Well, it's been a couple of days and we have moved on from the marina at Pangkor(while the city is known as Lumut). We did spend just two days there and packed a bunch into them. We checked in on Sunday, March 31st and made arrangements to get some more fuel. We'd taken on some while in Johor Bahru but only about 12 gallons(the extent of of jerry cans for diesel). This time, we made arrangements for 400 liters(about 105 gallons). We cleaned Zephyrs decks and put up tarps as it was very hot with a blazing Sun. We took a hose and watered down the decks and hull to try and keep it a bit cooler inside. In the end, we managed to keep inside the same temp as outside(95). Beats 100.
We met with Jimmy. He runs a boat repair service at the marina. We are looking at having the teak decks removed and he came down to take a look. It was one of the primary reasons we even went into the marina. He was to return the next day.
On Monday morning, we had the marina call for a cab as none ever come out to the marina. We needed to get to an ATM to get more money to pay for the fuel. They sell it for 3 ringgits per liter--12 ringgits for just over a gallon or about $3.65US for a gallon of fuel. We have found that some ATM's will take our cards and some won't. We have also learned to stay away from those that pop up a screen talking about currency exchange rates. Those little suckers will nail you for huge fees. A regular ATM charges about 1 ringgit for the transaction(32 cents).
We toured though a Tesco grocery store. Their prices were a good bit higher that what we have seen at other stores so we only bought what we absolutely had to have(lettuce and snacks). Tracy makes a great salad and it's worth the expense for the lettuce.
We managed to grab a cab at the grocery store that just happened to be dropping off a fare. In we climbed for the ride of a lifetime. Those white lines that separate the lanes meant nothing to him. He went right down them as fast as he could. That part of the road off on the side that cars can pull off on when they break down--well, that was his private lane to get past slower vehicles. We were stopped at one light and I happened to put my cup of pepsi up to my lips to take a drink just as he took off(red light, green light--they are all the same to him). I ended up with a shirt load of pepsi running down by chest. Cool and refreshing!!! We made it back with plenty of time to spare since the fuel was due at 1300. By 1500, we still had no fuel. We knew that syphoning 400 liters was going to take quite a while. I went to the office to see where the fuel was. I was told that the workers had gone to lunch but would be at the boat any minute. Well, "any minute" was actually another 30 so we finally had the fuel at 1530, just as Jimmy showed up to discuss the decks. We had a nice conversation and he is going to email us a quote for the job. Spending a month of more at that marina would be tough. It's not the greatest of places and there is nothing within miles of it. Guess we will see how good his estimate is. We've heard nothing but praise about his work.
We started in on the fuel and 2.5 hours later it was all in the tanks. Well, all but 5 gallons that went into one of our jerry cans. We will add it in later. With our jobs done, we checked out of the marina and made plans to take off on April 1st for Penang Island, about 70 miles farther north. We'd thought about the currents and tides that would either help or hurt our progress and felt we could make it in plenty of time. Well the current that would slow us down came but the current to help us never materialized. In the end, we finally made it to an small island just south of the main island(doing about 4 to 5 knots the entire way) at 2020 hours, about 45 minutes after sunset. We'd had a problem on the trip north with the alternator for the running batteries shutting down again. It had done the same thing as we rounded the tip just off Singapore. It was a broken wire that had shorted out the alternator. I inspected the wires this morning and found another wire that had had it's insulation worn through. The bare wire had then blown the inline fuse and shut off the alternator. For a second time, the DuoGen proved it's worth as while the engine was running, we lowered it behind the boat and it made enough power for us to run all the electronics and even the electric autopilot. Worked out just great.
I called the local marina(Straits Quay Marina) to see about us getting a slip. Sorry, booked full till the 7th. With that being said, and the alternator fixed, we made plans for another trip today, to get us another 40 miles closer to Langkawi, our distention for this part of the trip.