Our few days at Miri went flying by, catching up with other yachts, as well as a jolly BYO drinks party on the dock of the marina, and a luxury night and feast in a nearby hotel for all participants of the Borneo Yacht Race, an annual event which has two cruiser classes, a catamaran class, as well as a class for serious Racing boats!
Most of the rally boats are coerced into entering this race as a bit of fun, and it certainly was a different approach!
As we were heavily penned into our marina berth, Giles decided to go and crew on a beautiful Malo, and sail around the buoys on day one, and was very pleased to find that with help from a very favourable handicap they won!
Next day was the passage race to the island of Labuan, some 100 miles eastwards. We had a westerly wind of 6 kts to start with, barely enough to push us along, but we successfully started, and after watching everyone else put their chutes up we followed suit, and began to sail past several of the boats. This didn't last long, as the wind dropped, and our course became more downwind instead of a reach, so down with the chute, and we poled out the genoa and goose winged for a bit.
We had a nerve wracking sail in the dark through an oil field of rigs, which are either over lit or almost invisible with no lighting at all. Thank God for the radar, which saved us from hitting an unlit buoy, and guiding through the maze of rigs.
At 0200 I decided time to motor. This was within the rules, so long as we declared our motoring times! We didn't motor for long, as the wind picked up, and we were going nicely at 5.7 knots for a while, until it dropped away again, and we found ourselves next to one of the other rally boats, we decided to motor again. We motored for a total of about four hours!
Labuan is a duty free island, but with none of the charms of Langkawi which has the same status. However, it was a useful place to top up on our beer stocks, although finding wine boxes was more of a problem.
Next day we had time in the morning to go to the museum, and learn some of the fascinating history of the island, and then pay a visit to the largest war grave in Malaysia, a very poignant place with 600 British and 2,000 Australian graves. Many of these soldiers had died on the infamous 'Death March' from Sandakan to Ranau, from which only six people survived, out of a total of 2,000 soldiers.
The second part of the Borneo Yacht Race was a 70 mile race to Kota Kinabalu. The race took us along a channel between Borneo and Labuan, and out eastwards along the coast, the only trouble was that we had a NE wind, so we were beating! It proved rather instructive, as we did longish tacks to and fro, and compared our position to other yachts!
This time we were largely making progress, and although we had one tack which took us 33 miles out to sea from our destination, we continued to sail, and were amazed to see two other yachts not far away when dawn broke.
We were the last boat over the finishing line, but only by a few minutes, and we were one of the slowest of the boats, we averaged of over 4 knots.
We were given free berths for three nights in the very sumptuous Sutera Harbour Marina, in Kota Kinabalu, where we enjoyed wonderful swimming pools, and all mod cons, and there was a slap up prize giving feast at the marina for all the competitors.
What we had not expected was that we won the long race from Labuan to K-K, we had obviously been the only boat in Cruising class 'B' who had sailed it all!!
We could hold our heads up high waiting for my brother Jamie, his wife Mel and daughter Isabelle.