Kudat to Miri
Typhoon troubles and windy weeks.

"Be careful about what you wish for", is often said in regard to the weather. I obviously forgot that piece of well known advice when writing in my last blog about the lack of wind we had been having since Manado. During the last few weeks we have learnt a lot about typhoons, the transition season here, internet weather sites as well as adding to our knowledge of patience.

We arrived in Kudat expecting to stay 3 days and ended up staying 13 days while a typhoon romped its way across the Philippines , through the China sea before slamming into Vietnam. The typhoon breeding ground is east of Philippines, near Palau , they then head west to Philippines some curve NW towards Taiwan and Japan others move west to Vietnam and a few drop south. Which ever direction takes their fancy the typhoons are like huge vacuum cleaners sucking up air from hundreds of miles away and the wind becomes very strong as it rushes to feed the typhoon. Satellite weather maps showed the dense mass of swirling cloud with long tentacles of cloud reaching south to southern Borneo and into the northern Pacific. Kudat is in Sabah ..."The land beneath the wind" for about 3 weeks now Sabah has been the land in the wind.


This is the transition season between the south and north monsoons, I mistakenly thought the incidents of typhoons would be decreasing. But oh no, October the last month of the SW monsoon actually has one of the highest numbers of typhoons than any other month of this monsoon period. The other thing about transition seasons is of course my old favourites, lightening and thunder dance around the sky making for nervous nights....they always come at night. We cant complain tho we knew that coming over the top of Borneo at this time of the year was going to present some challenges. Staying in Kudat wasn't too bad, a safe anchorage, lovely people ...cruisers and locals... to get to know. Town within easy reach and great meals at the near by golf club. We even had a small Waikato club of two boats having missed the third by 2 days. We enjoyed the company of Fran and Dave Chown from Te Kauwhata on Melric at Kudat and we had just missed friends Joanne and Dave Booker from Pied a Mer ex Waikato Yacht Squadron members.

We did see a chink in the weather, a very small weather wind, after about a week and decided to leave Kudat for Kota Kinabalu. The Borneo race is on in Miri on the 9th October, we were aiming to take part and enjoy the social activities with friends not seen for a year. We left the pond at 5am and arrived back at 7pm to anchor in our same spot for another week! Because of the SW winds we had spent all morning tacking into 20 knot winds to claw our way south until early in the afternoon when we were slammed by a 50 knot SW front. Rain and wind made things a little difficult for an hour or so. I had been watching a build up of grey cloud on the horizon but didn't realize it was coming so quickly. As the wind built into the high 20s we furled in our small amount of genoa and just got the second reef in the main as the driving rain engulfed us. There was a coastal freighter about half a mile from us which disappeared in the heavy rain, as the wind zipped into the high 30s then 40s I stopped looking at the wind speed. Eventually the wind and rain was such that we decided to turn and run with the wind. Alan cut down our aft deck cover/water catcher as it ripped itself on the solar panels and threatened to flap up into the wind generator. Within an hour or so the wind started to abate and the sun was chasing away the grey, we then debated about turning around to renew our passage south. I had lost enthusiasm for the trip, it was late in the afternoon, our chosen anchorage was not good for a night entrance so we would have had to sail through the night to Palau Gaya for a better night entry. In the scheme of things we had been tacking all day but hadn't made a lot of ground south and I didn't fancy another of those fronts at night. So we turned back for Kudat. It was too easy knowing there was a safe anchorage to return to, if we had been on sea passage with plenty of sea room we would have carried on there would have been no choice. Chris had told us the night before that we would be back, we should have listened to his experience of 10 years or more of sailing these northern waters, Borneo to the Philippines.

The following week was spent listening to lines creaking as squalls blew across the pond, luckily we were on the leeward side and fared well in sometimes very heavy gusts. The wind was not constantly strong, it came in squalls often half a day a part. The rain that came with the wind topped up water tanks, these things always seem to happen at night so we were often out in the dark shifting buckets to get the best flow of water....our water catcher being out of action because of the great rip in it. The boys next door, on a delivery trip, during one late night blow, bleary eyed, pulled their stern ropes in too tight. As the tide receded the aft end of their boat ended up perched on one of the huge concrete blocks that had fallen off the sea wall. That incident kept everyone amused for the day, the old salts giving the boys plenty of advice and ribbing throughout the day until the tide returned at dark to float them off. We had the worst blow that day, the boys boat wasn't going any where, it was as solid as a rock, so they were free to help the yachts on the windward side reset anchors and pull away from the sea wall. I don't think that incident will be going on their Yacht delivery CVs.

Eventually after days of analyzing the grib files and swapping weather information, the wind abated it was time to leave before the developing Typhoon Palma spread its tentacles in our direction. We rounded Borneo's northern tip and found a long smooth lazy swell, a light S wind, we could motor sail directly the 60 miles to Usakan then it was another short 30 mile hop to the lovely marina at Kota Kinabalu (KK). Five miles out of Usakan our hydraulic steering had another hissy fit and it was back to the emergency tiller steering, at least we knew what was wrong this time. New springs were waiting for us in KK or so we thought. One phone call later and we found Tom on Matariki had kindly taken our parcel to Miri 160 miles away thinking he would give it to us there. We were thinking we would never get to Miri for the Borneo race. Hearing a snippet of conversation saved the day for us. The KK marina manager was delivering a yacht to Miri and was flying back the next day. A quick phone call to Tom to get him to give Simon our much needed springs, Tom answered the phone with... I've arranged to give Simon your parcel before he flys back."

Another bash into SW winds and we arrived in Miri marina on the 6th October giving us time to relax and catch up with friends. We are moored next to Patrick and Elizabeth from Labarque , it was their email with the race new date that got us hereThat night the wind howled, Palma although moving north towards Japan was having one last whirl on this coast.
A good night to be safe in a marina, but what do you know we race north on Sunday in a forecast of light northerlies!!! I suppose one good thing will be that in the clear night sky dodging the oil rigs and their prods will be a little easier.

Part of the generous race package for participants is two nights in the principal sponsors nearby hotel. So we are off tonight to enjoy the luxury, most of us will only use one night as the early morning tide on Sunday means a 6 am departure from the marina to get to the 8am race start. I am sure we will all enjoy the change from the boat even if it is only one night. The skippers can just about keep an eye on their boats from the hotel so they will happy while the rest of us i.e the woman are hoping to be luxuriating in deep baths.