Nov 6-13
Hi All,
Yep, that is what you do in the Sail Malaysia Rally…..go from marina to marina. We left Puteri Harbor Marina on Tuesday, November 8 at 6:45am…..right at sunrise…….had a delightful 80nm run the first day to just south of Muar. The 2nd day we went the remaining 64nm to Admiral Marina outside of Port Dickson arriving on Wednesday Novemebr 9 about 3:00pm in of course, more rain:))))
The run through the Malacca Straits was not too bad…..yes, a gazillion ships, but all pretty much behaved……we still have another ~275nm to go through the Straits. There seems to be two school of thoughts on doing the Straits…..some friends advised doing an overnight, staying just on the shipping lane edge…..while others said no way just do day hops. There also seems to be some concern about Malaysian fishermen deliberately placing their nets around your anchored boat and then demanding money to get them off. Quite frankly, while we think this may have happened a few times in years past, it might have now been overblown in the cruiser rumor mill to happening all the time. We continue to ask many of the cruisers who have been in Malaysia before and some had not heard of this happening. They related an incident where a drift net did fall upon their anchored boat but the fisherman was very apologetic and quickly got the net off.
So….with all that information we decided to make this 145nm run a 2 day trip and anchored the first night….luckily we had very calm conditions and we had no fishing net incidents. We did anchor maybe 4 miles from the shipping lane but even then we had some wake rolls…whoa. We also anchored sort of near some fixed bamboo fishing traps….maybe a mile away thinking that maybe they will not put nets out near the traps. We had a very nice sunset….wow, very rare due to all the clouds/thunderstorms the past few weeks and then sat out after the sun went down to watch the lightning show way off in the distance…reminded us of our times in the San Blas islands in Panama. Eventually the lightning/thunder/rain moved in on us about 5am…..oh, don’t worry honey, I’m sure it will stop before we weigh anchor…..not….the anchor “b….h” was not happy:))))
We are very glad to have done a day hop because we had to divert numerous times for all the junk in the water. It has been raining hard and we guess a lot of the junk is washing down from the rivers. We had to divert for numerous logs….almost like the PNW….they are fairly easy to spot as they almost always have birds resting on them…..we also diverted for of all things….a huge sofa…..yikes. And of course, there were the numerous fishing boats…..some dragging nets while others were setting drift nets. Some of these were right on the edge of the shipping lane but most were well outside the lane.
Puteri Harbor: I haven’t really discussed our time at Puteri. Well…..maybe, because we didn’t do too much other than go to Singapore, clean the boat and a few boat projects. I did get a new iPhone 7. My old 5s just upped and died one day. We took the shuttle to the local mall where they had an Apple dealer and the tech did some diagnostic and came back and said the power logic board died…ok, can you fix it….yes, but it’s cheaper to buy a new phone……so I did my research and discovered the price of a new iPhone was the same in Malaysia, Singapore and back in CA….wow, impressive Apple impressive…..no price breaks anywhere.
Puteri Marina is in the middle of a huge development zone…..lot’s of condos, hotels, and restaurants et al…..but far from anything else. It is Chinese money, of course, and many people from Singapore are moving to Malaysia as it is so much cheaper and then doing a 1-2 hour commute to Singapore for work. So, we ate at several of the restaurants…..Chinese, Indian, Belgium….good beer!!!….and a Kenny Rogers chicken shop….never knew he had a franchise going:)))
When we came back from Singapore many of the Rally boats were showing up so it was good to see people and catch up. We did attend the Rally’s technical briefing…..about 4 hours……but then decided to leave a day early as they had canceled the tour and all that was left was a dinner….we thought the weather would be better plus we wanted to get to Port Dickson to do some other tours.
When we arrived at Admiral Marina it was election day and of course, we had been following the results on the iphone as we had cell service all the way…..OMG…..we were in shock…..we had several people come up and say how sorry they were for America…ugh!!!! But, it was the Aussies that were the most upset…..it seems Trump had said he wanted to tear up the trade agreement with Australia…..their stock market and dollar was crashing worst of all……we ended up having a dock commiseration party and just got drunk….yikes!!!
Here is how Kathy wrote about the election: We traversed the southern portion of the Malacca Straits tied to our computers and the internet, watching the election results. It was raining, which seemed to fit the gloom and doom I was feeling! Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I hope I’m wrong in my feelings about him. Nothing would please me more than for him to actually do a decent job as President without starting WWIII!! 🙂 I will say we were stunned, as were most of our cruising friends of all nationalities. The Aussies are not getting out unscathed either, currently being one of our strongest allies. We’ll see how long that lasts! Many of the trade agreements are in jeopardy. And really, the truth is, the first question everyone is asking us is how the US could elect him. They don’t get it at all, and we’re at a loss as to how to explain it! Guess some things just have no
‘splainin’! It was also suggested to us that we should take down our US flag and substitute a Canadian one. I guess it’s just a way different world out here than it is on US shores…..
Melaka: We came to Port Dickson trying to arrange a tour of Melaka and Kuala Lumpur…..but, the marina and the hotel did not know of any local guides/tours so we decided to rent a car and drive ourselves. After having walked to the rental place and making a booking, we come back to Mystic and talked to some friends and they said geez, you should have asked us, we have the name of a local guide who takes people on tours all the time…really, yep…..so we gave Ringit a call and arranged a Melaka tour the next day and canceled the rental car!!
Sunday night: We have just got back from Kuala Lumpur and it is late Sunday night. We have toured both Melaka and KL and loved them both. I’m going to stop the blog now and will discuss both tours on the next blog with lots of pictures.
We are leaving tomorrow, Monday, November 14, at first light, ~6:30amish to make the 2 day 140nm run to Pangkor. The conditions should be calm but who knows about the squalls and thunder/lightning storms. We hope to make about 70-80nm the 1st day and then do the rest the 2nd day.
Hope all is well!!
John
Mystic Moon
GO MYSTIC GO!!!
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