14 December 2016 Straits Quay Marina, Malaysia
Our last day in Straits Quay Marina - the weather forecast looks okay for tomorrow and we'll have a 2.5 metre tide just after midday. I went for my final run and then pottered about for the rest of the day, doing some jobs and a beer run to the supermarket. Glenys slaved away over a hot sewing machine, making a new cover for our Life Sling, replacing the original which has disintegrated after five years of tropical sun.
In the evening, we went to the local food court with “Sea Monkey” and “Conrad”.
15 December 2016 Straits Quay Marina to Pulau Bidan, Malaysia
High tide wasn’t until 14:00, so I ran some errands in the morning. I’m in the process of buying some spare parts for our dive regulators and the scuba company can’t take a credit card over the phone, so I had to walk to a bank and deposit the cash in their bank account - all very quaint, but inconvenient. Back at the boat, Glenys had tidied up and we were ready to go.
We left an hour before high tide and had no problems with the depth - the shallowest part was in the marina, where I cut the corner next to the sea wall. We then had a dull, four hour motor to Pulau Bidan where we anchored out of the persistent swell, on the east side at 5°44.77N 100°17.44E in 5 metres of water. It’s a very pleasant looking island with two beaches and coconut trees swaying in the breeze.
We had a very relaxed evening, eating dinner in the cockpit, gazing at the peaceful anchorage in the moonlight - much better than being stuck in a marina.
16 December 2016 Pulau Bidan to The Gorge, Langkawi
It wasn’t a peaceful night. I was awoken just after midnight by newly acquired mosquito bites on my hands and arms, so I had to get out of bed; treat the bites; spray on some insect repellent; find and switch on our electric mosquito coil; and place the mosquito net in the hatch over our bed.
I had three hours restless sleep (trying not to scratch my bites) before I was woken by waves slapping on the hull. Dragging myself into the cockpit, I found that the wind had veered 180 degrees, picked up to 12 knots from the east, creating 2 foot wind waves and put us on a lee shore. However, the anchor was holding and we were still in 5 metres of water, so I went back to bed.
A couple of hours later, I was woken again by a strange jerky motion. Back in the cockpit, I found that the wind had veered to the south east and we were now in 2.4 metres of water. We hadn’t dragged, but the wind shift had swung us over a shallow, uncharted sand bank. The tide was falling and with another 0.8 metres to go, we’d soon be aground. Don’t panic…
I shouted for Glenys, started the engine and we motored further out to a depth of eight metres and dropped the anchor at 05°44.82N 100°17.51°E. (Later, looking at the Navionics chart, someone has put update on the chart showing a drying rock, just to the north of where we anchored, although we saw no sign of it when we left the anchorage. Nevertheless, it might be prudent to anchor a little further south at 05°44.75N 100°17.53°E.)
Being six o’clock, we couldn’t be bothered to go back to bed and had a nice cup of tea waiting for the sun to come up. We left at the crack of dawn, and motor sailed for nine hours, all the way to The Gorge in Langkawi, anchoring at 06°11.48N 099°47.21E in 9 metres of water. It’s a very impressive anchorage with sheer limestone cliffs and sea eagles soaring above looking for food.
17 December 2016 The Gorge to Pulau Singa Besar, Langkawi
It was a lovely peaceful night. The Gorge is one of our favourite anchorages in Langkawi, isolated and, even better, the sun doesn’t get high enough to hit the boat until ten o’clock, so it stays nice and cool. Unfortunately, by ten o’clock, the tourist operations are on the go and packs of jet skis come screaming through the anchorage. You can hear them from about half a mile away and they come over the horizon like the “Smokers” in the old movie “Waterworld”.
After two packs of jet skis had rocked us, we upped anchor and motored though the impressive limestone islands to Pulau Singa Besar where we anchored in 5 metres at 06°13.60N 099°44.83E. This is a large open bay with lots of room and a favourite amongst cruisers for a beach barbeque.
Our main reason for coming here was to have calm water and enough depth for me to scrape the barnacles off the bottom of the keel. We haul out on the 21st and it’s always hard to get at the bottom of the keel when the boat is resting on it. I ran the dive compressor, filled a tank and jumped into the water.
The visibility was about one foot and there was a strong current, so it was a bit of a mission to scrape off the big clumps of barnacles. The rate of growth is prodigious in these Malaysian marinas that we’ve been staying in. It took me 20 minutes of groping and feeling my way along the keel, but I think that I’ve done a good enough job to slap some antifoul paint on.
In the evening, we invited Hugh and Brenda from “Scotia” for dinner. After a few drinks and a fabulous curry, we dragged out the guitars and ukulele and had a great jam session. It’s been months and months since we last played with someone else. Brenda picks a mean folk song, so I’m motivated to learn more finger picking rhythms like The Boxer and Let Her Go.
18 December 2016 Pulau Singa Besar to Telaga Bay, Langkawi
After breakfast (and two paracetamol for my hangover), I pottered about doing a couple of jobs. I pickled our water-maker a few months ago and had removed the two pre-filters. My plan was to get the water-maker going again to test it before I give it a big service. When I tried to replace the two filters I found that one of the large o-rings on a filter case was missing, so I spent an hour searching the bilge and my spares cupboards, but couldn’t find the o-ring or a replacement.
This was a bit of a disaster because Langkawi is not renowned for boat spares. A short dinghy trip across to “Scotia” solved my problem. After a decade of cruising, Hugh has built up an impressive spares collection and a big bag of o-rings yielded the exact one I wanted. I nearly kissed him…
With the water-maker re-assembled, we motor-sailed a few miles out to sea to some slightly cleaner water and ran the water-maker for an hour, which worked fine. One hour later, we were anchored in the peaceful Telaga Bay at 06°21.71N 099°40.77E in 2.8 metres of water. I jumped in the dinghy and zipped ashore to the marina office where I was able to book a car for tomorrow, so that we can do some pre-Christmas provisioning - i.e. buy booze.
19 December 2016 Telaga Bay, Langkawi
We picked up our hire car - only £10 for the day. The car belongs to one of the marina staff, who make a bit of money on the side by lending their cars out to cruisers. No forms, no hassle and no insurance… Our first stop was at the Chinese supermarket in Matsirat, where we started to stock up on tins and long life supplies ready for our trip across the Indian Ocean.
Langkawi is a “Duty free” island and last year you could buy as much booze as you wanted at very cheap prices with no questions asked. Unfortunately, there has been a considerable amount of smuggling, with duty free alcohol being sold in other parts of Malaysia, so the government has clamped down.
Now there’s a customs officer in every “duty free” store and they have a computer system where they record your passport number when you buy liquor, wine or beer. Also, there’s a monthly limit of only 3 cases of beer and 5 litres of wine or spirits. This is a total disaster to our provisioning plans - we were hoping to stock up with enough booze to last us across the Indian Ocean.
We decided to buy mostly rum and gin, with a single 3 litre box of wine for Christmas. The personal allowance is per calendar month, so we’ll have another allowance on the 1st January, so it looks like we’ll be delaying our departure from Malaysia until the 2nd January.
After lunch in Kuah Town, we bought some more groceries and then went to get some US dollars and some Indian Rupees. The money changer is in a real dodgy place, up some narrow stairs and along a deserted corridor, but they are a very friendly family of Indians (sat behind study iron bars). We bought $1,000 USD, which we’ll carry as emergency money to use in any places where there isn’t an ATM (or it won’t work…) We also bought £20 worth of Indian Rupees ready for our trip to the Andamans in January.
20 December 2016 Telaga Bay to Rebak Marina, Langkawi
It threw it down last night and it drizzled all morning with low cloud hanging gloomily over the anchorage (Gloomily? Is that a real word?) Anyway, it was grey and dismal. We were intending to go to the fuel dock and fill up with diesel, but by noon, the rain was still falling and we gave up. Glenys brightened my day by producing grilled bacon and tomato butties with brown sauce - Muslims really don’t know what they’re missing.
(As an aside, a few weeks ago, Glenys chatted to a Malaysian nurse at the eye clinic, who was wearing a Hijab scarf, but was able to say, in a northern accent, “I could murder a bacon butty”. Apparently, some English guy had taught her to say this and she thought it was very funny.)
After lunch, we motored in the rain to Rebak Marina, ready to haul out tomorrow. Glenys’ eye surgeon has banned her from doing any physical labour for a month, so I’ve contacted Sea Spray Marine Services, who are providing a labourer for tomorrow to do the wet sanding to prepare the hull, so that I can paint on the anti-fouling.
In the evening, we went to a jam session with a few of the local marina residents, which was good fun with a combination of ukuleles and guitars, but the thick clouds of evil, black mosquitos drove us away at sunset.
21 December 2016 Rebak Marina, Langkawi
There was a fair bit of hanging about this morning, while we waited to be hauled out, but by lunchtime we’d been pressure-washed and plonked down on the hard. We’re only planning to be out of the water for a week, so they’ve given us a prime place near the showers and, more importantly, the bar.
Our labourer arrived in the afternoon to start scraping the hull. I was hoping that it would be a quick job, but the International Interswift 5800 anti-foul paint that we put on in Phuket nine months ago is terrible. We’ve got loads of barnacles and, once the hull dried out, the paint started to craze and is flaking off. Mark from Seaspray Services had a look and says that it’s a very bad base for the next coat of paint and ought to be stripped off.
This means a lot more preparation work, but I agreed to go ahead. It took our man 3 hours to do 1/8th of the hull, so he might not be finished tomorrow, which would delay everything and I might have to work on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day.
On a positive note, I removed the old propeller and fitted the new one. It was a bit of a fiddle because the keyway on the propeller is a slightly different size to the keyway on the shaft, so it took a couple of hours to file a step on the new key and fit it.