On my last day in Kota Kinabalu, I headed off to the Jabatan Laut, (Literally, Department Sea, or harbour master). I cleared out with them and customs. Then back to the Imago mall to get some fresh lettuce, tomatoes and spuds. As I arrived the dancers were kicking off again and I managed to get some lovely footage (no pun intended).
That evening I took some pictures of the sunset from the quay where the hotel guests go to see it.
The night before I visited the beach at Tanjung Aru again.
This is the local beach for KK, and it was rammed with Chinese people, everyone of them seemingly fused to their mobile phones, It seemed that they had gone there, not to enjoy the beach, but to look at it, very odd. We used to spend our summers on the beaches at Barcelona, where the locals know how to use a beach, they build bars on them, setup volleyball courts, sit, tan, swim, drink, eat, smoke weed, and just chill. Now I had a few hundred tourists in front of me, marching up and down the beach, photographing it, photographing themselves and each other, ‘at the beach’. Nobody seemed to realise you can play games, jump in the sea, build sandcastles etc!
I wondered if many of them come from inland China and hadn’t seen a beach before. I noticed new arrivals here at the resort often get quite excited when they see the fish swimming in the marina!
So after an evening of packing things away, and a good nights sleep it was time to fill up with fuel and checkout of this resort. No more luxury for me until we reach the Philippines I expect.
The boat has so much prop walk, especially going astern, I have learnt to take advantage of this when manoeuvring in tight spaces. Basically what this means is that if I rev up the engine, either ahead or astern, the back of the boat kicks to the left, I can make the bow move left easily with the bow thruster, so I can almost walk the boat sideways just by bursts of ahead and astern, with the odd touch of bow thruster. This came in handy this morning as there were many boats around the fuel dock, and I had to fit into a tight gap.
Not so good if the dock is on the starboard side. As soon as I fuelled up I left for the short 3 hour journey to my current location, in a little sandy cove just NE of the main port of KK
Leaving the resort meant motoring through all the day tripper boats that speed between the Marina, town and the cluster of islands out here.
The islands look lovely, but crowded with fast day-tripper boats razzing around everywhere.
A little later I came across the para-boaty-thing boats, lots of them, all motoring into the wind for lift off and landing, which meant they all just crossed my path.
One cut right across my bow, and I wondered what might happen should he misjudge things and the poor lass in the parachute found her line wrapped around my mast. 
I don’t think we covered that on the RYA Yacht Master course.
Once past the main island Pulua Gaya, I turned into the wind, got the mainsail up, a little startled by the dead cockroach that seemed to jump out of the mainsail at me, then turned off (away from ) the wind and sailed close hauled to my destination.
So I was able to sail for the last 90 minutes at around 6 knots, which was nice.
Early start tomorrow as I was reminded that everywhere will be shutting down in a few weeks for the New Year, and I need to get into the boatyard pronto if this work is going to get done.
Paul Collister