We left the boat to her own devices on the hardstand at Port Takola and spent October, November, December in Europe visiting the old Mums and not quite so old sisters in the UK, daughter Rose and granddaughter Daphne in Finland, which was predictably cold and dark!
On 9th January we sailed into the sunset with a reasonable tail wind for the first 24 hours which sadly fell away to sail slatting nothingness on the second day out. Still, it was only a two day passage and we did get a final puff of wind allowing us to arrive in Sabang looking like a sailing boat.
Sabang is a small town on the island of Pulau Weh just off the northern tip of Sumatra. It has a very sheltered deep water harbour which fortunately has a number of good quality moorings available. We only found out when it was time to leave that the Port Authority has a daily charge of US$4.50 for their use but after my feigned apoplectic fit at the size of the bill, we negotiated it down to a reasonable figure of 800,000 rupiah, which sounds a lot but is only about NZ$90 for nearly 3 weeks mooring.
The harbour has a convenient floating pontoon which is mostly filled with local fishing boats but with room to squeeze the odd dinghy in. The "ladder" up to the sea wall was less convenient, having been thrown together by some joker with little carpentry or engineering nouse and no respect for human frailties.......
The local fishing boats had a design all of their own with a very high prow and unusual flat, high transom. They ran an internal salt water cooled diesel engine with a short tail pipe from the dry exhaust that exited right in the middle of the boat at about waist height - loud and toxic!
At night they came out with bright green lights for squid fishing........
Our time in Sabang was pretty relaxed, even hiring a scooter was fairly relaxed - well, as relaxed as you can be riding a scooter in Asia - but the roads were good and the traffic light. The 2nd scooter we hired only came with one helmet so we stopped at the first helmet shop and bought a couple. NZ$14 each.... hmm, maybe a token gesture. Hopefully we never get to find out how robust they are. We visited most of the major advertised tourist spots like the "volcano" which turned out to be a pile of rocks with a whiff of steam coming out but more importantly we found some good eateries with good views......
One day we took the ferry from Pulau Weh over to Banda Aceh on mainland Sumatra, primarily to visit the Tsunami museum which tells the terrible tale of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that killed more than 170,000 people in Banda Aceh on Boxing Day 2004. The museum didn't really quite "work" for me but I guess there's only so much you can exhibit from a one off disastrous event such as this. Perhaps more stories from individual survivors would have given some scale to the personal trauma suffered by the people of Aceh. There were some interactive displays demonstrating the geological events that caused the tsunami which could have been interesting but virtually none were operating - such is the way of "maintenance" in S.E. Asia.
On the bright side, we did find a really nice coffee shop which had "ice cube coffee" on the menu. We were expecting plain iced coffee but what turned up was quite different and very tasty......
We had some interaction with the local children on the ferry. One girl must have been aware of the safety record of Indonesian ferries as she brought her own chair and sat next to the life jackets!.......
Our one lasting memory of Sabang will be the noise. Not that of traffic or the fishing boats but of the mosques. We've experienced many mosques in our time but Sabang takes the cake for volume and length of service which is all broadcast across town. To my mind this has moved right away from its origins when the mu'azzin would stand at the top of the minaret and call the faithful to prayer. In Sabang this now appears to have descended into a big "pissing contest" over which mosque has the loudest amplifier.
We did escape for a week or so over to Rubiah Island which is more touristy and only has one mosque (under construction but the loudspeaker is clamped to the scaffolding!) but Sabang is where the "action" is!
We left Sabang on 9th Feb 2020 heading to Cochin, India. More of that later...
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AND THEN, THE MAST FELL DOWN !!
14 December 2019 | Port Takola, Krabi, Thailand
Richard Thorogood
That's what's called an attention grabbing headline, conjuring up images of general mayhem and heroic deeds cutting broken rigging from the stricken vessel as the wild sea crashes over the boat. Well, it wasn't quite like that. Yes, the mast did fall down but it happened while we were on the hard stand having the mast extracted from the boat and was a result of the lifting strop on the crane being inadequate to the task.
It could certainly been a lot worse as I had asked the crane driver to lift the mast about half a meter while I pulled the wiring out from the bowels of the boat. Had the strop broken while I was doing that, I could now be typing with my toes! As it was, the mast was only about a centimeter off the deck when the strop gave way. Three of us grabbed hold of the mast but it only took a nanosecond to realise the futility of trying to keep a 14 meter mast upright, so we let go and allowed it to fall gracefully over the starboard rail, striking the crane a glancing blow before hitting the ground directly on a top spreader bending the mast fatally.
"Bugger"!
Yep, she's bent alright!
Getting a replacement mast turned into something of a nightmare. Insurance naturally insisted on the cheapest quote, which was from Z Spars, France - a company that makes hundreds of masts each year for the likes of Beneteau and Jeanneau but give them a custom mast to make and be prepared to wait...... 9 months as it turned out! When the day finally arrived it became stuck at the docks as the mast had been described on export documents by Z Spars as "aluminium building products" and had not been labelled "Parts for yacht in transit" as requested. Consequently, duty had to be paid before it could be released.
When the mast finally arrived at the yard we were a bit surprised by the packaging - or lack thereof! Most new masts I've seen are shipped in either a robust plywood case or in a strong plastic drainage pipe. Ours arrived in bubblewrap with some blue plastic around it. Having opened this up we found a number if forklift scars, one stainless steel d-ring had about 2mm ground flat off it where the mast had presumably been dragged over concrete and worse of all, the mast appeared to have been dropped from a great height and was bent and cracked at one end - and just plain bent at the other end! Completely unusable.
Crappy Z Spars packaging
Bent and battered. The crack ran about 300mm up the mast.
Yep. Been dragged alright!
After much argy bargy with the shippers, who had changed insurers part way through the shipment of the mast, they agreed to pay for a replacement, although not the shipping cost (€2,000)! This only took another 6 months to arrive - packaged in the same way as the first mast despite our previous complaints to Z Spars and similarly scarred by a forklift although not bent and battered this time.
So, finally we had a usable mast but when it came time to rig it we found that good old Z Spars had managed to get most of the rigging the wrong length - mostly too short but at the same time, they had sent additional, unnecessary pieces of rigging. In an extraordinary turn of speed Z Spars sent some Sta-Lock fittings within a month that enabled me to use some of the extra rigging to create lowers of the right length and then to finish the job I had to have some plates made to extend the fore and inner forestays and buy some toggles to extend the back stays.
What a bloody mission! Anyway, you will have sensed my feelings about Z Spars France but credit where credit's due.......
Firstly, this all happened in Pangkor marina in Malaysia. Anywhere else in SE Asia this could have been a financial disaster but owner James Khoo immediately offered to pay for everything that insurance didn't cover and more beside. He was an absolute gentleman over the whole debacle.
Secondly, my insurance company recommended an agent / rigger who dealt with pretty much everything on my behalf including a total of some 700 emails and 80+ phone calls to France. Hats off to Mark Chapman of Nautical Alternatives, Port Dickson for taking all the frustrations and donkey work in such good humour - although I suspect he may have aged somewhat more than the 16 months it took to complete the "project".
Thirdly, Pantaenius insurance, Australia who paid out promptly, even though they had just reduced my premiums due the lower risk of being on the hard stand (!).
During our enforced stay on dry land we did a fair amount of work on the boat including stripping the hull back to fibreglass below the waterline, allowing her to dry out and then applying a total of 11 coats of epoxy resin, barrier coat, tie coat and anti fouling, which should stand her in good stead for many years to come. We also fitted a new lithium battery house bank and battery management system which will also hopefully last us a good few years.
In between the work, there was plenty of land and air travel including 2 trips each to New Zealand, England and Finland; Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Sumatra. All of which was reported on Facebook. If you're not my "friend", too bad - you missed it!
Kereru now sits in Port Takola marina in Krabi, Thailand and from there we will soon start the next stage of our seafaring adventure - across the Indian Ocean to Africa
Watch this space - Kereru will soon be flying again!
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Yes, we're still here!!
21 October 2017 | Pangkor Marina
Richard
As you can see, the last posting was in May 2017. Since June, we have been on the hard stand at Pangkor Marina, Malaysia and have actually just returned to the boat after 4 months land travel in Northern Europe, Vietnam and Cambodia.
If anyone is at all interested in these travels, photos and quirky comments can be sen on FaceBook. If you're not a "friend" already and you're not some kind of a weirdo, please send a friend request to get access.
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THAILAND ROUND UP
12 May 2017 | Royal Langkawi Yacht Club Marina
Richard
I seem to remember, way back in the mists of time, promising that the Indonesian retrospectives would start coming "thick and fast". Well, no. Foolish of me to make such a rash promise - I won't do it again! But I will slowly plod along through Indonesia as there was so much to see and I'd hate you to miss it!
Where are we now? - Just on our way out of Thai waters and heading back to Langkawi, Malaysia. We've spent the last 6 weeks or so since leaving Krabi, cruising around the islands of Phang Nga Bay and the eastern seaboard of Phuket. Some of the islands we've stopped at have been quite large with road networks connecting the towns and villages which we've explored by motor scooter - ubiquitous and cheap to hire. The exception was Phuket, where we hired a car - having tried a scooter one day and decided the risk to our lives was too great in the manic traffic (we saw three major accidents on our scooter day). The most striking features of our time here have been the geologically fascinating karsts (limestone islands) and their "hongs", the myriads of annoyingly noisy "long tail" boats (both fishing and tourist excursions - as described in the previous Krabi blog), the myriads of frequently annoying tourists (how dare they come on holiday and spoil our peace!), largely from China and Eastern Europe - and the odd sun burned Pom!
Some of the karst islands of Phan Nga Bay looking towards "James Bond Island" (where they filmed Man with the Golden Gun) - we avoided it - too many tourists.......
A seemingly floating island off Koh Tarutao - that's rain on it's way in the background........
Further south on Koh Tarutao in better weather.......
Val kayaking around some of the amazing rock formations at Koh Kudu Yai (dodgy quality pictures as I take the dodgy quality camera in the kayak!)..........
Taken from inside a sea cave.......
Look - here's some annoying tourists too lazy to paddle!........
So what's a "hong" you ask? Loosley speaking it's an island with a hole in the middle! The "hole" is apparently formed by rainwater creating a lake on top of the island (it rains a lot here!), which over the millenia percolates down through fissures, dissolving the soft limestone and eventually creating a big "hole" with an underground passageway or channel to the sea (imagine a big sink with a drain) which, depending on the state of the tide needs to be traversed by wading or swimming or paddling a kayak or dinghy. These passages are usually pitch black for at least part of their length, so it all gets rather exciting at times - at least you'd think so by the shrieks of the myriad tourists as they splash their way through.
Val and I got lucky at one hong on Koh Phanak ("Koh" is Thai for "island" by the way). We'd anchored off the entrance and timed our run ashore just as a tourist boat was leaving, so we had the "hole" to ourselves.
The way out.......
Inside the hong........
On the way back through the passageway, it was clear that another tourist boat had arrived in the interim as we came face to face with a party of about 30 Chinese tourists all wearing head torches. We pressed ourselves against the rock wall and luckily it was at a point in the passage which was wide enough to let them pass. (The tide was low, so the water was only knee deep.)
The tourists' chauffeur driven blow up kayaks waiting for them on the beach.....
Anyway - enough of the "now", let's get back to the past ........Actually, I'll make that a separate posting - coming up next.........
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INDONESIAN RETROSPECTIVE #5
10 May 2017 | Flores Island, Indonesia
Richard
September 2016
I last left you at Maumere, where the locals were watching us scoff down a "banquet". This next section takes us across the north coast of the island of Flores as far as Komodo and the island of Rinca - home of the famous Komodo dragons - all the more famous since a Singaporean tourist was bitten by one last week and had to be rushed to hospital!
We had a memorable stop at the small island of Gili Bodo which had crystal(ish) clear waters and much colourful invertebrate sea life to keep me happy snorkeling for hours. There was a wide range of different coloured sea squirts and clams that took my photographic fancy...........
Also tube worms........
And lots of little fish........
I shot Brian and Penny on "Ameldec" from the top of our mast (figuratively speaking!). I was up there, fixing something as usual.........
Next stop along the way was the modest little backpackery sort of low key touristy town of Labuan Bajo. Quite a refreshing change to find some nice restaurants and cafes catering to the needs of foreign tourists (us). We spent many a relaxed hour looking out over the local boats and maybe having the odd beer or two!..........
Labuan Bajo is the main base for heading out to see the Komodo dragons and while you can take your own boat and anchor off the park HQ, we chose to take one of the tourist boats - which was an adventure in itself. The long, narrow wooden boats have a curious arrangement of two diesel engines one in front of the other, which have to be hand cranked to get them started. I couldn't work out if the engines were driving individual prop shafts or if they were both geared up to the one but anyway, once they were both fired up, with the obligatory clouds of black smoke, they had a sound rather like a WW2 Lancaster bomber. The return trip nearly got very exciting when passing through a fairly narrow channel with reefs either side, it became apparent that our helmsman had fallen asleep at the wheel! His mate saw us getting agitated and quickly jumped up and poked said helmsman in the ribs - crisis averted!
The group of intrepid dragon watchers en route........
Seeing the Komodo dragons was a definite highlight of the whole trip. They are big - up to 3 meters, can move at a fair lick and despite their typical reptilian lack of expression, they exude a definite "don't mess with me or I'll rip your leg off" sort of attitude. Actually, they tend not to tear their victims limb from limb but just bite them and then follow them until they drop down dead ...... then tear them limb from limb! It's the deadly bacteria in their saliva that does the damage, causing a fatal septicaemia if the wound isn't treated within a few hours. The Singaporean tourist was considered a "high value asset" and so was rushed to hospital for treatment. The guides, who accompany every group on Rinca supposedly to protect us with the small stick they carry, are obviously considered a somewhat lower value asset as 3 had failed to survive attacks by komodo dragons in the last 4 years!
The video shows a large male dragon hoofing it down a slope towards us. I was trying to act brave but the nervous laughter gives the game away. I would point out that the guides had already scattered at that stage. So much for the protective stick!
I'll leave you with some more underwater shots taken at our anchorage on Komodo Island. They're some interesting thingies - Any idea what they are??
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GETTING ABOUT A BIT IN THAILAND
29 March 2017 | Krabi, S.W. Thailand
Richard
OK, so I know I look a muppet but that's the point - I'm driving a Honda "Scoopy" complete with "Hello Kitty" stickers! (Val looks alright though!)
So there's another 3 months between blogs - crikey! Where does the time go?!
I was going to make this another short note on where we are now, followed by an Indonesian retrospective - but there's more than enough material here for a blog, so I'll leave the retrospective for another time.
As a brief recap - after Christmas we lounged around Rebak for a while before flying to NZ for a catch up with family and friends. Returned to Rebak and finally cast off the lines on 3 March, spending a few days anchored off Kuah (the main town of Langkawi) before clearing Customs etc. at Telaga.
Then the great "voyage" to Thailand - the island of Koh Lipe, just 25 nm away! Koh Lipe is a popular day trip destination for tourists from Langkawi, so they have an Immigration Office set up on the beach where the tour boats come in. We were able to get our passports stamped by Immigration but as there is no Customs official or Harbour Master, which as visiting yachts we have to get a rubber stamp from, we cruised on up the coast to the larger clearance port of Krabi. But not before spending 4 hours under water scraping the impressive collection of barnacles off the bottom of Kereru - accumulated from 3 months sitting still in Rebak marina.
Some countries we've visited are very strict on getting all your clearance paperwork completed on arrival and certainly before you start cruising around the place. Thailand isn't one of those countries! As long as you have your passport stamped and visa validated they don't mind you spending a bit of time getting the rest of the paperwork completed - which is just as well as we didn't arrive in Krabi for nearly 2 weeks!
One of the islands we stopped at along the way was Koh Chuku, where we were fortunate in finding an empty mooring buoy for the night. The water clarity was dramatically better now north of the Malacca Straits, hence the reason for delaying the bottom scrape until in Thai waters.
Here's an arch to replace the one you lost recently in Malta, Clive..........
An Anemone with a blue bottom - haven't seen one of those before!
....And here's an anemone with a blue top! I'm still trying to get the perfect "Finding Nemo" shot.....
It can be a challenge when arriving in a new port, finding where we have to go for Customs clearance and the like. Krabi was no exception. The man at the marina told us to go to the police station - "Customs?" - blank stare - "Try down the road". Down the road turned out to be an Immigration office - didn't need that - "Try down the road" - Down the road and round the corner we found the Customs office quite close to where we'd anchored the boat but by the time we got there by our roundabout route they were closed for the day - so try again tomorrow. Maybe the marina man was a bit miffed we didn't want to pay his exorbitant marina charges so he sent us on a wild goose chase!
The anchorage in the river has been good. The currents are not too strong and there's not too much debris floating past (this is S.E. Asia after all!). There are several getting ashore options and the fishermen (and women) are friendly. The only downside is the frequent very noisy passing of the 'longtail' boats especially at the beginning and end of the day as they ferry tourists to and from the Phi Phi islands - although we're told you can't get away from longtails wherever you go in this part of Thailand. I'm not sure how the longtail evolved apart from the fact that the local boats have canoe sterns which would make fixing an outboard a bit of a problem. As you can see from the photo they are powered by a 4 cylinder petrol or diesel car engine driving a very long propeller shaft. We have only seen one that had a silencer - hence the racket!
Krabi Fisherwoman - from the way she was dressed she obviously felt the cold - it was only 28 climbing to 36 deg C!
A skillfully thrown cast net........
We've been getting about a bit in Krabi - as per the opening photo! But it's not all scootering around - we've also been getting some exercise!
Trip 1. - Wat Kaew Korawaram temple in the centre of town. Lots of gold paint and some interesting frescoes depicting Buddhist angels without wings (my interpretation!). Also, note the interesting traffic lights (one of a set of 4) nearby...........
Wat Kaew Korawaram temple......
Buddha - solid gold (paint)....
Buddhist "Angels"?......
Trip 2. - Tiger Cave Temple - a Buddhist temple about 20 minutes north of Krabi whose claim to fame is the 1,272 steps that take you to the top, which is 600m above sea level. I'm not sure what the base altitude is but the steps have an average rise of about 300mm (I kid you not!) so the total climb must be about 400m. Before climbing the steps you get to see the usual gaudy gold trappings of commercial Buddhism with some very secure collection boxes.........
Also, a depiction of how a tiger might have looked if it were in the cave .........
Unfortunately all the tigers were killed or driven out a long time ago.
Then to the steps.........
Some facebookers reckoned they'd climbed the steps in 20 minute - it took us 1 hour 20 minutes(!) but I think we won the prize for "most ancient step climbers" - we didn't see another step climber who was less than 30 years younger than us!
The 1,000th step - hooray!.......
A sweated down version of us.....
Buddha got there before us......
The view was worth the hundred gallons of sweat produced on the way up - and the wobbly knee syndrome on the way down!.......
Krabi Town
Looking into the hinterland
Trip 3. - Tab Kak Hang Nak Nature Trail. Being gluttons for punishment, 2 days later with calves still complaining bitterly, we set off for the 45 minute ride to this place (don't ask me to type it out again!). Having made the previous excursion at about midday (mad dogs and Englishmen and all that), we decided an earlier start was in order, arriving at about 9am only to discover that about 30 people had headed up the hill before us - You have to sign it at "base camp" including your scooter licence plate number so they know who to look for if you don't make it back down again. The return trip takes an average of 4 hours so they actively discourage anyone from starting too late in the afternoon. Maybe this non-specific sign was meant as an active discouragement too!.........
The walk was quite like a hike through the NZ bush - only hotter - and with snakes! On our way down a medium sized brown number shot across the path a few centimetres from my departing foot and just in front of Val's approaching foot - exciting! What was most noticeable was the noise - absolutely amazing volume and range of insect sounds. Something between a model aircraft and a chain saw but with lots of variations and LOTS of volume........
Sorry about the Germans or was it Russians? coming up behind us - I guess they didn't know David Attenborough was up ahead!
You'd think there must be insects the size of Mac Trucks out there but the only one I found that was making a medium sized racket looked like a standard cicada.........
Anyway, although once again it was tough on the way up........
- the views were worth it.......
And there was this photogenic chappy at the top......
The opening picture of us on the scooter was taken on the way back from this trip while we were sheltering under the covered driveway of a convenient unoccupied new house - very convenient for us as the sky had just turned black and the heavens opened, making scootering quite hazardous! It was scarily amusing to watch the locals riding along in the rain with one hand over their eyes - presumably peeking out through a gap between their fingers. I'm usually up for "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" - but I'll only take that so far! By the way, I've decided that the Honda Scoopy is my least favourite model of scooter. The Honda "Click" is much more manly!
So, to bring you right up to date, after nearly a week anchored up the river in Krabi, this morning we left at high tide and made our way to Chicken Island - so called because of an allegedly chicken-shaped rock formation - but as we arrived in the midst of a prolonged squall of wind and rain I wasn't in a position to take photos - we'll see how tomorrow pans out.........