Malaysia I December 20th 2008

Well, once again I've fallen way behind so this will be long. Braceyourselves.IN THE MEANTIME, BEFORE YOU GET TOO BORED WITH US, ROSE AND I WOULD LIKE TOWISH EVERYONE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.Please don't send us those silly electronic cards to this emailaddress--satphone, etc.Even I had to look back and see where we left you. We were leaving thedock in Singapore with teary farewells 6 weeks ago. Much has transpiredsince then.Our departure was in company of seven others heading off to Malaysia.Singapore has a goofy system for checking out with immigration and you haveto take the boat to the quarantine anchorage and they come out to you. Anannoying and unnecessary interruption. After that, our route was taking uswest along the south shore of Singapore and then up into the west side inthe Johor Strait to Danga Bay, Malaysia. There were at least a millionships around as we navigated through shipping lanes, strong currents and thebridge to Singapore on this 30 mile journey. Every mile or so in the straitthere was a Singapore patrol boat and that side of the island is fenced offto keep out illegal aliens, primarily Indonesians. Also a few Malaysianboats,but none bothered us. On the way back down we actually saw a patrol chasing a local boat all over the place. A second boat joined the pursuit with both firing flares across the other guys bow, but we don't know if they caught him. Danga Bay was a pleasant surprise. The rally up theMalacca Straits starts there and it was the venue because the new marina inJohor wasn't complete. We expected sort of third class environs but theplace is a huge resort area for Malaysia and Singapore, alike, with tons ofrestaurants, tour boats and even an amusement park. Check in was the bestin 4 years with the officials asking us to sign about 10 forms and takingthem away with our passports. Next day they returned everything and theyhad taken our info and filled in the forms for us.It was an eventful 3 days. First, I went to get a new SIM card for thephone and, I must have screwed up aconnection prying the old SIM card out of the phone. Another 20 minute walkbackto the nearby shopping mall to get a new phone. Ended up with a used phone,but a really nice one for $80. By the way, the Malaysian Ringgit ishoveringaround 3.5 to the dollar, so Malaysia is relatively inexpensive. Not ascheap as Indonesia, but so much more civilized with really great food. Ofcourse , Rendezvous Cay is not at rest in any venue and we had our usualproblems. In Singapore, we had them put on a spare alternator as the otherhad crapped out. We were on shore power, though and couldn't check it.When push came to shovethe spare didn't work either. We had also been told that we could fuel upeasily in Danga. Wrong. They bring in a barge, which we had to beg them todo early, and you either bring the boat to them or jugs. Since we neededquite a bit of fuel we elected to bring in the boat. Of course, the bargewas late and we had to rush out during the middle of the Rally briefing toget it done in daylight. Their idea of fenders was a large chain through anold tire so the boat hits the chain and we got a couple of nice scratches.No problem, though, as we were on our way to getting hauled out and boththings could be fixed easily then--sure!!The next day was an all day tour which Rose went on but I decided to foregoand get a massage. For RM80, you get 2 hours!! Yes. I had been in massagewithdrawal since Bali. That night was the official rally dinner and it wasreally well done. Lots of good food and free beer and wine. SailIndonesia could take a few lessons. It was held in the park's band shellthing and there was a ton of free entertainment as well. An oldies band(they love oldies in Malaysia) alternated with traditional dance. Quitenice and not too many speeches. We were leaving the next day and concernedabout the heavy current in the strait so we were being a bit flexible on ourdestination. There was a close in island about 25 miles away that the priorday's bus tour actually went to and another island 15 miles further on.So off we went on the early side due to potential current, which, as itturned out, were unfounded. However, it was more of the same, motoring,motoring, motoring. Light air. Another boat, our dock mates in Singapore,Freebird, left the same time. So we decided to go to Pulau Pisang, about 40miles away which breaks up the trip to our ultimate destination, PortDickson, into more manageable chunks. The bottom there was a very stickygooey clay, and there was tons of traffic on the way including all thecommercial traffic as well as a billion local fishing boats. The nextintermediate stop was Pulau Besar in the Water Islands and there were a fewother boats there. Freebird dropped their dinghy and came over to see if wewanted to explore and maybe have a happy hour drink. Not much on theisland, and NO alcohol--damn Muslims--so we beat a hasty retreat to Freebird(Dave and Judy) for an extended happy hour. Next day we finally made AdmiralMarina which is about 10 miles south of Port Dickson. The attraction hereis that is is very close to the colonial town of Melaka (where the MalaccaStraits gets its name) Melaka was a very important trading port even beforeEuropean exploration and conquest and has both Dutch and Portugueseinfluence.The marina was a little pricey, for Malaysia, mind you, not Singapore, butvery nice. I think they're trying to make the area into an entire resortthing. Drinks were a bit much but they had a monthly special "all day,every day" happy hour which was two for one so that brought down the price.Fuel was ridiculous--50% more than Danga, though, so we decided to passuntilPenang, our next real stop. Several of the Blue Water Around the Worldrally were in which might explain why Sail Malaysia dropped Admiral from therally. We spent a day or two reorganizing the boat to suit our tastes andthen rented a car to drive down to Malacca about 1.5 hours away. Several ofthe boats were spending a couple of days there, but we were on a fast trackto get to Penang for the haulout so we just went for the day. Gave Dave andJudy a ride--the car was only RM80. We ran into a few other yachties in thetourist area and dropped D & J with them as they needed to findaccommodations while we went to Carre Four for something that escapes mymindat the moment. We met up with everyone later for lunch at Nancy's Kitchen,a Malaysian place with really great food and cheap beer. Architecture wasinteresting but it was all pretty touristy.On our return, we ran into Peter from Dutch Touch. I may have mentioned himfrom Noumea where he stirred me up. He's still a jerk but we couldn't avoidhim and did get the real scoop on another boat he'd been travelling withwhich has headed on a fast track back to California for business andpersonal reasons. The price of the gossip was listening to Peter talk abouthimself endlessly. Hey, that's my job!!! We were going to leave the nextday, but decided to stay. The weather wasn't that good and Rose had to sortout her ATM card which NatWest, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put ahold on without informing her. It was a pretty cheap cab ride into PortDickson just for the heck of it and to get Rose money which is when we foundout her card wouldn't work. So, back to the Marina after lunch, happy hour,dinner at the cafe there and off to our next stop in the Port Klang area.One good thing that came out of our drinks with Peter was he'd heard of anundocumented (at least in our guides) anchorage north of Klang thatshortened the trip to Lumut, our next anchorage, into a managable but quitelong day trip. The weather was very iffy when we left, but turned nice.Still no wind.It was a long, long day up to Lumut, actually Pulau Pangkor, off the coastwith no wind and varying currents that make arrival times uncertain. Someof the other rally boats were also underway and there was loads of radiotraffic deciding stop or go on, anchor here or there, arrive after dark ornot, etc. Pangkor was quite nice and a resort destination. There weren'ttoo many boats in, and we decided we were ahead of schedule to get to Penangso we'd stay another day and chill out. Just as well as the next day theweather was lousy. While we were there, I emailed the yard to tell themwe'd be at Penang in another day. Now there's been all sorts of dramasurrounding the timing of the haulout. It seems the bottom of the slipway(marine railway) has silted in a bit and unless the tide is high,it is notpossible to get the thing deep enough to float the boat on top. That's whywe were racing a bit. They could either haul us around Nov 30th or notuntil 2 weeks later. Well it turns out we were early enough, Nov 18th, thatthey could get us out earlier. The bad news is they wanted us there thenext day and the haul wouldn't happen until 11 PM!!! Past our bedtime.Okay, we're in, but Penang is even farther than Lumut was so we left beforedawn. While we can motor at 8 or 9 knots, you never know when you'll get 3knots of current against you so it's best to leave plenty of time for thetrip. There was a passage out of the bay which would have knocked a fewmiles off, but too scary in the dark. As it turned out, we had the currentwith us and got in mid afternoon. To make a long story short, we went inand reviewed the work orders and made arrangements for a hotel and car.Oops. forgot to mention, something was rotten in the state of our shorepower. When we left Singapore, I noticed the plug that goes into the 110Voutlet on the boat was burned. Looked like it had been loose, however, soI changed power cords and made sure the connection was good in AdmiralMarina. Uh,oh. Same result --in fact, worse, with both female and maleends melted and burned. As most of our freezer capacity is water cooledand we'd be out of the water, we needed shore power to run our spare aircooled freezer, so the electrician came out to look. In the meantime, wewere able to offload some of the food to Pen Marine's freezer, and the nextday the guy got ours working with a 3rd cable. Probably a loose connectionto the plug on the boat. Harris Loo, the guy who owns the yard spent 5years in Chicago at IIT so we hit it off right away. Mogan, an Indian guy,runs the yard, itself--foreman, if you will. Late that day, it startedpouring rain and we were really tired from getting up at 5 so it was a greatrelief when Mogan called at 6 pm to say the railway wasn't working and we'dhave to delay hauling until the next day.So the next day, we booked into Krystal Suites Hotel and got a car. Car wasabout $35/day and the hotel (our room was like an apartment) was about $43.The guys at the yard are very nice and drove me around and booked the hotelfor us. Harris even set us up with his vet to accommodate Charlie who nowmeows in Malaysian. Back on the boat about 1, we were getting ready to moveoff when Mogan called and said he thought they could get us out right then.Yes!!!! Brought the boat in, offloaded our stuff and the cat and we wereout of there.Okay, we're not halfway caught up but I'm going to have to break this into 2or 3 or no one will read it allWill start volume 2 tomorrow.Best holiday wishesTim & Rose