20th April 2009

A little anecdote that I forgot to add to the last blog.

After getting back to the boat from our day in Kuala Lumpur at 9.30pm we found our boat keys had been stolen from a lee cloth pocket which were in a plastic bag under a few other things in the pocket, which I thought was well concealed. The burglar left his foot prints behind - guano so in the dark had to break into the boat. The plastic bag was lying in the cockpit empty so obviously a crow like bird had got away with them. We had seen them flying around with big hunks of polystyrene which were bigger than they were. Fortunately we have another set but they were inside the boat but we were able to break into it without too much damage.

We finally anchored at 7.45pm, 13 hours after leaving Port Klang in the lee of Cape Rachado Lighthouse a few miles south of Port Dickson. We ended up only having half an hour without the motor and in total put 49 miles under our belt. It was a nice calm anchorage for the night and there appeared to be several looking expensive resorts ashore.

We were up and away by 7am Saturday morning and headed the 36 miles to Pulau Besar with another day of only half an hour sailing with no motor, but we arrived just after 4pm. We then both got into the water to make the most of the daylight hours left to give the bottom of the boat a clean and remove all the barnacles. This is an on going job up in these tropical waters and virtually has to be done every 10- 14 days and at times Dave has to use his diving gear. It was particularly bad this time after being in the filthy water at Port Klang. Also found a big plastic bag around the prop which would not have helped our speed over those two days!! The man part of the antifouling on the bottom of the hull is good but when last done there should have been another coat put on the leading edges of the keel, rudder and the water line but we were away when the antifouling was done. We are hoping we can hold off with antifouling until the end of the year or early next year. Hauling out and anti foul is expensive up here but by us using International Micron 66 we should only need to do it every three years.

Dave spent ¾ hour on the hull again yesterday morning before leaving Pulau Besar and we motor sailed all day until 6.30pm when we anchored off the coast from Tanjung Labor in what appeared to be in the middle of the ocean as we were 2 miles off the shore as it was so shallow and even then we were only in 4 metres of water. Fortunately it was a lovely calm night and we did think we were going to get a thunder storm but it went right around us.

Dave had me up just after 4.30 this morning and decided we might as well get going and as usual there was s not a lot of wind to start with but by 11.30 we had picked up a nice breeze from the WNW and we sailed the rest of the way doing 5-6 knots until we arrived at Pulau Merembong in the Johor Strait only a few hundred metres from the western side of Singapore. Merembong is owned by Malaysia. We head into Puteri Marina tomorrow morning and it is only 7 miles from here. Overall we think we have had a good trip down from Langkawi with no Sumatras thank goodness, just more motoring than we would have liked.

On doing some research on the internet on yachting Dave found an article about using Google Earth while sailing so I have downloaded it on to the computer and even though not connected to the internet, but with using the GPS, shows us sailing down the Malaysian coast. Also tells me on our navigation programme, Maxsea, what the winds are in any particular place, along with its direction and barometric pressure. Friend Desiree has managed to pick up where we are so from now on I will be running it in the background while we are sailing so anyone can pick up at any given time where we are.

We are looking forward to catching up with our friends Maggie & Ray who live 6 months in England and 6 months in the UK. They were in the marina along from us in 2003-04 and they are coming over to see us while we are in Puteri and we will catch up with them again in Sebana Cove. They were in England when we were there in November.