11-08-00 We're still in the Malacca Strait, anchored up the Dinding River near Lumut, Malaysia (Lat 04°16'N/Lon 100°40'E). The river is a wonderful place flanked by thick jungle and plantations along the shoreline. Kampung Baharu is the small, local village that we've been enjoying for the last few days. From here we've taken the bumpy, 20 minute bus ride in to the larger village of Sitiawan to shop and email. We checked the internet today to see who was our new US President, but it was still too early to tell due to the time difference - we are 12 hours ahead of US Eastern Standard Time (EST). Maybe we'll hear the final result on the local radio later today, supposed to be a close one. The villages of Kampung Baharu and Sitiawan have the charm of being entirely off the tourist map and the locals have been friendly and the food in the small eateries excellent (and unbelievably cheap). We have been eating one or two meals ashore each day since two of us can eat for $6 ringgit, which translates to $1.50 US!!!! The cuisine is Malay,Thai, Indian or Chinese - all interesting foods. We've tried alot of different foods here in Malaysia - our favorite Indian food is roti. Roti is a type of bread, almost like a thin pizza dough that it stretched and filled with vegetables/egg or meat/egg combinations. The dough is folded over several times and then fried. Served with peanut, curry, or sweet chili sauce and it's fabulous. Thai food is VERY spicy - we've had chili crabs, chili prawns and a hot soup called laksa. The Chinese food - lots of rice and stir fried veggies, seafood or meat - hot and spicy or sweet and tangy. We've also had Malaysian chicken and beef satay. Strips of thinly sliced meat is marinated in a satay sauce then skewered and grilled over wood fire. Great stuff. This area of the world is a gastronomic haven. Our taste buds are definitely evolving.
11-13-00 We arrived at Pulau Langkawi yesterday morning after an overnight passage from Kampung Baharu, current position: Lat 06°11'N/Lon 99°47'E. It was a 26 hour passage and we had a few hours of wind on the nose and big seas - of course at night from 11pm to 6am! We beat into it with a double reefed main, staysail and about half of our roller furling genny rolled out. Lumpy night. But we were happily rewarded when we arrived here. Langkawi island is beautiful. Lovely protected anchorages to choose from and fantastic scenery - shear cliffs, lush tropical forests, monkeys, and lots of bird life so far. The anchorages are spectacular with jutting pillars of rock, fjord-like inlets dripping with vegetation. And we've only seen two of the anchorages so far. Langkawi is actually the largest island in this archipelago - about 10 other medium-sized ones and 80 small ones. Langkawi is located just under the Thai border, we plan to spend a couple weeks here exploring and then move on to Thailand. Langkawi is also a duty free port, so we'll be stocking up on beer, spirits and chocolate!!!!
11-16-00 After much research and deliberating, we just made a two major cruising decisions. One - leave SE Asia in January, and two - go around Africa (Cape of Good Hope). We've changed our minds about staying in SE Asia for an entire year, we will cross the Indian Ocean in Jan '01. The biggest factor in our decision is the weather. It is very hot and humid, without the luxury of jumping off the boat for a cool-down swim. The water has been dirty and uninviting all the way up the west coast of Malaysia, until here in Langkawi. We also considered the monsoon seasons in this area. Right now we are entering the winter Northeast (NE) monsoon season. This means monsoons (heavy rains and wind) on the east coast of the Malay/Thai peninsula and currently cruising on the west coast is good. But during the summer Southwest (SW) monsoon season, everything switches over and we'd have to move over to the east coast of the peninsula for protection from the SW monsoons. The other alternative to moving to the east coast is to spend the 4 monsoon months up a muddy west coast river in rainy, wet weather. No thanks. Mildew city. Another consideration was the Thailand visa timeframe. Thailand only allows for a 30 day visa, so we would have to leave the country and come back in once a month by traveling to Malaysia and/or Myanmar (Burma). Moving over to the east coast of the Malay/Thai peninsula entails traveling back down the Malacca Strait, the way we just came, around Singapore and up into the South China Sea and into the Gulf of Thailand. Neither option seems appealing to us. We are enjoying the people, culture, food, scenery, etc in this area ..... but the weather doesn't provide us with our favorite cruising activities - snorkeling and swimming. Therefore, our decision to cross the Indian Ocean this season. See our updated itinerary. Our other big decision is to sail to Africa and not to travel up the Red Sea. When we first left the States, we thought we'd go up the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. But with ongoing turbulence in the Middle East, we've opted for the African route. The Red Sea would be very interesting and lots of yachts do take that route, but we felt more comfortable with Africa right now. And also it allows us to see some places we've been reading about in the Indian Ocean that have peaked our interest. The one drawback is that we will be out of touch for quite some time. It'll take us about 10 months from Thailand to South Africa and half of those months we'll be incommunicado. We'll be spending 4 months in Chagos Archipelago. No one lives in the Chagos atolls (except the US Navy at Diego Garcia Atoll), so no phones, post office or internet cafes. We'll have to be totally stocked up on provisions as well. But we're looking forward to the fishing, shelling and remoteness of the Indian Ocean.
11-19-00 We're anchored in a lagoon on Rebak Island off the southwest tip of Langkawi (Lat 06°17'N/Lon 99°42'E). SIMMER had developed a "creaky" sound in the mast that has been bothering us for the last few months. We've gone over the mast several times and have tweaked the rigging, but the noise is still there with a side-to-side motion. Rebak Marina is a full service marine, with a heavy duty lift, so we decided to raise the mast with their crane and inspect for possible corrosion. Part of the problem is our aluminum mast sits in a stainless steel "shoe" on the keel, and we can't see the very bottom 4 inches of the mast inside the shoe. We were concerned that the dissimilar metals were causing galvanic corrosion. If the corrosion was bad enough, we thought we might have to cut off a bit of the bottom of the mast. Luckily everything was ok. A wee bit of corrosion, but not much. We cleaned up the mast base and coated both the mast and shoe with lanolin grease and inserted a thin plastic sleeve around the mast to act as a barrier between the two metals. Once the mast was back in place, we readjusted the rigging and hopefully fixed our "creaky" noise. At least we know the mast is sound, and not coming down on us. Peace of mind before crossing the Indian Ocean. At some point in the future, we plan to redesign the mast shoe, so that the mast sits on the outside of a shoe and not the inside, so we can see any corrosion forming. Poor design as is. Next time we sail and roll, we hope not to have any creaks. We'll let you know.
11-21-00 We've been in Langkawi a week and a half, enjoying the many fine anchorage around the island and the abundance of monkeys. We got a few more digital monkey pictures for our new nephew-in-law, Tom. Sometimes it's tricky, the monkeys are pretty quick. One minute they are on the beach playing and the next they are swinging from the tree tops, 10 meters up! (Another monkey picture for you, Tom!) We're anchored near a small island off the southwest tip of Langkawi - Pulau Anak Borau (Lat 06°22'N/Lon 99°40'E). We walked to a neat waterfall today, about a 30 minute walk from the anchorage - straight up! We were very hot and sweaty by the time we got there and the dip in the refreshingly cold, mountain water felt great. A few people were there also swimming, so we had to wear our bathing suits, but it was still fun. On our way back down we ate at a small roadside food stall. Tomyam (Thai style noodles) for Colleen and stir fried rice with chicken for Pat - all for $7.50 ringgit or $1.90 US. Can't beat the prices here, cheaper than eating on our boat by the time we buy the food, use the propane to cook, and then the water to clean up - that's Colleen's theory anyway. And the food is really good, we just look where the locals eat and then make sure the cooking area is clean. Some of the places on the sides of the road, aren't very clean and raw and/or cooked food is left out in the open. They do eat some strange things here, last week we went to an outdoor night market - food stalls, fruit/veggie stands, clothing, VCDs, etc and saw someone cooking whole chickens (they were plucked, but head and feet still attached). Somehow didn't appeal to us. They also eat lots of dried little fish - some as small as your thumbnail. We bought a bag of shelled peanuts and they had these dried little fish mixed in with them! Yuck. We didn't know, no English language on the bag ... part of the experience. Well, we'll sail northward up the coast of Thailand in a week or so. Day sailing along the islands to Phuket. Looking forward to the amazing Thai scenery along the way. We'll update the webpage again once we reach Phuket, around mid December. Maybe by then we'll hear who our new US President is?!?! Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
P.S. Our VCD movie count is up to 42 and growing. Guess we'll stock up on a few more before we leave the area. Some of the other yachties have over 200 VCDs! Last night we watched "What Lies Beneath". Good scary flick. It's so neat to watch movies on our laptop.
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