8 November 2016 Admiral Marina to Pulau Pangkor, Malaysia (Day 2)
It was a pleasant, but boring night and we arrived at Pangkor just before midday - 27 hours of remorseless motoring. We anchored at 04°12.56N 100°33.05E in 5 metres over good holding mud. After lunch, we chilled out for the afternoon and then had dinner sitting in the cockpit for the first time for months - I’d forgotten how nice it is to be at anchor.
9 November 2016 Pulau Pangkor, Malaysia
We spent the morning pottering about - I had a long needed haircut and then dropped the dinghy into the water. To my amazement, the outboard started on the third pull - not bad after such a long layoff.
Just before noon, we went ashore and hired a scooter for 30 Ringgit (£6). We only needed it for half a day and probably got over-charged, but it was so cheap that I couldn’t be bothered to haggle. The main town of the island is very small and reminded us of Tarempa in the Anambas. There are lots of small shops selling a mixture of groceries and t-shirts.
We’ve been told that Pangkor is a favourite destination for Malaysians to take a weekend break, but being a Wednesday, it was very quiet with many of the small restaurants closed. The island is famous for dried fish and dozens of shops were displaying large baskets of dried fish, shrimp and squid. Vacuum packed packets of dried slivers of fish & cuttle-fish marinated in sweet or savoury sauces were on sale everywhere. A lady in one of the shops gave us a sample of a sliver of cuttlefish in a sweet marinade, which was like fishy Biltong - not our favourite snack.
The majority of the islanders seem to be of Chinese descent and we ended up in a Chinese run Warung for lunch. There was no menu, but a lady was stir-frying using a huge wok next to the pavement. They spoke no English, so we pointed at noodles and rice and asked for one Mee Goring and one Nasi Goring, letting the lady add whatever she wanted. It was very good and cheap at £0.90 each.
We visited the Chinese temple, which like most Chinese Buddhist temples is very colourful. The temple is located at the bottom of a steep sided hill and they’ve built a miniature “Great Wall of China” up the side of the hill. There’s a footpath with steps which meanders up the hill in between the wall and we spent a pleasant 30 minutes wandering about.
We circumnavigated the island, which is very pretty with verdant rain forest. On the way, Glenys insisted that we visit the local fish drying factory, which was basically a shop full of dried fish, where she bought some dried shrimp, dried fish slices and a packet of foul-looking, dried spicy fish snack.
10 November 2016 Pulau Pangkor to Jerejak Island, Penang
With 75 miles to sail to Penang, we left at the crack of dawn. There wasn’t any wind of course, so we motored hard to try to maintain a 6 knot average all day. It was very, very boring - we saw a few fishing boats and that was about all.
As the day progressed, the wind picked up from the north-west, which was on the nose, but good enough to fill our mainsail and give us some forward power. With a favourable current for most of the day, we made good time and were able to make it all the way to Jerejak Island, where we anchored at 05°19.06N 100°18.49E in 8 metres of water. Ten minutes after we’d anchored it was dark.
11 November 2016 Jerejak Island, Malaysia
Neither of us could be bothered to do anything, so we had a quiet day on board doing research into our Indian Ocean Crossing. Glenys focused on Sri Lanka where we are expecting to do a few weeks land travel. I spent all day researching anchorages and regulations for the Andaman Islands which will be our first stop in January.
12 November 2016 Jerejak Island, Malaysia
We had another research day. Glenys continued studying Sri Lanka, while I continued with the Andaman Islands, which are owned by India and look very interesting. The indigenous people are a race of pygmys called the Andamanese and until the end of the eighteenth century, they had never met western man and lived a peaceful hunter/gatherer existence.
There are now only 450 Andamanese remaining in the archipelago and the government restricts access to their lands, so contact with tourists is strictly forbidden. There's one tribe called the Sentinelese, who live on an isolated island and shun all contact with outsiders - whenever a government boat approaches the island it's met with a volley of arrows...
Consequently, there is a lot of bureaucracy surrounding cruising in this area - all boats must submit an itinerary of anchorages, which is approved by the port captain. There’s also a requirement for every boat to radio their position twice a day. It should be an interesting trip.
13 November 2016 Jerejak Island to Straits Quay Marina, Malaysia
We were up early to catch the favourable tide to Straits Quay Marina. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the marina was completely full and we had to hang around outside waiting for our berth to become vacant. It’s always a tense experience entering the marina because it’s very shallow at the entrance - about 0m at low tide. We entered on a 2.5m tide and found that the shallowest point was just inside the marina walls, but we saw nothing less than 2.6 metres.
Once ensconced in our berth, we switched on the air-conditioning and, apart from a short excursion to the local Tesco supermarket, we stayed on board. We invited Chris and Nancy from “Amulet” for a sun-downer and caught up on their adventures for the past couple of months.
14 November 2016 Straits Quay Marina, Malaysia
In preparation for our Indian Ocean Crossing, we have a long list of maintenance jobs to complete on the boat, but we’ve come to Penang to get maintenance on our bodies. We’ve booked to see a dentist later this week and, while we’re here, we decided to have some medical check-ups done at the nearby Seventh Adventist Hospital.
Glenys tried to see a Dermatologist and an Eye Specialist, but she couldn’t get an appointment until tomorrow, so she went shopping at the nearby Gurney Plaza Mall. I’ve had numbness and tingling in my toes for the past year, so I went to see a Neurologist. He thinks that I have a trapped nerve in my lower back, so he sent me for an MRI scan. Amazingly, they could fit me in straight away, so within fifteen minutes, I was inside the noisy machine - I’ll get the results tomorrow.