Author: paulcollister

Last night this was our view out at P Satang Besar, 

however just an hour before sunset, a very big thunderstorm/squall blew in, gusting 25-30 Knots, 

We were certainly chucked around a bit, but the anchor held really well, and after an hour or so of torrential rain, it calmed down, and Kathy could get on with her pie baking. She has been very resourceful with the cooking, since we haven’t been to any decent shops for several weeks now and supplies are low.
This morning we woke early to a lovely calm bright day. We were heading into Santubong River today, to finally get ashore and to some supermarkets and to check into Malaysia. The journey to this river means crossing a sand bar, which is only 0.5 meters deep on the chart, but today we have a 4 metre tide, at 10 AM so as we are 2 hours away we needed to get going pronto, and hit the bar not long after High Water. Also there are many unmarked wrecks and a few dangerous rocks on the way in.

Once at the river mouth, the sea was so calm, not much current and a huge array of little fishing boats with nets everywhere we had to weave our way through.

Below is our view from our anchorage. There’s a little group of jetties we can use to go ashore with our dinghy, but we can’t tie up to them. It’s a very tranquil spot with a great view. The only downside is that I expect some wildlife to visit us on the boat tonight, also last year 3 crocodiles were shot after killing some locals here, so I’m hoping they don’t bother us.

Below I have posted some pics I took in Indonesia on our way across

Tied to a coconut, probably not good in a storm.

P. Airarabu

Now we are about to go ashore, this will be fun, it’s been a few weeks since we were in a shop that sold bread or lettuce, I’m looking forward to getting some Diet coke, and Kathy is keen to replenish her well depleted vino blanco supplies.

Paul Collister

Yesterday we arrived in Sarawak, but we had no internet still. Today we set off towards Kuching, where we would get some connectivity, we had planned to travel about 7 hours to arrive at Pulau Satang Besar (Big Satang Island), but a big squall came through, this lasted for a few hours and headed us with strong winds and waves. By the time the squall had passed we didn’t have time to get to Satang in daylight, so we settled on an island quite close to us called Talang, this island is a turtle sanctuary, and in the picture below you can see the big beach, where they visit to lay eggs at night. Just as we arrived, as if they had organised a welcoming party, a massive turtle appeared next to the boat and put on a little show for us. On the way over last night we had a pod of Dolphins visit us as well, so at last we see some decent aquatic life, other than flying fish.

We had a long trip over here, being low on fuel and having no wind was a pain, we had to balance speed and fuel consumption to get here. We spent three days getting here, and I will put some pictures of our trip up on the next post, but here is one of the many squalls we had to endure. Right now we are happy to be anchored and catching up on a weeks worth of emails, facebook posts and tweets etc. Tomorrow we will try to get to P. Talang, then the day after to the mainland where we can get ashore and check in, then get some supplies sorted.

Paul Collister

On Tuesday morning we were just relaxing a little before we left Tarempa for the last time, when we heard a groaning/growling sound from the bow, I now recognise this as the chain dragging over rock. After all our anchor woes, I really didn’t want to be stuck in rock again, and we shouldn’t be, as we are a distance offshore and anchored in sand.
I ran up on deck, and noticed the wind had swung to the west, pushing us towards the shore, and we were again over the reef, in about 8 metres depth. So I guessed as the wind slacked, the chain fell onto the rock. I winched us in, bringing up about ten metres of chain to get us away from the shore, but then the chain jammed, it was hooked on some rock. “Not my day today”, I muttered to Kathy as I came below to reset the windlass power trip, which had tripped under the strain of the chain trapped under the rock.

Back on deck, I released 10 metres of chain, went to the helm, and could see on the chart plotter track, we had done a big clockwise circle to get to where we were, so hard to starboard, and off we went, there was no resistance that I could tell, and the boat headed off, past where the rock might have been, and into deeper water. Back to the windlass, and I pulled up 20 metres of chain, checked we were back in deep water, and returned to the relaxing mode, feeling smug that I had one over on the rock, Rocks 2: Sister Midnight 1:

An hour later, we headed off to spend a night or two at the waterfall bay in Temburun. This is a small village at the end of a winding cove.

This was worrying Kathy as it’s a complicated journey, not far, just 7 miles or so, but most of the journey is between shallow rocky reefs, which twist and turn. The charts are no use here, because they are out so much you would certainly be on the reef if you followed them. So we overlay google maps images over the charts, these are spot on, and you can actually see the reef clearly on the images.Also we had waypoints from others who had made the journey before, so I wasn’t too worried. As it turned out, besides the software continually crashing, or not picking up the GPS data, it went well. the reef was easy to see.
The village in Temburun is typical of many here, it’s a road built on stilts at the side of a steep hill that is too steep to build on, off the road are houses built on stilts. It runs for maybe a mile along the coast, and has a couple of shops, and a public jetty for the residents. Everything is basic, but they have everything they need, water, electricity and a 3g signal, sometimes. Our reason for visiting was to see the waterfall, which is claimed to be one of the areas main attractions, It’s certainly a big waterfall, and when we visited had plenty of water flowing, but the path up, and the visitor area is terribly dilapidated, and deserted /  overgrown. We only made it halfway up the hill. However it was worth the walk, the view was wonderful, and seeing Sister Midnight sitting at anchor a long way away made me realise how comfortable I had now become about anchoring and getting the boat to hold. On our way back to the dinghy we had a walk through the village and along the way the local people, especially the kids were very keen to say hello, or ‘hello mister, how are you’  and to make us feel welcome.

We are making use of the fact this may be our last internet connection for 10 or more days, as that is how long it will take for us to meander over to Malaysia.

On Friday we hope to be in the lagoon at Pulau Bawah, I nicked this pic from the internet.After that 3-5 days sailing the 250 miles east towards Kuching in Sarawak, there are a couple of islands we can stop at on the way, but we may just slog on through the night(s) to get there quicker.

Paul Collister

 

What a palaver, we went ashore this morning (Monday), and checked out with Customs, Immigration and the Harbour Master. That all went well, but took a an hour or so of waiting in offices while officers ‘typed’ (on a typewriter) our clearance papers. For my kids, you can google typewriter, it’s like a computer and printer in one, but it doesn’t crash as much.

We did a bit more provisioning as we won’t see any shops now for over a week, maybe two. Then back to the boat to prepare to leave. We are going to a big waterfall that cascades down towards the beach and provides a good display from the anchorage, or so we read. It’s rained heavy here today and yesterday, in fact I got into the water collecting mode yesterday and managed to fill two 30 litre jugs with rain water, so the water fall should be on full form.
So up with the anchor,  and away, well that was the plan, I had 60m of chain and 30m of rope out, as we had anchored in 24m of water, but we had fallen back to a spot over the reef, which is very rocky, and only 8m deep. consequently as we had been swinging around for several days, and going from 30 knt gusts to flat calm nights, the rope had wrapped around the rocks. We couldn’t do anything, the rock was in about 15m of water and I couldn’t see it from the deck, or when I went snorkeling. I tried motoring around the point but we were stuck. Also at this point I was close to a catamaran in front of us. Thankfully their skipper was a diver and after I pleaded for his help, he was happy to oblige, but had to go ashore and would do it tomorrow. That was fine, we were checked out, and tomorrow we would be illegals, but I don’t think anyone will mind under the circumstances. I sat down to chill for the rest of the day, looking at our position on the GPS I understood now why we hadn’t moved very much over the recent squalls, as we are pinned to this rock.
About 4PM our neighbour knocked on our boat and said he would do it now, so we leaped into action, it took 4 or 5 dives before he got the rope clear, but pulling up the chain brought us right up to his boat, he was lying over our chain. His wife motored forward, so we decided to get the whole thing up and re anchor, but by now it was 5pm and the sun would set in an hour.  It was too late to get to the waterfall now, that requires very careful eyeball navigation between reefs to get into the bay. So we motored into a bay next to the town here, we had met some Americans on a large powerboat out of Singapore who had motored in the bay, they said it was great, and we had good charts, so off we went, just 20 mins away.
We found a spot in between the reefs, that should have been good and dropped our anchor, as soon as we tried to back down on it, I felt the crunching of anchor skipping over rock through the chain. Without further ado, Kathy headed to the chain locker to flake chain, while I started to winch up. Imagine my joy after just a few metres of chain coming in, the winch ground to a halt with the chain ever so taut. I had managed to somehow wrap the chain around a rock again. I released the chain a bit and motored around, then  tried again, this time the chain broke free with a loud twang/shudder which Kathy felt below. I had to repeat this 2 more times before we got the anchor free again. By now we were both feeling with the score at rocks 2: Sister Midnight 0: the rocks had the upper hand on us, and we left that bay. Now we only had 20 minutes left before sunset, and anchoring in the dark was not something we wanted to do. We raced back to Tarempa town and started all over again, fortunately, we found a spot well out of town, where we had once anchored before and held well, this seemed to work ok, we have 50 meters of chain out in 16m of water, not much of a scope but it’s holding well. The weather is supposed to be calming down now and tomorrow should be another baking hot day.
Before all of this fun, we took some pictures walking around the back of Tarempa town, which seems a little more upmarket.

Self contained street lighting, that doesent seem to work if it’s cloudy in the day

Paul Collister

 

I hope this works out, the file is 1080p HD so should look good full screen. Difficult to test here with poor internet speeds.

These chappies lived under the boat while we were at anchor in the anambas islands for a couple of days.

Let me know if the are technical issues with the file.

Paul Collister

We upped anchor from Tarempa after an official reception dinner thrown by the authorities here. This was similar to one we had in Las Palmas and in St Lucia on the ARC. Lots of difficult speeches, and daft awards. It was for the participants of the ‘Sail Malaysia’ rally, but Raymond, who was running the rally was happy for us to attend. He was also happy for us to go to the dinner barbecue the next day on the beach resort island of Pidi, just a few hours away.

Dementors, feeding on our hull. (video to follow)

So we stocked up with some last minute fruit and Veg, I bought 4 big bottles of the local version of Coke, you don’t see much coke here, and I remembered back to the ‘stop the war’ march I attended in London some time back in protest against Blair’s Iraq war, and there was a strong anti coke lobby there, an Arabic version of coke was on sale everywhere. I wondered if Indonesia, which is a very strict muslim country in many areas actually frowned on coke, and probably most American, and UK goods. I have noticed when asked where I am from, when I say England, I don’t get an enthusiastic interested kind of response, as I did in Malaysia. I’d like to say Ireland, and see how that goes down, but that would be fraudulent. So I bought the local version, just like coke in colour and fizziness, but the aftertaste is identical to the mouthwash my dentist uses, hideous. I wanted to give it away to passing fishermen, who would probably love it in these baking conditions, but with it being Ramadan and they are fasting, it might be rude. Tarempa is a fascinating town, it’s mostly built on stilts except for a few buildings hacked into the cliff walls.

The market is an interesting place to visit and pick up fresh food

Twilight zone or Dr Who?

So off we set, down a channel between several large islands to the barbecue location.The route was strewn with dangerous coral. The first one was right in the middle of the channel and very shallow and very obvious. We had to motor towards it, then turn left to avoid it. It was ten minutes away when Kathy and I started our ‘heated debate’ about the best way to look for coral and to signal to each other what to do about it. We honed in on the difference between ‘having the sun behind you’ and ‘having your back to the sun’, which to me seemed identical, but to Kathy, one was quite clear, the other not. At some point during this debate, I remembered we needed to look out for the reef ahead, and sure enough, there it was just about to pass under our bowsprit. Crikey cor Blimey, I thought, full astern, hard to port, and we missed it, we probably had a good minute or two before disaster, but we both felt a bit stupid after that. I set the course for the correct way around the reef and all was fine. However, a couple of local guys in a small fishing boat must have been horrified to see us motoring at full speed to our demise, and had sped over to try and avert another shipwreck. On arriving they insisted we follow them, and for the next hour we weaved in and out of large patches of coral until we emerged on the other side of the island safely. We didn’t really need them, as the course they led us through, was almost identical to the one we had plotted, but it was ever so kind of them to help. The guy below didn’t pay attention eitherAnother sobering experience.

We anchored outside of the barbecue island in about 22 meters, this is getting normal now, what has become a major pain is the windless doesn’t like my rope, I have 50 meters of rope to haul in, in these conditions, and although the windlass grips it very well, it won’t let go, the rope is meant to fall off and drop into the chain locker below, there is a metal bar that forces it off the wheel if it didn’t fall off on its own, however the bar is sized for chain, and works well there, with rope, it often sneaks up the side of the bar and jams. Once this happens, it’s a major pain, one one end of the rope is 60 mtrs of chain, pulling hard on the windlass, and you can’t pull this up by hand at all, so I have been having to run a line back to the winch on the mast and haul the anchor rode up a bit to get some slack, tie this off then do the same for the other side of the rope. This can happen a few times when hauling up 50 mtrs of rope, and each time the rope gets a little mangled. As soon as I can, I need to replace this rope.

The dinner was fine, but very expensive, we paid about £20 / head for a bbq buffet affair, drinks were extra, 2 nights earlier, we had dined well in a Tarempa restaurant, both meals together with drinks came to £3. That’s my kind of restaurant 🙂

The next morning we motored around the coral in the dinghy, it was very shallow and just as I wondered if it was too shallow, and how lucky I had been so far with rocks etc, that we hit something. I couldn’t stop the engine, because the stop switch had been playing up, so I tried to put the engine in Neutral, but from the noise it was making, I knew I had broken something. So much of what I’m doing here is a learning curve for me, and I was just about to learn how shear pins work! Basically it’s a pin that connects the engine to the prop, if the prop should get jammed on something, the pins shears, the engine happily carries on and hopefully no other damage happens,  I remember we carry spares with the engine so they are handy, but I must have been thinking of Stardust, as there were no pins around, they are about the same size as a 1 inch nail, which in an emergency, might work. So it was fun rowing back, I need the exercise, but I was also aware that there was quite a current flowing, being a full moon, fortunately toward the boat, but I was keen not to overshoot it, as the next stop north might be China. By the way, we only get one tide a day here, which is odd.

The rest of our trip was uneventful, one tropical paradise after another, as we skipped around the islands and coves of the NE part of Anambas. The weather has been lovely, sometimes overcast, but that brings welcome relief from the sun. The local fishermen are very curious about our boat, one young man Tommy, rowed over, in a dugout canoe, to say hello. He clung to the side of our boat staring in, so I invited him onboard. He seemed very impressed, he gave me a fish and wouldn’t accept any money from me. He sat there for ages just smiling, it would have been awkward, but I had a lot of epoxy work to do, and I was creating shear pins, from spare rivets, having found nothing better onboard. after an hour or so, he left when I explained we had to leave. Everything is done by gesture, as it’s very rare to find an english speaker here.

The snorkeling is the best so far, the water the clearest, and a great variety of life below the water, some of the coral, that looks like rocks, has mouths, purple and jagged, but ready to eat anything that gets close. rather scary. 

Right now though, heres a picture of improvisation, when you can’t find the clamps, there’s always a way to hold things in place while the glue sets. (PS it only lasted a couple of days 🙁 )

The list of jobs on the boat is still growing, I rowed around the hull and cleaned off the tyre marks from the Dalac haulout, and polished the stainless rubbing strakes. I am a little disappointed that there is a noise coming from the cutless bearing/prop. I expect it’s the shaft rubbing on the bearing, it’s the same noise that caused me to haulout and replace the bearing. I didn’t have it before the fishing line wrap,  I think I had a similar noise once on the baba 30, yet before launch, I checked and the prop shaft turned easily and wasn’t stiff at all. I suspect an inferior rubber on the bearing, or possibly a bent shaft or misaligned engine. yet I haven’t put any unusual stress on the engine, as you might get when you wrap a rope around the prop and bang the engine to a sudden stop in gear.

An interesting aspect of sailing here is the fact that the charts are useless, if you follow them you will be in big trouble, see belowThis route, the straight lines, was plotted on Navionics to clear the land, but google earth shows the error. Fortunately we have a good set of google earth images for all the coastlines around here which we load up on our OpenCpN chartplotter. They are great for spotting coral/reefs and the gaps in between where you might anchor. On the subject of cartography, best not let the flat earth people see this pic. 

We have been away from a marina for some time now, and will get fuel delivered in tarempa this weekend, we just took a delivery of water.then next week, we head south to Bawah Island, at the bottom of the Arambas group, before heading east to Sarawak, which is part of Malaysia on the north part of the Island of Borneo.

Again, Internet is very scratchy out here, I suspect all the carriers/providers here share the same Radio link back to the mainland.

Paul Collister

Just a quick post to say we are off exploring the islands now for as long as we can last before food runs out, 2 weeks max, It’s going to be very sporadic when we can get internet access, so don’t expect much from us.

In 2 weeks time we will be back here in the capital, Tarampa, and checking out for Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia, a few days sail away where we hope to go to the Rainforest World Music Festival, like a big WOMAD.

Last night we gatecrashed the welcome party put on for the Sail Malaysia ‘going east’ rally, by the local government and Indonesian tourist board. There was a display of traditional dancing, lovely food, (well maybe not for Kathy), and quite a few speeches by the dignitaries. also we all got a nice goodie bag at the end.

Today my fellow countrymen will be voting, in quite an important election, I predicted the last two important votes badly wrong, i.e. who on earth would vote for Trump, and the Brits would never be so stupid to leave Europe, So todays prediction is ‘Corbin hasn’t got a chance’, hopefully that will do the job. This will be the first time I am out of communication range during a general election that I can remember, so it’s going to be odd hearing the news some time after the event.

 

Paul Collister

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