8 April 2016 Koh Sawang to Ko Butang, Butang Islands
We’ve been living on Alba for exactly five years today, so I worked out a few statistics. In the past twelve months, we’ve sailed 6,982 nautical miles bringing our total to 26,970 since we moved aboard. We’re now at 99 degrees of longitude, meaning that we’ve done 55% of our circum-navigation. In the last year, we’ve run the engine for 380 hours, which at 5 knots equates to 1,900 miles, which means that we’ve spent 27% of our time motoring - I suspect that about half of that has been since we passed through the equator into Malaysia and Thailand.
We dropped the mooring in the middle of the morning and motored over to the north-east side of Koh Butang. It was only a few miles, so we didn’t bother to tidy up and looked like a tramp steamer with dive gear hanging about all over the place and the big awning draped over the boom. We anchored at 06°32.10N 099°10.10E in 15 metres of water alongside a shallow reef. It’s a lovely sheltered anchorage with two small islands about 400 metres away.
After lunch, we went snorkelling by the larger of the two islands. It was interesting reef to the north east side, but there were scores of tourists flapping around in their orange life jackets, scaring off the sea-life. The currents are very strong in this area and we were nearly caught out, with a very strong current against us as we tried to get around the corner back to our dinghy - we only just made it.
We’ve done so much snorkelling in the past week that I’m getting picky now about taking photos and nothing seemed to excite me. However, just as we were getting ready to leave, we spotted an animal swimming in the water, which turned out to be a Longtailed Macaque. It climbed onto a rock and sat there eating some food, which I guess it had scammed from one of the tourist boats.
I attracted the monkey’s attention, so that I could take some photos and it jumped into the water and started to swim towards us. It climbed onto a nearby rock and stared at us wanting some food. I think that it must have seen the movie “Shrek” because it did a pathetic pose just like the cat.
9 April 2016 Ko Butang to Koh Adang, Butang Islands
After a late start, we motored over to Koh Barat, where we’ve seen lots of tourist long-tails stopping. We tried to anchor to the north of Arch Rock, but it was either rock or coral and after two attempts at 10 metres and 15 metres, we gave up and returned to the anchorage on the west side of Koh Adang.
It was very calm and very, very hot, so after lunch, we went in the dinghy on a little snorkelling expedition around Koh Kata. The current was very strong on the north-east corner, so we didn’t get in the water. We picked up a white and blue mooring on the north-west corner, where there was no current and good coral, but mediocre visibility.
There’s a small bay on the west side of the island, which is cordoned off for the tourist boats, which was okay, but we didn’t stay long because Glenys got stung on the lip by something (and there were scores of tourists failing around.)
We’ve finally run out of beer, wine, cheese, meat, fruit and vegetables - our only provisions now are onions, potatoes, rice, eggs and tins, so it’s time to go to Langkawi.
10 April 2016 Koh Adang to Telaga, Malaysia
While tidying up the boat to sail to Langkawi, we ran the water maker to completely fill the water tanks because we won’t be able to run the water maker in Telaga Harbour - we managed to get underway by quarter past ten. As we rounded the island of Ko Lipe, the wind picked up enough to sail - yahoo!
Unfortunately, it was short lived and, a couple of hours later, we were back to motoring all the way to Telaga Harbour in Malaysia. We anchored at 06°21.74N 099°40.77E in 2.1 metres of water (chart datum). The holding is poor in this harbour and we were slowly dragging when we backed the anchor in at 1500 rpm - we normally pull backwards at 2000 rpm. We decided that it was holding well enough for the calm conditions that we have at the moment and the anchor will probably slowly work its way in deeper.
We won’t be able to clear customs until tomorrow, but I nipped ashore to book a car for tomorrow afternoon - we desperately need to get some food. In the evening, we went out for a meal and splashed out on a couple of pizzas in one of the expensive restaurants in the marina.
11 April 2016 Telaga, Langkawi
It’s very simple to clear into Malaysia - the three offices of Immigration, Port Captain and Customs are in one building in the marina. We filled in one form at Immigration, handed over our departure clearance from Thailand to Customs and filled in another form in the Port Captain. No fees, no hassle and, best of all, they asked no questions about where we’ve been for the past two weeks since we cleared out of Thailand.
After picking up a car from the marina office (£2 per hour), we drove into the main town of Kuah to run a few errands. I had no luck in buying a replacement high pressure hose for my dive regulator, but we were successful in buying some new SIM cards for our iPad and mobile phone. Glenys picked up some courtesy flags from a small shop in Kuah, where they stock a large range of hand sewn flags.
Glenys went to a dentist to see if they could do an implant, but it appears that no one in Langkawi does implants. They offered to remove the tooth while we wait, but Glenys politely declined. Goodness knows what she’s going to do now. Perhaps she can get it sorted out in Georgetown. It’s not causing any pain at the moment, but the logistics of sorting out the problem is defeating us.
After a pleasant Chinese lunch in the middle of Kuah, we went to a supermarket and stocked up. It was half past four by the time that we’d lugged everything on board Alba and then it was a rush to get ready to receive Phil and Sandy from “Southern Wing” for dinner. We had a pleasant evening catching up on the past few months.
12 April 2016 Telaga, Langkawi
We had a very lazy day with Glenys reading and playing her ukulele. I spent all day programming a new version of the Underwater Photographs module for our website.
13 April 2016 Telaga, Langkawi
We had another lazy day, I sorted through my Underwater Photographs and uploaded them to our website. I now have 800 underwater photos of 560 species of fish and other sea-life, most of which I’ve taken over the past two years.
14 April 2016 Telaga, Langkawi
We hired another car, so that we could pick up our laundry and do some more shopping. We finally found the wet market, which is a fair way outside Kuah town. It’s not too bad for fish and vegetables and Glenys bought a kilo of Water Buffalo meat.
We had “Peggy West” over for a few drinks in the evening.
15 April 2016 Telaga, Langkawi
It’s so peaceful in this anchorage and it’s so hot ashore, that we can’t be bothered to get off the boat, so we had yet another day of pottering about.
Glenys did some research on dentists in Malaysia and has decided to have her tooth fixed in Georgetown. She’s been in touch with a dentist there and they’ve set up an appointment to see her on the 27th April. They’re sophisticated enough that they can do the relevant bone grafts and do an implant, so we’ll be staying there for a couple of weeks, while she gets the work done.
“Southern Wing” invited us over for dinner.