10-12-00 Colleen is back on the boat after 2 weeks in the States. She brought back lots of goodies - pretzels and cookies for Pat and a few spare and repair parts for the boat. Two bags full of stuff! No problems getting them into Singapore or Malaysia. She had a quick visit back home with family and attending her niece's wedding. It was lots of fun and great to see everyone. It passed by so quickly though, everything except the 23 hours of flying each way! But Pat is glad to have her back onboard and anxious to get cruising again. The marina life, especially in the extreme heat/humidity, is no fun and Pat's been here at Sebana Cove Resort for 3 weeks now. (Oh poor thing, swimming in the gorgeous pool everyday because it's too hot to do anything else!) Time to get moving again, soon as Colleen recovers from her jet lag.
10-20-00 We're anchored behind Palau Pisang ("palau" means island) in the southern end of the Malacca Strait (Lat 01°27'N/Lon 103°15'E). The Malacca Strait runs between peninsular Malaysia on the east and the Indonesian island of Sumatra on the west. We are planning to cruise up the Malaysian side, day hopping to anchorages. The cruising conditions aren't spectacular - head winds, strong currents, frequent thunderstorms and big ship traffic. Oh well, it's a challenge. We actually left Pisang this morning, but turned around after an hour of crashing and banging into choppy seas and barely making 3 knots. We decided it wasn't worth it, we'll try again tomorrow, hopefully the seas will be calmer. We haven't met too many locals in our last week of traveling. The Malaysians seem to be very friendly and wave from their boats as they go by, but they haven't come over to our boat to say "hello" or to check us out when we're anchored. Very different from the overly-curious Indonesians we met. One thing we have discovered since we've been in Malaysia are the Video Computer Disks (VCDs). They are movie CDs that we can watch on our computer. Since we haven't seen movies in a long time, we've been buying quite a few to watch on the laptop. They're pretty good quality on our 233MHz MMX Pentium, and they only cost $1.50 US each!!!! We've seen "Perfect Storm", "Phantom Menace - Episode I", "Space Cowboys", "Man on the Moon", so far. Our VCD collection is up to 31 movies and growing. Others cruisers are buying them too, and we'll swap movies like paperback books. How cool. Don't think the VCDs are available in the States - probably illegal. But in Malaysia they are the hottest thing, they sell them everywhere on the streets and even in supermarkets.
10-31-00 We're in a lovely marina - Admiral Marina and Leisure Club, just 2 miles south of Port Dickson. Cruising Malaysia sure has been different for us - staying in plush marinas. But they are very affordable and have outrageously sculptured swimming pools. The pools are a god-send because the water is so dirty here, you can't swim off the boat at anchor. We really miss that in the 95-100°F temperatures! We've been in the marina a week now, working on various projects and enjoying a late afternoon swim in the pool. There are a dozen or so other yachties here doing pretty much the same thing. (The winds have been blowing from the northwest down the Malacca Straits and we're all waiting it to ease a bit before we head north again.) We had to take our wind generator, a three blade Windbugger, down off the 8 ft. pole mounted on the stern to work on it. One of the magnets inside the housing came loose and stuck itself to the armature. Luckily we've repaired that type of problem before and it was fairly easy 2 day process. Now the "Bugger's" back up and charging our batteries from the wind. Not bad, that's the only maintenance we've done to the Windbugger in over 2 years. We also worked on our battery connections, scrubbed/oiled the outside teak trim, painted our topside navy blue stripe, and polished the stainless steel hardware on deck. Now SIMMER looks loved again, she was beginning to look a little tired and weathered. We've also been enjoying the local cuisine. Wonderfully spicy foods with great hot sauces - sweet chili sauce and peanut sauce are our two favorites so far. The outdoor markets sell everything from fresh fish, fruit and veg, cooked foods, VCDs, copy watches, etc. Check out the picture from one of the night markets in Port Dickson and the beautiful pool at Admiral Marina. By the way, Happy Halloween! Not too many trick-or-treaters around the marina tonight.
Note: Just another reminder, we have cancelled our Compuserve account - so our Compuserve email address is no longer valid. Please use our Yahoo address for any email: rdegroodt@yahoo.com. Thanks.
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