Last evening was quite pleasant sitting at anchor off a small island just north of Palau Besang south of Malakka along the Malacca Straits. No fishermen for a change were there to put out nets and traps and shine lights at our boat. The wind stayed quite calm so we just bobbed at the end of our chain.

I bought a new chain snubber{takes the strain off the windlass when at anchor} from a company called Mantus. A big chunk of stainless steel that fits snuggly over the chain and locks itself on. From what I have seen, there doesn't seem to be any way for it to come off. It's attached to two pieces of twenty five foot, half inch line with an eye splice shielded by a stainless steel thimble. I attach one line to each side of the boat and we are going no where unless it should break the lines and even if one broke, there is still the second. Our normal snubber is nothing more than a chain hook sold at every hardware store in the world. I have it attached with the same eye/thimble design but I added one of the big rubber snubbers that you wrap the line around so it acts like a big spring. It works great also but I have had the anchor chain slip off it from time to time as the current shifts in an anchorage.

Today, we have about 68 miles to get to our next anchorage so we pulled up the mud encrusted anchor{thank you Rocna anchors} and we were underway just after Seven AM. Steve and Hon on the other boat that left Admiral Marina the same time we did had already gotten underway and were a good 5 miles in front of us. The current we were waiting for the help us along was slow in getting started so we were only doing about 5.5 knots. It took several hours for it to really kick in where we could get up to 7 knots. It's what we are doing as I type this. The winds today have failed to help out staying just about right on the nose at about 7 knots. Yesterday, they were right off the starboard side and really helped us make great time as we headed long the Malaysian coast, sometimes hitting over 8 knots. Fast for Zephyr.

At ten o'clock, I could see a storm blossoming off our starboard bow and watched as it made it's way toward us. I had Tracy hand me the side enclosures for the bimini from below decks so when it got to us, we would have a better chance of staying dry. At ten thirty, the rains came restricting visibility to about a quarter mile at best. Tracy fired up our Radar system and we watched on the screen as the storm passed us. Fifteen minutes later and it was gone. Out come the towels and down comes the side panel and on we push. Tonight will be at Palau Pisang and then on Monday, we should be back in Puteri Marina where we will be for a while. A few more repairs and a trip back to the US for me and perhaps Tracy. She hasn't been home in over three years.