I’m currently anchored off Pulau Tiga, half way between Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sabah, and Pulau Labuan, the duty free island state just offshore from Brunei after a glorious days sailing.
First I had two nights in KK in the luxurious setting of the Sutera harbour marina.
Yesterday I popped into town and picked up groceries, finally got some nice tomatoes and fresh lettuce, as usual, the Imago mall had put up a big display for the Chinese New Year
Can you spot the lucky charms on the shelf below, It wasn’t that long ago that the colonising Brits insisted the indigenous tribes cut down on the old skull collecting thing.
Pulau Tiga, (AKA Survivor Island)
Early morning, 9AM and I’m all set to leave the marina, I had to wait for the office to open to pay the bill. It was a gorgeous day with just a light breeze and a very calm sea. The marina only charged me for one day, even though I had been there two nights. Very generous of them, I will be back.
I motored effortlessly out of the marina into the sea, and immediately realised there was enough wind from the right direction to sail, so up went the Main and both headsails, off went the engine and we were away. I started off close hauled, then as I passed around the back of Manakuan Island I turned to the south and let out more sail until I was on a reach. On went the Monitor self steering and I settled down to a 4 hour passage to P. Tiga. The sea remained very flat but the wind varied between 5 and 10 knots, however we spent most of the time making between 5 and 7 knots, helped along by a bit of current heading south. There is a buoy at the bottom of Tiga, it’s an easterly cardinal, meaning to keep east of it, It’s a long way off the island and marks a big underwater spit that travels out, I figured I could cut the corner a bit, one chart had 20 mtrs of water there, the other only 1.8, but that was an old chart. As I approached in 28 mtrs of water I was quite shocked to see it go from 28 down to 4 metres in less than 10 seconds, at this point I went to kill the revs only to remember the engine hadn’t been on for many hours, and the sudden realisation it’s not so easy to kill speed under sail, I hung a big left, risking a jibe, away from the shallow and quickly saw the depth rise. Back on course and I was then able to beat up the leeward ( in the winds shadow) side of the island and find a nice anchorage. This was one of the few times I had sailed the boat in a decent wind but a flat sea, it was very pleasant. I have put a little vid of the conditions on below.
Also I was able to measure the tacking ability easier, and I programmed a tack into the autopilot to take me through exactly 90 deg, which turned out to be pretty close to the limit of the current sail / rig setup. This means I can only sail 45 degrees into the wind when trying to head upwind. I would hope to get closer to 35 deg, and can fine tune this, one of the problems I can see is that the headstay is not very tight and I need to see what I can do about this.
Pulau Tiga was the setting for the TV Reality series Survivor island, Kathy mentioned this when we took shelter here a few weeks back, but didn’t go ashore. This time it’s so calm and sunny here I was able to launch the Kayak and have a little wander. First off I paddled over to the nw edge where the beaches were full of monkeys, shy ones who disappeared into the trees as I approached, the island is full of lovely beaches everywhere, at the first resort I spotted the monitor lizard below, and while snapping this a bigger shock appeared from the trees
A Zombie! not really, but a mud volcano monster. At first I wondered what the heck… I thought this person has some serious skin issues, and tried not to stare, then I remembered the ‘mud volcano experience’ that the island is famous for.
More of the monsters appeared, heading for the sea, quite surreal, they posed for selfies, then entered the sea, only to return as near humans. Apparently they will look younger and live longer now, somehow I don’t think this has been through a very thorough peer review process. But it’s cheaper than buying ‘No 7’ or whatever the current trend is.
I took these pictures with the new android phone, and I do like the phone, the big screen is much nicer than I imagined, and all the apps work just the same as on my iphone, however the camera sucks. I hadn’t appreciated how much I take for granted on the iPhone, there’s loads of shake on this one, not sure if that’s due to exposure time, or lack of stabilising software, also it cant handle bright lights, or low light. The display is rubbish in bright sunlight, so bad that the 2 minutes of footage of the monkeys I shot turned out to consist of my ugly mug staring at the phone trying to see what I was filming, without realising the camera was on me! SO now I don’t know what to do, it’s nice being able to take pictures from the Kayak without worrying about damaging the phone, for £90 I can risk it, but I do miss the quality of the iPhone.
It’s now tomorrow, I couldn’t get internet last night to upload this, and it’s very calm, I will explore the island more and stop another night.
Just as a footnote, not everything is perfect in paradise, I have a little hole in my finger where I burnt the skin off melting the end of some plastic rope I was seizing, then I followed that with a broken toe. At least I suspect it’s broken or very badly bruised. I had left one of my Yankee sheets (ropes) lying in the cockpit sole, normally I’m more tidy, and I jumped down onto the rope, and my foot landed on the big figure of eight knot in the end. The knot rolled, my toes curled under it, and my foot continued in one direction and the toe in question remained steadfast. It hurt like hell, I couldn’t walk much for a day, and it went a funny colour. If you’re reading this Kathy, and they find me dead on the boat from some deadly toe based infection, I want it clearly stated on my death certificate as cause of death to be ‘Death by Figure of eight knot’. However I think it’s healed enough for me to try one of the island walks later.
Paul Collister