8 May2016 Straits Quay Marina, Penang
Glenys headed off to the hospital first thing in the morning and I got on with a few jobs. I’ve been very lazy and have been avoiding attempting to repair the front toilet after it stopped working while Steve and Jacqui were on board five weeks ago.
I suspected that the pipes had become furred up, but when I tried to remove them I couldn’t budge any of them. I’ll have to cut them off and replace with new reinforced pipe, but I won’t be able to get any pipe until we get to Singapore, so the job was stopped. I started to reassemble the toilet and noticed that the Joker Valve was inverted. I reverted it, rebuilt the toilet and, lo and behold, the toilet now works - brilliant.
Glenys came back mid-afternoon, and her tests were all okay. The doctor told her not to take any more blood pressure tablets and thinks that the tablets were the reason why she nearly passed out on the hike. They have no idea why her blood pressure was so high at the dentist - perhaps she just gets stressed up by dentists...
9 May 2016 Straits Quay Marina, Penang
We had another admin day. Next January, we’re planning to go to the Andaman Islands, which are 500 miles west of Thailand, and belong to India. So we’ve got to get Indian tourist visas. Unfortunately, because we are British citizens, we are only able to apply for a visa in the UK and it’s a right palaver.
I spent three hours filling in two on-line visa applications. The visa applications have been outsourced and the process is tedious. Having made our on-line applications, we have to print out the forms and take them in person to a visa processing centre in Birmingham. It’s going to cost £108 each to apply, which, of course, is kept even if our application is unsuccessful.
In the afternoon, Glenys went off to the dentist. We measured her blood pressure before she left, which was 110/71 -perfect. By the time the dentist took her blood pressure again it was 154/99, so she obviously hates dentists. The dentist worked on her for an hour preparing the tooth for a crown, which went well, so we might actually escape the marina on the 11th.
We had cracking thunderstorm tonight that lasted for a couple of hours. Over the past few days, the clouds have been building up in the afternoon and the lightning starts with a vengeance after six o’clock. This doesn’t bode well for our trip down the coast.
10 May 2016 Straits Quay Marina, Penang
Glenys went off to the dentist again. He took an impression for a crown, which she’ll have it fitted tomorrow. I spent day pottering about on-board, buying things on-line to be delivered to our son Craig in the UK.
11 May 2016 Straits Quay Marina to Pulau Rimau, Penang
We spent the morning getting ready to leave in the afternoon and some more damn admin. Glenys rushed off at half past two, had her crown fitted and was back at the boat by four o’clock. At five minutes past four, we were motoring out of the marina.
The entrance to the marina is a nightmare. Despite having a 2.6 metre tide, the depth still dropped down to 2.2m - that’s just 200mm under the keel. I guess we were off-line, but goodness knows where the deep channel is.
We motored against a fairly strong 15 knot south wind, passed under the two bridges and anchored at Pulau Rimau at 05°15.03N 100°16.33E in 7 metres of water. It seems to be very good holding and we’re tucked out of the wind in a shallow bay. The small island looks nice, but has packs of wild dogs roaming the scruffy beaches and howling as the sun went down.
12 May 2016 Pulau Rimai to Pulau Pangkor
Our alarm went off at 06:00, we didn’t have enough light to leave until 06:45 - normally, I don’t mind sailing in the dark, but there are so many fishing boats and nets around that it would be foolhardy to leave in poor light.
It was a long 70 mile day. The wind we had was on the nose, so we motor-sailed for 12 hours. It’s a dismal stretch of coast, with nothing of interest apart from the hundreds of fishing boats. We had quite a variety of small boats - some laying long nets that we had to skirt around and others trawling in large fleets.
The other thing that we had to avoid was large patches of rubbish in the water - logs, plastic bottles, crates, rope, etc. When we were about 5 miles from our destination, the revs on the engine suddenly dropped for a few seconds and then picked up again. Our boat speed dropped by a knot, so we knew that we’d picked up something on the propeller. As we were only an hour away from the anchorage, we just kept on going.
We dropped the anchor at Pulau Pankor at 04°12.57N 100°33.00E in 6 metres of water and I immediately went into the water armed with a bread knife. I found a big ball of netting around the propeller, but it only took a few minutes to cut it off.
We used to have a rope cutter fitted to the propeller shaft, but I removed it in New Zealand because it was worn out. In our first four years of cruising, with the rope cutter fitted, we never had any problems with entangling things on the prop. Since leaving New Zealand we’ve now had two incidents. I’m going to bit the bullet and buy new parts for the rope cutter even though it will cost over £300.
13 May 2016 Pulau Pangkor to Pulau Angsa
This is a lovely settled anchorage, but we had no time to hang about and were on our way at the crack of dawn. We had another boring day of motoring. It’s so mind numbing that we set up two hourly watches, so that we could do other things. I spent a few hours sitting at my laptop trying to learn all about jazz chords on the guitar - very complicated stuff…
We arrived at the anchorage off Pulau Angsa and anchored at 03°10.84N 101°13.01E in 10 metres of water on good holding mud. I’ve said this before, but this a rubbish anchorage - it’s behind two small islands five miles off-shore and very exposed from most directions. However, it’s the only show in town if we want to move quickly and not sail at night, so we went to bed praying for settled weather.
14 May 2016 Pulau Angsa to Admiral Marina
It was actually a very quiet pleasant night. We upped anchor and left before the sun came up. The first hour was spent dodging rows and rows of fishing nets set up across our route. The tide was against us and I wanted to stay in shallower water where the current would be weaker, but that where the fisher men were laying their nets, so we headed out and stayed in the shipping lane.
Our route took us through Port Klang, which is the closest major port to Kuala Lumpar and it’s very busy. There are miles of container ship docks with their alien looking cranes, efficiently lifting containers on and off the ships. The ships are refuelled by tankers that pull alongside and are dwarfed by the huge container ships.
It was very boring for the remaining 45 miles, so we carried on with our two hour watches and, being so close to the coast we had a reasonable 3G internet connection, so I spent my off watches down below on my laptop.
Fortunately, we had a good current with us and we made good time to Admiral Marina, arriving at around five o’clock.