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| Outside Langkawi Marina in Malaysia |
We are now in Nongsa, Indonesia, just across the Malacca Strait from
Singapore. We left Langkawi under cloudy skies at 8 in the morning and
have sailed or motor-sailed most of the way.
As this is a delivery, we are not stopping in every interesting nook,
but moving the boat to Cairns as expeditiously as possible; this means that
when the winds are light or adverse, we motor.
We are checking into Indonesia here as a formality, which will allow us
to stop in other places in Indonesia if necessary for supplies or repairs.
We will check out in Bali and then go on to Thursday Island to check
into Australia.
Our passage to Indonesia was relatively uneventful (at least until the
last day…more on that later). The boat, being a former charter boat, is
quite spacious, but lacks the tools and spares and manuals that our own
cruising boats would have. Bill did a very good job of anticipating tools
and parts that would be necessary, so we at least have the basics. So, when issues crop up, we need to be
resourceful, which is part of what makes cruising so interesting.
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| In the anchorage outside Langkawi |
We moved out of the marina and into the anchorage on Saturday, giving us a
chance to test the anchor, stow dockside equipment like fenders and lines and
get our heads into living aboard. Sunday
morning we were out fairly early and, on raising sails, were confronted with
the first of many issues: the mainsail,
which we knew to be well used, had already developed a tear near the clew
patch. Fortunately, the boat’s owner had
already purchased new sails, which were aboard, so we decided to baby the old
one to Nongsa, reefing once if needed.
Then the technology issues started to crop up: the chart plotter, newly
installed by Bill himself, quit working and refused to do more than flicker
‘Raymarine” before fading into black. Not to be outdone, Bill’s navigation computer
and handheld GPS that both kept shutting down for no apparent reason and his iPod
that refused to shuffle. At the same
time, we were both learning the logic and operation of the AIS system and chart
plotter’ touch screen system. We needed
a boat geek and we needed one badly!
It was almost a relief when we heard the thwap-thwap-thwap of a line
caught in the prop, a problem that we knew how to solve! Bill was overboard with mask and fins and we
were back underway in just a few minutes.
First days are like this, though, so we started night watches with a long
list of things to address at first light.
Monday morning found Bill at work with the electrical tape, hotwiring the
computer and the GPS to 12V circuits to bypass the need for a 12V plug and
socket. Problem solved. This also freed up the two 12V sockets for iPod
charging, important companions for night watches. The chart plotter started to behave, so we
crossed that off the list, and with some persistence I got Bill’s iPod to
shuffle. The sail continued to split,
so we took in a reef, which pulled the tear into the bunt, and motored on down
the Strait.
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| Two of the thousands of boats we passed in the Malacca Strait |
The Malacca strait is a critical link in world shipping. Like
the Panama Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal and the Torres
Strait, it is a narrow and shallow body of water on the shortest shipping route
round the world. Ships of all shapes and sizes, laden with oil, cars,
coal and containers funnel into it and thread their way north and south…an
incessant parade of behemoths.
We motor along, just outside the shipping lanes, and watch them all
warily on our AIS receiver, correlating the "targets" we see there
with the vessels we see on the water. ‘
Because the boat has an AIS transponder, other ships can also see us on
AIS. This is very reassuring at night when all you can see is a profusion of
red, green and white lights. At one
point, the AIS showed 160 ‘targets’ within a 6 mile radius! And, outside the shipping lanes, we need to
watch for the brightly painted Malaysian, and then Indonesian, fishing boats
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| Malaysian fishing boat |
On Tuesday we finally figured out that the chart plotter would only work
if the engine was on, so we will need to do some testing to determine if the
issue is in the chart plotter itself or in the wiring to it. But at least we had a reliable chart plotter. So there we were, motor-sailing down the
Malacca Strait with the wind just off our nose and feeling like we had pretty
much solved all of the technology issues, when Bill’s computer went dark. This time it refused to restart, letting us
know that we needed to insert the setup disk…which of course he did not have
with him. Now we seriously needed that
boat geek.
And then the uneventful portion of the passage ended. I turned the watch over to Bill at 2:30am on
Wed a.m. and woke up a couple of hours later to a strange motion that reminded
me of slalom skiing. Disoriented, I
poked my head out to find a totally different scene than I had left. When I went below, we were motor-sailing with
two reefs in the main, barely making 5 knots, nearly head to wind, in
relatively calm seas. Now we were
surfing down huge waves at 10 knots in pitch dark and winds that approached 40
knots…all while the stream of behemoths continued just a mile away. We were in a ‘sumatra,’ a form of squall
unique to the Malacca strait. I put on
my foul weather gear (it was raining buckets) and together we managed to strike
the main, put out a bit of headsail and get the boat speed down to a mere 8
knots. Taking down the main, we could
see that it was completely shredded, the luff having separated from the body of
the sail in the top third,
An hour later, the drama was over.
And by sunrise, we were motoring past Singapore under cloudy skies and
lightening rain. We pulled into Nongsa
marina at 2pm, and hoisted the sail for pictures of the damage. Bill ran into some sailing friends on the
dock – the sailing community is a small one and it is typical to run into
someone you have met in another port. So
the first task is to find out how to get groceries, if the water is potable,
where to get parts that you have discovered that you need, etc. All of that usually happens over a beer along
with a few sailing stories.
Yesterday’s job was bending on the new sail. We had lost a batten when the old one blew
out, but another sailing acquaintance just one slip over happened to have a
supply and gave us one. Once again,
there we were: working on our boat in an exotic location – the definition of
‘cruising.’
