I just posted this post as we have had no internet for a couple of days. We were in the backlands of Langkawi where it's beautiful and very quiet. It's now Monday and we are headed for Rebak Marina along the west side of the island. I'll post again when we get in.
Saturday--11/15/2014
We pulled up the anchor along with Bill on Solstice just about 0800 and prepared to take off for Langkawi. In talks with Bill yesterday, we asked how he raised his sails since he is a single hander. He told us he got advise from another single hander that it was easier to just pull up the mainsail while still at anchor. The boat is already pointed into the wind so there is no really better time to do it since once you leave anchor, you have to put the boat into the wind to raise it so do it when it's much easier and safer. This morning, that what we did. The sail was up before we pulled up the anchor. So much easier as we didn't have to buck the waves as we motored away from the island. It was already up and ready to go.

It's about 40 miles to the south end of Langkawi where we plan on staying the next couple of days. We have reservations at Rebak Marina for a few days to see what it's like. We've never been there before and hear it's supposed to be quite nice. We'll let you know when we get there. Meanwhile, the forecast is for 14-18 knots of wind today coming from the northeast so given our heading from Palau Songsong, we should have a good good sailing day. Unfortunately, there is no wind yet so the motor is making our boat move for a while.

It's now 1530 and we've been at anchor for about an hour. We had one of the best sails we've had in a long time. Tracy's plan for us skirting the coast yesterday to give us a good angle of attack at Langkawi worked out perfectly. While we had to fight a bit of wind yesterday, todays forecast was for 12-16 knots of wind from the Northeast to East. In the end, they were pretty much from the North but we had made it so far North along the coast that todays course was about 310 degrees for just North of West. With that being said, we had a great sail. Bill on Solstice was with us and he took the lead off our port side. We both zoomed along with all our sails up--main, forestaysail and genoa. At times we were hitting well in the 7+ knot range and for our boats(big and heavy) that's fast. We even hit 8.1 knots(short but sweet).

The day was pretty much overcast so the heat wasn't so bad and the decks were not blisteringly hot under the feet. The swells we had were hitting us on the starboard side and were maybe 1.5 feet, occasionally tossing water on the deck at the bow. Bill, on Solstice was having a greets time too. He even put up his forestaysail too.

When we started out this morning, there were fishermen and their boats all over the place either deploying their nets or pulling them in. Both of us did a good bit of dodging to get past them. Luckily, the wind hadn't come up at the time so we used the power of our engines to help us move around them. Once the wind came up, well, all the sails came out and the engines were turned off and it was a fine day for a sail. As we neared the south end of Langkawi, we saw another sail boat that was bashing it's way north probably having left earlier in the day from Pinang but it took a more northerly course than we did yesterday. He had to bash all the way, about 55 miles to get here. We went about 25 yesterday and another 40 today but it sure was a fun 40 miles.