As I wrote in the last post, we are now in Kuala Bernam. We upped the anchor this morning and were off by 0700 for the trip up the Malacca Straits to this small village along a river. Now if you look at the charts for this place, there is no way any boat would willingly come in here as the charts say that the channel is only 4.9 feet deep in some areas. We'd gotten "way points" for this river from another cruisers post who had gotten them from another cruisers post. It's how it works out here. We snatch info from anywhere we can. Tracy has become a great sleuth at finding out info on different places.

Well the day was sunny and we had some wind off the port stern side and pulled out the big genoa sail again. We climbed back in the high 7 knot range and zipped along(as much as a heavy boat like Zephyr can zip). We made good time watching for fishing nets along the way and dodging them where ever we found them. This time north, we have found that more and more fishing boats have AIS transponders on them letting us know they are out there. Maybe it's the parent company watching their boats to see where they are(doubt it as most are family owned). The biggest thing you learn out here is to watch, watch and watch some more. Fishing boats leave out nets, some with floats along their nets and some not. All should be avoided as propellers love to eat them. We've been lucky so far and not hit any but we watch as much as we can so we avoid them.

Today, we had wind but we also had swells hitting us on the beam making us swing from side to side in a good 40 degree arc. Back and forth, over and over again all morning and into the afternoon. We didn't finally escape it till we pulled into the mouth of the river and then it calmed out just fine.

Both Emerald Sea and Romance have AIS transponders and neither has come up on our screen showing them moving behind us so either they had equipment failures or simply decided to sit still for a day and have some fun. We continued on doing another 52 miles before we stopped for the day. Tracy just went below for a nap as she had a bad night last night. The swells in our anchorage were close together and every few seconds, Zephyr would rock from end to end or side to side moving the hull every witch way. Tracy ended up sleeping in the main salon while I sprawled in the stern bunk getting what I could also. As we went to bed, we had lightening and thunder to the south of us and it passed us by and that's just great. While we did have a lighthouse close by, you never know what Mother Nature will do.

As we came up river, watching the way points I had put in all our plotters, a local fisherman came in beside us. He was a bit ahead of us and as he went along the shore, he suddenly made his boat go in a circle showing us where he recommended us to anchor. Once he finished his boat donut, he continued up the channel. We came over and dropped out anchor right where he suggested. It's only 16 feet deep but it sure beats the 4.5 is says on the charts. A shore was a Chinese shrine and we even heard dogs barking, a rarity in Muslim countries that dogs are pretty much taboo due to their religion. Tomorrow, we will be off for an island just north of Pangkor called Palau Telang at about 04 25.160N 100 34.748E. It's another 40+ mile day.

At 1830, as I sat along the side deck trying to get what breeze there was, I looked up and saw a sailboat coming up the river. I got up and the number grew to three. Geramar, Emerald Sea, and Romance had caught us. We'd gotten in by 1400 and they were 4.5 hours behind getting in just as the Sun was about to go down. I called Romance and found that they were staying a bit farther out of the river basin that the rest of us and had planned on heading out between 0600 and 0700. Smart move as the tide is falling at that time and we both need to get out long before low tide. Both Emerald Sea and Geramar anchored about 150 yards west of us for the night.

As the tide shifted, so did the river water. When we came in, it was going up river but eventually changed to coming down river during the evening. A current of several knots really made our anchor dig in and put a good strain on our anchor snubber. We were up at 0600 and pulling up the anchor by 0645 just as the Sun was about to make it easier to see what was around and in front of us. We were headed out by 0646 having covered 268 miles of our trip so far. It's a good thing we got out when we did as the falling tide put us just 2 feet from the base of our keel. Geramar and Elerald Sea took off a while after we did so I'm sure at least Geramar was close to the bottom being a monohull. Emerald Sea, being a cat had no problem. That is surely one advantage of being a cat as you draw far less water and can get in places monohulls can't.

As we made out way north, we(Romance and us) dodged several nets and their marker buoys. Romance had to make a huge turn to port to avoid one. We're doing 9.1 with the genoa out and a good current and favorable wind. We are zipping right along making the fastest we have done in a long time.