6 November 2015 Singapore to Pulau Pisang, Malaysia
Despite being on the fuel dock at eight o'clock, it took ages to refuel and pay our marina bill. The office didn't open until nine o'clock and, of course, everything was sequential - wait for the fuel dock attendant, wait for the water and electricity meters to be read, wait for the complicated bill to be recalculated twice and printed out, etc. However, we were soon at the Immigration quarantine anchorage; cleared out and, by half past ten, we were on our way.
Escaping Singapore was a little challenging. We motor-sailed just outside the northern edge of the shipping lanes, hoping to keep out of trouble. Our route took us through a big ship anchorage, where, unfortunately, a large tanker decided to pull up its anchor right in front of us. I tried to call them on Channel 16, but there was no response, so I had no idea where they were going.
I assumed that he was heading off into the shipping channels, so I crossed over to his starboard side. It took him ten minutes to build up his speed to ten knots and then he decided that he was going to cut in front of us towards one of the Singapore ports. I tried again to talk to him, but no joy and then the cheeky bugger gave one huge blast on his horn (turning to starboard) and went for it. He was the over-taking vessel, outside the shipping lanes, wouldn't answer me and forced me to take avoiding action before he pulverised us - I was annoyed.
I used to have a t-shirt, showing a large eagle swooping down on a small mouse and the mouse is stood still giving the eagle the “finger”. The t-shirt had the words, the “The Final Act of Defiance”. I’m afraid that as bridge of the huge ship passed by us, I walked to a prominent position on our aft deck and did the same as the mouse. I hope the captain saw me.
We managed to get into the Straits of Malacca without any further incident, where we found a ten knot wind directly against us. Fortunately, we had a very helpful 1-2 knot current with us, which pushed us along at seven knots, enabling us to get to Pulau Pisang (01°27.81N 103°15.79E), where we anchored in 4 metres of water in the lee of the island. There’s not a lot here, but that’s no problem because we don’t intend to go ashore until we get to Port Dickson, where we’ll clear in.
It’s 450 miles from Singapore to Langkawi - sailing up the western coast of the Malaysian peninsula. We've read various pilot books and other cruisers’ blogs and, sad to say, it’s appears to be a poor cruising area. There are some interesting historical ports (Mallaca and Georgetown), but the water is murky, so there’s no diving or snorkelling and many of the anchorages are road-steads with little protection. On this trip north, we've decided to just keep going, staying one night at each anchorage - perhaps when we come back south, we’ll spend more time exploring the coast.
7 November 2015 Pulau Pisang to Pulau Besar, Malaysia
Glenys woke me up in the middle of the night, suffering from Conjunctivitis. It was so bad that she couldn't see out of one eye and needed me to find the correct medication from our first aid kit. It was a hot and humid night, so we both lay awake for a while, watching the flashes of lightning and hearing the thunder as a big thunderstorm passed close to us. Fortunately, we didn't have any strong winds, but the wind direction varied giving us wind against tide for some of the night making it uncomfortable.
We set off at the crack of dawn, knowing that, with a 70 mile passage ahead of us, we had to average 5.8 knots to arrive before sunset. Unfortunately, the 10 knot wind was against us all day, so we had to motor-sail and had to run the engine at higher revs than normal. On the positive side, the tidal current was with us for most of the day, but the wind-against-tide made for some choppy seas, so we were pitching quite a lot - not the most restful motion.
By four o'clock, ominous black clouds had formed over the coast five miles to our starboard side and sure enough, we soon had a spectacular set of lightning bolts illuminating the shore. With 15 miles to go, we could only watch and pray that the storm stayed over the mainland.
We arrived at Pulau Besar (02°06.49N 102°20.56E) half an hour before sunset and anchored in 5 metres of water. It’s only a small island, so we weren't expecting to get much protection or sleep. The thunderstorm started to head out to sea just after dark, but thankfully, it had lost most of its power and we only had a little light rain and the lightning stayed as sheet lightning in the clouds.
8 November 2015 Pulau Besar to Admiral Marina, Malaysia
It wasn't too bad a night and we had a leisurely start with only 40 miles to go to Admiralty Marina. The morning was very calm with hardly any wind and calm seas, so we motored at a more relaxed pace. There was a rain shower around midday and the wind switched direction to be from the north-west - straight on the nose again, so the last couple of hours were a little bumpy.
Our charts contain very little sounding information for the approaches to Admiral Marina, so we were a little nervous especially because it was low tide. In the event, it was very straight forward with the sea bed shallowing very gradually to 4 metres and once inside the marina, there’s at least four metres of water.
Admiral Marina is a very pleasant, well maintained marina and appears to have a large number of empty berths, but we’re only allowed to stay for two nights because the spaces are reserved for the Sail Malaysia Rally, which leaves Putri Harbour (near Singapore) on the 10th. We've heard that there are 65 yachts on the rally, so everywhere will be packed out as they head north up the coast. Fortunately, we’ll be days ahead of them.
The marinas in Malaysia are much cheaper than those in Singapore - we paid £24 per night in One:15 Marina in Singapore and this place is only £12 per night. This looks like it might be a good place to leave Alba while we travel back to the UK in May/June next year.
In the evening, we went to the bar for happy hour and had a few drinks with Rich and Jan from “Slipaway”.
9 November 2015 Admiral Marina, Malaysia
We caught a taxi into Port Dickson to clear into Malaysia. The marina organised the taxi for us and charged us twice the going rate, but it still only cost us 30 Ringgit (£5). The driver dropped us off at the ferry terminal where we had to wait for ¾ hour while the immigration team sorted out a huge queue of people boarding a ship. It was just plain bad timing on our part. The actual Immigration process only took 10 minutes including having our fingerprints taken - we were given 90 day visas.
It was a short walk to the Port Captain and Custom offices, which are next door to each other. The process was very simple and there were no charges. We’d spotted a Maxis shop on the same street as Customs, so we bought SIM cards for our mobile phone and 3GB of data for our iPad. A short stop at an ATM got us some cash, so we’re now fully cleared in, flush with cash and have internet access.
Having cleared into Malaysia and obtained the immigration stamp, we had no empty pages left in our passports, so we needed to get new passports. The only way to renew a UK passport is to send the old ones back to the central passport office in Liverpool in the UK. It can take up to four weeks for the passport office to process the application, so we might not get our passports for six weeks, which may cause us problems with the Malaysian Authorities as we travel up the coast.
We’d already completed on-line application forms and printed them out. We’d also printed two new passport photographs, so we now needed to send the forms and our passports off to the UK.
We tried to find a TNT or DHL office, but there aren’t any agents in Port Dickson. We eventually found a small Malaysia courier called City-link Express. When we told them that we wanted to send our passports back to the UK, they refused, saying that they couldn’t ship original documents - how crazy is that? I argued that I had to send them back and eventually they relented and allowed us to use their service, but at our risk.
I carefully wrote out the address on one of their document envelopes and put our passports inside, feeling more and more nervous about trusting these very important documents to this rather chaotic organisation. Unfortunately, we had no other choice other than delaying it until we sailed to a bigger town, but that might not be any better. With a deep breath, I handed the package over and trusted them.
Having sent our passports off, we walked back into town and stopped off at a café/restaurant and had our first Malaysian meal - a huge plate of curry, vegetables and rice - all for 9 ringgit (£1.50 each). A bottle of water was £0.16 and a can of coke was £0.32 - it’s good to be able to eat out cheaply again, after the expense of Singapore.
We caught a taxi from the bus station which cost us 15 ringgit (£2.50) and spent the afternoon lurking down below in our air-conditioned saloon, using the internet and working out a detailed route from here up to Langkawi.
10 November 2015 Admiral Marina to Pulau Angsa, Klang
With nearly 70 miles to go to the next anchorage, we were up at the crack of dawn and motoring north in flat calm seas with hardly any wind. Since we left Singapore, the weather has been consistent - nice in the morning, then getting very sultry in the afternoon as huge cumulus clouds build over the coast, with a high chance of thunderstorms overnight.
We made good time and by one o’clock we were approaching Klang, which is a huge container port close to Kuala Lumpur. We had a great view of the port activities as we motored down the narrow waterway between the main land and an island, passing very close to the container ships being unloaded by massive cranes.
We’ve had plenty of time to look at passing ships over the last two weeks and the “Bulbous Bow” is an obvious feature on a lot of ocean going freighters and tankers. I found this explanation (geek alert):
A bulbous bow is a protruding bulb at the bow (or front) of a ship just below the waterline. The bulb modifies the way the water flows around the hull, reducing drag and thus increasing speed, range, fuel efficiency, and stability. Large ships with bulbous bows generally have a twelve to fifteen percent better fuel efficiency than similar vessels without them. A bulbous bow also increases the buoyancy of the forward part and hence reduces the pitching of the ship to a small degree.
In a conventionally shaped bow, a bow wave forms immediately before the bow. When a bulb is placed below the water ahead of this wave, water is forced to flow up over the bulb. If the trough formed by water flowing off the bulb coincides with the bow wave, the two partially cancel out and reduce the vessel's wake. While inducing another wave stream saps energy from the ship, cancelling out the second wave stream at the bow changes the pressure distribution along the hull, thereby reducing wave resistance. (Interesting, Eh!)
The current had been favourable all day, but changed in the middle of Port Klang and we had a couple of knots against us for the last 15 miles to Pulau Angsa. Like all the anchorages that we've stopped at so far in Malaysia, Pulau Angsa is an open road-stead, consisting of two small islands five miles off the coast, with a non-drying shallow sandbar, one mile further out to sea.
The wind was coming from the north, so we worked our way to the south of the island and anchored at (03°10.85N 101°13.03E). Fortunately the forecast is for variable winds, but there’s a thunderstorm system rumbling away along the coast, so who knows what we’ll get tonight.
11 November 2015 Pulau Angsa to Pulau Pangkor, Malaysia
I suppose that it was good that we weren't struck by lightning or murdered in our beds, but other than that, it was a pretty horrible night. It didn't start well, because a few minutes after I went to sleep, I had a vivid dream that we were sinking and leapt out of bed telling Glenys that there was water on the floor and I was going to check the bilges - they were dry, of course, and she now thinks that I’m getting senile.
Later on, we were woken by thunder, lightning, heavy rain, wind from all directions making us pitch, then roll, then pitch with water slapping under the transom, then roll... It all calmed down at about three o'clock in the morning and we finally had a bit of sleep until the alarm clock went off at six o’clock.
With another long 75-mile day ahead of us, we set off as the sun rose and motor-sailed with the engine roaring away. Fortunately, we had the tide with us for the first five hours, after which, we headed for shallower water while we fought the adverse 1-2 knot tide.
By mid-afternoon, we were down to 5.5 knots over the ground and, with 25 miles to go, it wasn't looking good for getting to our destination by sunset. Fortunately, a sea breeze picked up and we were able to pull out the genoa increasing our boat speed to seven knots and our speed through the water to six knots. Doing this kind of coastal hopping is horrible - we've got to get there, so we have to keep running the engine even though normally we’d be sailing.
We made good time and, just after six o’clock, we pulled into the bay on the south-west corner of Pulau Pangkor and anchored at 04°12.57N 100°33.00E in 5 metres of water. It’s a lovely anchorage and is protected from nearly all directions with a sandy beach and hills covered with trees. What a difference from the other anchorages south of here. I’ve changed my mind about Malaysia and I now like it.
There was a good internet connection, so I checked with the City link courier and our passports are still in Kuala Lumpur, so I’m starting to feel nervous now…
12 November 2015 Pulau Pangkor, Malaysia
We caught up on a few chores in the morning then went ashore to have a look around. It’s a small holiday town, full of resort hotels and apartment buildings. There are a few restaurants around, but they were mostly closed at lunch time, so we ate at a small roadside warung - Mee Goring and Laksa, nice and cheap.
We could have hired a motor bike very cheaply, but couldn't be bothered - it’s a small island and I’m not sure what there is to see. We went for a walk along the beach, which is nice enough apart from lots of sea weed being swept ashore. The water is very murky and looks slightly brown, so it’s not the best holiday destination in the world.
One thing that is very apparent in this area is the lack of coconut palms. These islands seem to be covered with deciduous trees and only the odd coconut palm tree. It makes it look more like some higher latitude place like Maine rather than close to the equator - very strange.
13 November 2015 Pulau Pangkor, Malaysia
After yesterday’s relatively nice weather, we were woken at four o'clock in the morning by a big thunderstorm with bright lightning and torrential rain. The rain continued through the morning, so we abandoned the idea of leaving today and had a pleasant day doing our own thing. I was pleased to find out that our passports have been delivered to the Passport Office in the UK, which is a great relief.
Glenys found some bacon in the fridge, so we had bacon and grilled tomato sandwiches with brown sauce for lunch - luxury. The rain stopped in the afternoon, but we could still hear the rumble of thunder in the distance, so we lurked down below. It became a little rolly in the afternoon as the wind dropped and we had swell coming in from the east.