Settled down for a while!
10 October 2008 | Sebana Marina
The picture shows the pool where I swim daily!
October 10. 2008
It is now over a month that I have been in Sebana Cove, getting used to the warm and humid weather and making a couple of visits to Singapore.
Sebana is a nice place, very quiet with a gorgeous pool where I can do my daily laps. It also offers surroundings which invite for early morning walks (before it gets hot). Another real plus is the friendliness of the Malaysians. Most of the time you get a warm smile and some kind words! Look at my pictures in the "gallery" and you might be tempted to come and visit me! The welcome sign is alway out!
Though it seems off the face of this earth, I have met an amazing amount of cruising friends from previous stops. It seems that sooner or later everybody gets here in preparation for the trip up to Phuket,, Thailand and then on to the Maldives (the popular stopover of the past: Sri Lanka is out of the question with all the problems there) and then the Red Sea and the Med. To me it is kind of interesting that people still want to cruise up the Red Sea which involves a passage through the Gulf of Aden with all its Somali pirates. But then I guess, small boats are not their primary target since it is the big ships that really bring in all the big money. In any case, if one wants to complete a trip around the world, the choices are either putting up with this uncertainty or heading to South Africa which offers another challenge: rough waters and lots of currents.
I am not sure yet what I will want to do but for the time being, I enjoy Malaysia and hope to see some more of it and perhaps even venture to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos via land. The cost of living here is so affordable that it is hard to think of returning to places like the USA or Australia where costs have risen astronomically over the past few years.
But then I do quite often miss my friends in San Francisco and that lovely city.
Beside swimming, walking and lots of reading, I keep myself busy with the boat as usual. A boat always needs lots of maintenance and in the salty and here humid environment things just don't last as long. The other day I had a very interesting experience. After cleaning and waxing the boat after the trip, I was quite happy the way she looked - until a couple of days ago when we had an enormous rainfall. Now usually you would expect the boat to be clean after this natural wash: not here!! She was all covered with a thick black film which necessitated another serious scrub down. And what is all this? Pollution: the bad habit of burning, the planes of Changi airport and the industrial pollution of Singapore. With my 15 years sailing, it has become increasingly clear to me that the environment needs our urgent attention. Not only do we have to become more careful with our bad economic habits but also with the use or abuse of our earth.