fouling, must make a note to keep cleaning it often. I have a very small amount of tiny blisters, but 99.99% of the hull is blister free, so I think the work we did last year worked well.

So the plan now is to fill the scratches and grooves, prime, then put another coat of antifoul on tomorrow. I have cleaned the prop and put a new anode on, tomorrow I will grease it, and possibly adjust the pitch if I can work out the correct setting. Then we launch on Thursday and I head south. I plan to get down to KL or maybe even Singapore before Kathy flies out. Then I am thinking we will try to get to America’s PNW after all. I need to be in Japan for the middle of May if I want to be safe from cyclones, The route is Singapore-Hong Kong-Japan-Seattle, so there’s a lot to do.

Paul Collister

Continue reading “On the hard”

Yes I was talking with chappy earlier at the fuel dock who spoke Malay and he enquired about the name, he was an Iggy Pop fan and liked the name, I think? Anyway, I pointed out that it often caused amusement with the Malaysians when I had to give them the name, and he explained that it would, given sister means gay here. The Malaysian government have banned gays, and officially these aren’t any, except, it seems, for my boat,”Gay Midnight” and she is quite brazen about it !!

I was up early and got the boat ready for the trip, fuelled up and left at ten, after giving some boat handling lessons to a lovely couple from Estonia who are just starting their sailing adventures, having bought their first boat here, from a guy I became friendly with when Tim was over last year, and now they want to head off into the blue yonder, just once he has worked out how to leave the dock.

The wind was strongish from the east, 10 knots at Langkawi, building to 20 by the time I arrived near Penang. It was a great sail down, with thunderstorms threatening all the time and plenty of things to dodge. I will write more tomorrow, as right now I’m at anchor in a rather uncomfortable spot just north of Penang. I couldn’t get to the shelter of the main island before dark, so I pushed on to the last island before Penang, much further than I had hoped, but then I was making between 6 and 7.5 knots most of the time, under full sail.  All of the islands en route are long thin affairs and generally lie North/South so great if the wind is from the east or west, but by the time I got here the wind had changed to the NNW, So I sheltered on the SSE corner of the island,  not much shelter as the waves, which had risen to 1.5m were getting round the whole island and the wind, a steady 20knots was everywhere. Anyway I dropped the anchor and it’s holding very well, I just have to pretend I’m crossing the Atlantic and it’s a bit choppy an the boat is bouncing around a lot, in order to get some sleep. As I write this the wind has dropped to 15 knots and the sea calmed a little, so that’s good.

Things I need to put in tomorrows blog, once I work out how to get the pictures off my iPad are, birds on the sheets, Caught a fish, but it got away, and nearly took me with it, Almost drove through the biggest fishing net I have ever seen, self steering hassles, and fish sticks up close.

 

Paul Collister

Tomorrow morning I’m going to slip my mooring here in Langkawi and head south. In theory this should be a simple operation. The plan is to get some fuel at the dock here, then I can do a 3-4 hour trip to an island called Pulau Paya (2 on the map), if all is going well I might continue onto another island 3-4 hours ahead called Pulau Songsong (3), I have stopped here before a few times doing the sail from Penang (4/5) to Langkawi. It all depends how quickly I can get away, the fuel dock doesn’t open till 9am.
The plan so far is to get as far as Pangkor Island (8/9), which is not far from Kuala Lumpur by Friday. There I can haul out the boat and check how much damage I did on the rock. I  can also see if the osmosis has re-appeared and I may try to adjust the Max-Prop propellor to see if I can’t get some better efficiency from it.Since Kathy went home I have been busy doing chores on the boat. I have fitted the new Throttle and gear cables, Changed the oil and filter, cleaned out the raw water filter and changed both the fuel filters. On my last Volvo engine on the baba 30, I only had to look at the fuel system to induce an air leak into the system. These were always annoying, often they would hide while the revs where high, but as soon as I throttled back entering the marina the engine would stop and not want to start, good game. So after changing these filters I bled the system and it has started perfectly, high revs, low revs, it works great. I haven’t tested the new cables away from the dock, but they seem fine now. What could possibly go wrong 😉

What could go wrong is the weather!Above is typical of the weather here now. It’s forecast for thunderstorms for the next 7 days. A met office warning to shipping for the Malacca straits for today warned small ships to stay home, the forecast said in areas of multiple thunderstorms, waves could reach 12ft high with 30 knt winds. However that was for today, no warnings for tomorrow. I have a variety of sources for weather information, The national weather services for maritime service, the equivalent of the uk shipping forecast is a main one. I make a lot of use of grib files. These are weather data files you download over the net. They are a very compact form of data, so ideal for loading over HF radios, or expensive satellite links. With a viewer on your PC you can see the data as wind and wave patterns as shown belowThis covers the area I will be in tomorrow. It is animated on our iPad, showing the changes every hour over a 96 hour period. Here is the legend/key expanded

So the worst weather tomorrow will be at 17:00 and you can see inshore the wind is about 5 knots, calm, and further offshore, at the extent of where I might be, the wind increases to 15 knots, very healthy for sailing, plus it’s from behind me, so that’s even better. Also the waves go from <1m inshore to 2 mtrs offshore, This might make it a bit more lively, but as they are in the same direction as the wind, and behind me, I’m not too concerned. The only problem is that at some point there will be a strong current flowing north, on the ebb tide, this will slow my progress down and make it less fun, but at the same time, well actually 6 hours later or earlier, the tide will be pushing me along adding a couple of knots to my speed. I think High tide is about 5pm, so the southbound current will be strongest between 3 and 6 pm, roughly. and the current against me between 9-12pm.

I bought a stack of squid from the street market last night, and had them for dinner just now, I’m very pleased at how quick I can prepare them, ripping the body out, removing the plastic spine thing, and skinning them, all in seconds now. Just need to work out how to catch them myself. I don’t eat the tentacles, seems like to much effort, which I know some will think a crime.
I read an article today about how Trump was turning off GPS Accuracy for non military use, and would allow Americans and certain others to buy a license to use it. This would not be great news for sailors, even worse for satnav users, I was concerned. He was quoted as saying it was a great way to raise money for ‘the wall’, he might even make so much money from it he would build a second wall on the Canadian border. At that point I checked the date on the article to see it was the 1st April, I’m just hoping it was a hoax. It did make me think though, just how dependent we are on GPS these days. However I think the European system should be online soon, oh, just realised, as a Brit, we might not be allowed to use it, damm 😉 !!

Paul Collister

Kathy is back in Liverpool now and I’m having to endure this relentless heat on my own. Actually, I decided to go crazy now she has left and yesterday I headed off into town for some fun. First stop was the department store where I bought an omelette pan, guess what I’m having for dinner tonight, and a food processor. Next I bought a giant bag of kit-kat chocolate bars, it’s going to be wild back on the boat tonight, I have already ground some coffee beans up that I’ve had since Tim was here and made a very strong cup of coffee. I might even make up a smoothie with all the fruit that’s hanging around (literally) on the boat.

Seriously I have made a list of the chores and tasks to work on. They are:

1. Work out where our next stop is, somewhere between Africa and America (not the Atlantic side) is as close as I have it now.
2. Sort out the head waste system, somehow the holding tank is filling up, yet it’s not connected!
3. Get the engine looked at, it’s like I used to be, smoking and drinking too much
4. Get a new canopy made, the current ones won’t last much longer
5. Get the boat hauled out, the hull checked for damage after the grounding, and some new antifoul
6. Get the water-maker into service
7. Source some new solar panels, these computers/phones use more power than I thought
8. Buy a liferaft
9. Wash the hull and polish, this could wait till the haulout
10. Fit the WiFi aerial.

There’s quite a few other minor jobs as well, but these are my main tasks I need to complete in the next week or two, certainly before Kathy gets back.

I have uploaded these two videos to accompany Kathy’s blog about the river trip in Tarutao, It doesn’t look as good as it was, honest. I’m still trying to learn what works and what doesn’t, probably should have taken a video making course before I started this trip. Must also remember to keep the lens clean, sorry 🙁

Going in

Heading home

Paul Collister

We are back in the yacht club, it’s not like a real yacht club that we have back home, this is a marina, and now it’s grown to quite a big commercial operation. The office hangs off the end of a large development of apartments/hotel rooms, trendy designer shops and the usual array of franchised food and drink outlets. However, having said that you can see from the header picture I just uploaded, you get some cracking sunsets from Charlie’s bar. The complex is a short walk from a decent shopping mall, and a nice walk a little further into town, but not for the faint hearted when the suns out. I’m ok being an Englishman (mad dogs and all that).
We have had a week here, and haven’t done a lot really, the gang of grey ships we passed through on the way into the harbour were part of a huge military showcase here for the International Maritime and Air Festival, I think that’s the front for what is more honestly known as an arms fair. But we have had fighter jets flying overhead all week, some of them are very noisy. It coincides with school and public holidays, so the whole island has been rammed.
I was very pleased to find my favourite hardware store here stocked the cable I needed for the broken gear stick, so I picked up two, as the throttle cable is the same age, and presumably on its way out. It took the best part of two days to change the cable, as the steering had to come off, the bracket on the engine was seized, on and I had to saw off the connecting rod and fabricate a new one. I took the opportunity, while I was deep in the bowels of the boat to do a few other jobs, like cleaning the raw water filter, and generally cleaning the hull inside. I also managed to identify a couple of jobs to add to the list, like replacing one of the water hoses, that seemed a bit crunchy when squeezed.
I have put a few pictures of the binnacle, which is the thing that has all the engine and steering controls on it, mostly so I can remember how it all works in the future 😉

The new cables waiting to be connected

The gear works well, but I have a problem with tension on the throttle, I have a practical solution, involving a clamp, but it’s abhorrent to me as an engineer, so I’m musing on a better solution, I will probably post to the baba owners group for their wisdom on the matter. Basically a big spring at the engine end is always pushing the throttle back to idle, much like the spring on a car’s accelerator peddle, but unlike a car, you don’t keep your foot on the throttle, you need cruise control, the clamp I took off, basically crushes the cable casing onto the wire inside, that can’t be right.
Still, I have a strong elastic band that works amazingly well for now 🙂

The authorities here threw a maritime parade for the holidaymakers this week, about a dozen big cats, motor boats and old schooners were dressed up with lights and TV screens and paraded around the harbour/bay for a couple of hours, they seemed popular, I can understand that as the Malaysians seem to love their bright LED lights, and these boats were so decorated, that to me they looked like garish fruit machine/one armed bandits, on steroids. One catamaran had the whole side covered in a wall of flat screen tvs displaying flashing lights, 80 style pop video effects and adverts. 

The fireworks at the end were nice, above the giant plastic eagleFinally I managed to upload one of my videos, it’s me and kathy swmming around the boat in Ko Phi Phi. The boat is in about 8 metres of water, so clear.
Let me know if it doesn’t work.

We are hiring a car tomorrow, it’s Kathy’s last day here, so we are going to take a ride to the top of the big hill here in the gondola ‘sky ride’ and also stock up on a few bits and pieces. We will also check out the food festival in Chenang.

Paul Collister

 

 

Saturday 11th March   The Stony Magnificence of Koh Pethra

We weren’t in too much of a hurry to move on from Koh Muk this morning, so it was 10 30 before we weighed anchor and began the journey to Pethra. Not far into the journey, however, Paul noticed the instrument panel wasn’t showing any life so we couldn’t monitor the temperature or the engine revs. We had to stop so that he could do checks on it until he fixed the problem (the sealed fuse was intermittent apparently).

It was midday by the time we motored off and by 2 o’clock we were once again able to have all three sails up and no engine. The next three hours were very chilled. Captain Mainwaring, our trusty autohelm performed well with the steering while we watched out for marine traffic and life (no dolphins at all have been seen yet, although they are around apparently).  Pethra from a distance was long and large with high, undulating rocks. We motored around it to locate the most sheltered area.  The steep side of the biggest mountain on the island’s eastern side blocked the sunlight and gave us instant relief from its heat and glare.

It was 5 30 by then and we also felt the benefit of a cooling gusty wind. There was only one catamaran in the distance and a couple of longtails moored near a tiny fishing village on the beach further along. The sea swell made it a bit rolly on board but, not unbearably so and it was peaceful enough for an overnight stop. Paul had the rest of his squid for dinner along with some of my homemade veggie burgers. We were able to eat in the cockpit and watch the moon rise.

Pethra’s steep rock faces are home to thousands of sea swallows and it’s a protected island, so it isn’t possible to go ashore. We heard all sorts of different bird calls after the sun had set. With the time, and the silence to actually listen instead of merely ‘hearing’ them in the background, it sounded almost as if they were communicating with each other. It’s nice to think these birds have the island to themselves. Not all the birds of Thailand’s islands have been so lucky. The delicacy known as bird’s nest soup comes from the dried saliva the swallows or swifts use to build their nests and these have been illegally plundered, threatening the birds’ habitat as well as the environment. The nests are mostly commercially produced now but some guide books warn that rangers on protected islands are armed with guns to deter nest thieves.

Sunday 12th March  Tarutao National Park

We set off for Tarutao at 8 30 and on the way I read up about it in our out of date (1999) pilot guide. It was described as old, mysterious and primitive with sea turtle nests, a library and a museum. No wonder Paul had told me it would tick all my boxes. The sea was virtually deserted and very calm with diamond-like sparkles on its surface, and watching them was almost hypnotic after a while. At midday Paul pointed out Malaysia coming into view in the form of Langkawi Island and I realised how much I’m looking forward to seeing it again. It was the first place I spent any length of time when I came to Asia last August so it feels a bit like a home environment if that makes sense. Meanwhile, we had western Tarutao to explore. This island was our first port of call back in October when we left Langkawi but we had stopped on the eastern side when the weather had been windy and rainy. This time we picked up a mooring buoy in weather hot and sunny enough to require putting our canopy up for protection.

We pulled up on to the main beach at 4pm so that we could check in at the ranger’s office. Tarutao is a national park so there is a small admission fee (about £5) that goes towards its upkeep. It’s also an eco-tourist destination and is popular with backpackers because the basic accommodation is cheap and tents and sleeping bags can be hired for sleeping on the beach. After a brief chat with the ranger we went for an exploratory walk. The chalet-style accommodation is scattered throughout the wooded area, which also has shower facilities and a restaurant. We came upon the library which contained some intriguing old books, while a few modern paperbacks formed what was probably a book swap facility.

There was what looked like it might have been, or about to be, a games room but was full of dusty table-tennis tables, and abandoned bats and balls. Other buildings that might have once been intended as shops or cafes were in a neglected state. Walking down the centre path we saw some guests outside their chalets painting and meditating and a few people were cycling and jogging. It seemed to be an ideal ‘back to nature’, ‘away from it all’, ‘meditative retreat’ resort, it just doesn’t seem to get the amount of visitors it expected.

On the beach we saw a group of Buddhist monks sat around a couple of rudimentary tents and a little further down a couple of girls sharing one of the camp’s camouflage style tents. These few people had the whole beautiful seafront to themselves. The long white beach was populated only by sand crabs when we walked along it (signs warned of box jellyfish in the water and of monkeys from the forest who like to pilfer belongings). The tide was coming in, creating warm rivers to paddle in and it was blissfully quiet.

As it was almost sunset we bought a couple of drinks from the mini-mart and sat on a bench to watch it.  We had intended to eat in the restaurant but I didn’t fancy navigating the dinghy over the rocks in the shallow choppy water in the dark, especially as it had proved tricky enough spotting them in daylight!

Monday 13th March   Cruising Through the Mangroves

We had to endure the heat of the hottest part of the day but it was a trip that had to be done! A river wends its way through the lush mangroves and thick forests on Tarutao. We’d seen it when we arrived and knew that it was possible to dinghy through it but the tide needed to be right. 10 o’clock was the best time according to Paul’s research so we slapped on factor 50, donned hats and filled up with fuel for an ‘African Queen’ style trip through the jungle and swamps of Southern Thailand. Ok, that’s a slight exaggeration but as we got further in it did remind me of a jungle heartland. It was fabulous. The pictures show it better than I can describe it, although I can relate that the sounds of birds and monkeys added to the jungle-like atmosphere. I half expected to see crocodiles poking their heads up out of the still, murky water. At times, the tree branches were so low we had to duck but they did at least provide relief from the searing heat of the sun’s rays. We spent two hours enjoying the stunning scenery on that river and we had the whole place to ourselves. Below are quite a few pictures of the trip 🙂

Our next destination was to be Ko Lipe but it would be too long a journey, leaving at 12 as we were, so after slipping our mooring Paul looked for a suitable halfway point. Fifty one islands near to Tarutao form the National Park so there were plenty to choose from. Ko Tanga looked ideal but it turned out to be very deep close to the shore and then went shallow very suddenly so it took a fair bit of negotiating and a few attempts before were secure in 20 metres of water (all good practice). We could see an island called Ko Khai not too far away. This island has an arch which is popular with couples who want to walk under it to prolong their relationship or something. Anyway the island we chose was a lot more peaceful for the lack of any arch (fewer longtails and dinghies racing past).

Tuesday 14th March Koh Lipe (pronounced Lippy)

Both of us were up in time to see the sunrise this morning, but unfortunately it was blocked by clouds when it rose. We set off For Lipe not long after that so that we’d have more chance of picking up a buoy if there were any available.  Koh Lipe is a picturesque holiday resort and the bay looked crowded with a variety of vessels as we got nearer to it.  Quite a few boats and ferries were already moored or anchored and we took some time to suss out an appropriate spot. We thought we were in luck finally finding a free buoy after we had motored around and decided that it was too deep to anchor in most parts, while some of the free buoys were too near the coral for our boat. The free buoy turned out to be too good to be true because as we were tying to it a guy came over in his dinghy to warn us that it wasn’t safe – his boat had drifted off it the night before. Back to the drawing board then and after one failed attempt to anchor in 23 metres of water, we had just got it set and I was putting the gear into reverse when the gear lever went loose in my hand. I called out this news to Paul, expecting him to say it does that from time to time, and to fix it immediately but when he looked at it he said it was well and truly broken. I wasn’t sure how serious this was and tried not to imagine all kinds of disastrous scenarios. After three hours of investigative work in the midday sun with noisy longtails racing past us, Paul managed to construct a temporary solution in the form of a very rudimentary gearstick made from wire and a bolt! He worked at it in his usual calm, methodical and logical manner. I have to confess that the combination of noise and the sticky heat, as I fetched tools from the cabin and helped to test various parts as he compiled them, stressed me out quite a lot (to put it mildly). A relief then, when just before 5, with all the tools put away, it began to get cooler and we prepared to go ashore.

No surprise to find there were several longtails and daytripper boats near the shore, and as the water got clearer, lots of jagged rocks came into view and had to be negotiated in the dinghy. Our first impressions of Lipe weren’t very positive. The path we took from the beach trying to locate the shops led us onto a dusty and smelly building site, teeming with flying insects. When we eventually came upon walking street though, it was a vibrant and colourful area, full of backpackers and hostels and shops (including a couple selling second hand books :)). There were pubs and restaurants, Thai massage rooms, tattoo parlours and quirky cafe bars where customers can lie on comfy loungers and watch films. Vendors stand outside their establishments beckoning you inside, and all the time motor bikes roar up and down the crowded streets. We bought a few provisions, browsed some of the shops and then went for a much-needed drink and dinner on the beach.

Kathy