Swaggie's wanderings

Terengganu looked the obvious next choice, about 150 miles away. I had spoken to a couple at Tiomen about it and they said it was a doddle getting in and out there as far as customs went, so – give it a go. Not much wind so motorsailing was the order of the day. Storms developed to the west and I just got in the second reef in time before we were hit by a thunderstorm. Winds went to 35 knots and vis to zero in driving rain. Out the other side things calmed down and the wind gave some assistance to our efforts. Terengganu looked nothing like the charts. It is a regional headquarters and along the lines of Canberra has decided it has to have flash buildings and suchlike, the fact there is really nobody about to use them isn’t an issue it seems. The harbour walls have been constructed out to a point that was shown on my chart as fairway lead lights to the original harbour. This has no become a pretty big harbour. Of course there was nothing in this newly enclosed space, so we made our way to the marina, miles away now, to anchor up. I had been told the marina was expensive and had no facilities, so wasn’t about to repeat an even worse example of Cullen Bay. Rob and I chatted to a cruiser that was anchored up and got the info about whare things were, so dropped anchor and I headed off in the tender to get things seen to. It was about 2pm by now and I was determined to see if we could achieve everything, a clearance in and out before 5pm when things shut down. Scooting upriver to the customs house I tied up amongst all of their big vessels and dodged cars driven by people that seemingly have not read the part of the car’s manual that dealt with brakes and steering to cross the road to the Harbour Master. Of course the Harbour Master would not be on the waterfront…..
Forms to fill in after being fairly promptly seen to and I was out of there, back ducking and weaving across the road to Customs. Again, things went smoothly, the lady there didn’t bat an eyelid when I said there were no crew on board, only passengers (this to make entry to Thailand easier) and I was on my way with the needed paperwork back to Swaggie. Rousing Rob we headed ashore to grab a cab to the airport where Immigration lives. They have no international flights at all, so an obvious location choice for this office.
Nice young lad there seemed to know what he was about and went about stamping everything in sight. A small problem occurred when asked if we could be cleared out at the same time. I said we wanted to leave the next day early and it might be easier. Of course I had no intention of definitely doing this, but was sick of the run around that this process seemed to inevitably involve. He looked a little crestfallen at this request and wanted to know what time exactly we planned to leave. ‘Dawn’ I said, ‘Maybe before then’, hoping this would make him realise a warm bed was a good place to be at that hour. “So 6 to 6:30?” he said. “I’ll be at the marina at 6:30, clear you out then” Doh! Now I have to get up! In the cab on the way back Rob kindly pointed out the deficiencies in my plan and that I should have said 3:30am. We stopped at some local markets to get some fruit and veg we needed and back to the boat. At the marina at the appointed time, thinking there is no way this guy will be here before 7 or so, and he turns up, on his bike, at about 6:32, hops off and apologises for being late! You could have knocked me down with a feather.
Trying to cover up my error, I suggested we may not be able to get away early as we had a fuel leak, or some such. The crestfallen look reappeared and queries were made about exactly when we would go. “Possibly not today, if we cannot fix it” I replied. “You must call me if you do not leave today, I have stamped your passports with today’s date”. I was about to point out that this sort of left open the option of stamping them with another date, as could have been done maybe yesterday, but decided I had made enough of a mess of this so far talking, so shut up.
Back on board we mucked about tidying and fixing then looked at the charts and discovered – measuring the distance correctly this time – there was a great island only 6 hours away, so off we went to Redang.