Day 36, Year 5: Getting Ready to Leave Rebak

Day 36, Year 5: Getting Ready to Leave Rebak
Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Weather: Overcast Day with Periods of Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

The ‘thing-a-mee’ around the moon last night did indeed mean that moisture was headed our way. We awoke to a totally overcast sky. I needed to get laundry done before we leave tomorrow, so I put the clothes in the buckets early and had everything out to dry by 11 am. There was a wonderful breeze, but not enough to dry everything before the rains came in early afternoon. So the cockpit looks like a Chinese laundry.

We finished the job of getting the lazy jacks in place to hold up our new sail cover. This meant Mark needed to go up the mast three times. But now it looks like everything is in place and the new cover looks great. What was a Doyle Stackpack is now a Ben Stackpack (Ben is the name of the canvas man who did our work here). We then launched into doing every job we could think of that requires a lot of fresh water. Mark scrubbed the teak decks and I scrubbed the deck top. I’m not sure what is in the air here, but whatever it is, it is very black and yucky. Some say it is gas and oil fumes from all he airplanes that fly overhead. But whatever it is, I will be glad to leave it behind.

In addition to tonight’s log, I am writing a letter to family and friends that will also be posted. We have finally made a decision about our travels for the next year, and that will be outlined in the letter.

Tomorrow we will leave here and sail to Kuah. It is a short distance, but it will give us a chance to check all systems. We will start the watermaker and hope that is working, use the autopilot and hope that is working, and check out the sails to make sure everything is going up and down as it should. I’ll report from Kuah tomorrow night on how things go.

Day 36, Year 5: December Letter to Family and Friends

Day 36, Year 5: December Letter to Family and Friends
Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

Hey guys,

We are still in Malaysia but getting ready to head for Thailand. Tomorrow we will leave the marina where Windbird has spent the last eight months. The short sail to the main town of Kuah on Langkawi Island will give us a test run to make sure all systems are working as they should be. We will spend a day or two in Kuah madly buying food, booze, and other necessities before heading to Thailand. No later than mid-December we should be in Phuket, Thailand, and there we will do the final serious preparations for crossing the Indian Ocean. It’s a long way across with no grocery stores on the way!

We will begin the final stretch of the Voyage of Windbird when we leave Thailand. We have more than 12,000 miles to go before we reach the southern tip of Florida in the USA and deciding which way to get there has been a HUGE decision making process for us. When we started our voyage, we had planned to go around South Africa. We never wanted to put ourselves in harm’s way by going through the pirate-ridden Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean. But while we were home this summer, the grandmother in me suddenly decided that I would get to see grand kids much sooner if we went that way. Going around South Africa means sitting out in the middle of the Indian Ocean in the Chagos for two to three months while waiting for the seasons to change to allow us to head for South Africa. So we bought all the books and the courtesy flags that would allow us to travel to Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Tunisia, and Morocco. We got all excited about seeing the pyrimids of Egypt and the ancient ruins in Turkey and Greece and having our kids come to see us while were in Greece.

But, stop the press. We have just today decided that we just can’t go through pirate alley to get to the Red Sea and then on to the Mediterranean. The odds that we would be taken by Somali pirates is almost nil, but there is that chance. And the thought that family and friends would have to wrestle with the idea of paying ransom or letting us be killed while we would be sitting in mud hut in Somalia is just not something that we can do. So we are headed to South Africa. This time the decision is final, so you can count on us arriving in Cape Town, South Africa, by Christmas of next year and then heading the 6,000 miles north to the Caribbean. We will definitely make a stop in Brazil on the way, but we should be back in the Caribbean by spring of 2011. So that’s the plan.

We are now allowing ourselves to get excited once again about visiting Madagascar and South Africa. We are ruling out going to the Seychelles as there have been Somali pirate attacks there, but at this point, Madagascar looks safe. We will leave Thailand in early January and head to the southwestern coast of India. We will stay in Cochin, India, for one to two months, then head south to the Maldives, and then further south to the Chagos. The Chagos is officially a British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and most people only know about it from Diego Garcia, the big US military base in the south. But the islands that cruisers are allowed to visit are uninhabited pieces of paradise. Communication is not great from there, and there is certainly no internet, but we will spend two months writing and fishing, and then anxiously await a time when we can once again see the grand babies via Skype (maybe) in Madagascar. Internet is very slow in that part of the world, we will hold out hope. From Madagascar, we will head south through the Mozambique Channel to South Africa.

We had a great Thanksgiving aboard Windbird and even had a turkey we purchased on a trip to the mainland of Malaysia. We will be in Thailand for Christmas and will try to be where we can have Skype contact and talk to some of you then. We think of all of you daily and miss you so much.

Before signing off, we want to do a few thank you’s. We want to thank Patsy and Joe for letting us stay with them while in North Carolina and Dickie and Conda for having us over for fantastic dinners. We want to thank our social director, Jennifer, for organizing our time in North Carolina. We had a wonderful time and give thanks for that to Jennifer. We also want to thank Mark’s brother and sisters for traveling to North Carolina to see us and then for hosting Justin, Jo, and Ziggy while they were in Florida in November. And we thank Heather and Jed and Justin and Jo for letting us spend time enjoying their children while we were home in the US. We love what we are doing, but we miss all of you so much. In a year and a half, we should be home unless we decide on a side-track adventure. But if we do, we will be close enough to visit without having to travel half-way around the world.

We’d love to hear from you, so email when you can.

All our love,

Oma and Granddad, Aunt Judy and Uncle Mark, Mark and Judy

Day 35, Year 5: The Thing-a-mee Around the Moon

Day 35, Year 5: The Thing-a-mee Around the Moon
Date: Monday, November 30, 2009
Weather: Beautiful Day with Blue Skies
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

I love the Brits and the Aussies out here. They always have such wonderfully descriptive phrases to describe what is happening in the world, and tonight it was ‘the thing-a-mee around the moon.’ Indeed, there is a huge halo around the almost full moon. My dad always said that kind of halo meant snow was coming, but since I know absolutely we are getting no snow, I’ll go with what the locals here say. They tell me that we are in for a couple of days of thunder, lightening, and rain. I much prefer the blue skies of today, but I might have to put up with rainy weather for a few days.

Today was a busy one. We knew we needed to pick up our main sail and new sail cover, but we couldn’t get a rental car. So we went in on the 9:30 ferry and hooked up with Mike and Helen on Piping Shrike. They agreed to let us ride into town with them and they actually took us all the way out to Langkawi Yacht Club where we needed to start our day. We picked up a charger we have been trying to sell through the second hand boat shop there, as we have a buyer here at Rebak. We had hoped to pick up our Monitor wind vane once we move the boat to Kuah, but we found out this morning that the shop owners of Nautical Bits are going to be out of town for a few days, so we also made arrangements to pick up that item. By noon we had picked up everything and headed back to the Rebak Marina ferry terminal. We didn’t catch the 12:30 ferry, but as soon as we arrived a second ferry magically appeared.

We spent the afternoon putting up the main sail, met Shirena at the pool and then had dinner at the Hard Dock with Rendezvous Cay and Free Bird. All of us are leaving here in the next couple of days, but we will reconnect in Thailand. We plan to spend tomorrow getting ready to leave and then head to Kuah by boat on Wednesday to do the last minute provisioning and check out for Thailand.

Lima 2009 is happening here in Langkawi this week. It is an aerospace and maritime show. We met a young man from Missouri on the ferry ride back out here this afternoon. He is with the US Navy and is stationed in Japan, but he flys all over the globe to check and repair US Navy ships. Evidently some of them are here for the show. Very interesting!

Day 34, Year 5: All About Grand Babies

Day 34, Year 5: All About Grand Babies
Date: Sunday, November 29, 2009
Weather: Beautiful Day with Blue Skies; Late Afternoon Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

We talked to Justin, Jo, and Ziggy this morning and Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah this evening, so it was a perfect day for us. We had our Grand Baby Fix for this week. In fact, we had a very busy Skype day. Early this morning, our friends Ron and Suzi called us on Skype video from China. And while Mark was talking to them, Justin and Jo called and then my niece Jennifer called. Mark was a little overwhelmed with all the calls at once. We did get to talk to Justin, Jo, and Ziggy, but we missed my niece’s call. Then this evening, Heather and Jed called. So the great thing about today is that we got to see all three grandchildren on one day. Ziggy is almost eight months old, Jonah is a little more than five months old, and Sam will be three in January. They provide endless entertainment on Skype video and we enjoyed every minute of our connections with them.

As we prepare to leave here, we are spending every spare minute on the internet doing research for the coming year and continuing to get our website up-to-date. We are still hoping to leave here on Tuesday, but we are starting to think that we might not make our deadline. But surely by the end of the week we will be on our way to Thailand. Of course, every time I have said ‘surely’ it is an absolute indication that the plan won’t work, so we shall see.

Day 33, Year 5: Contact with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy

Day 33, Year 5: Contact with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy
Date: Saturday, November 28, 2009
Weather: Beautiful Day with Blue Skies; Thunder in the Evening but No Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

Where did today go? I had great ambitions, but they seemed to fade right away. Mark made one tremendous step forward today when he attached the new 3M Keel Guard to the bottom of our dinghy. This was a West Marine purchase while we were home in the US and we sure hope it works. Much of the gelcoat on the bottom of our dinghy has been rubbed away by dragging it up sand beaches, so this new rubber guard should help protect the bottom. I just hope it will not be a hindrance when we try to drag the dinghy ashore. At least the application went smoothly.

I spent a great deal of my late morning, early afternoon walking around trying to borrow a couple of green peppers from friends. I need them to make the spaghetti sauce that I plan to can for the long Indian Ocean passage. The young woman who runs the little store here told me she would try to get some by tomorrow, and that will be my only hope as no one had any to loan. My trek took more than an hour and half as there are always things to talk about, and in the meantime, Justin, Jo, and Ziggy made a Skype call to Mark. I missed it and when I returned home, the internet connection went away for almost two hours. By that time, it was way past midnight in New Mexico, so I missed them today. Hopefully I will get to see Ziggy tomorrow. Justin and Jo have completed their move from Santa Fe to Cerrillos and they posted great photos on Picasa for us to see. Their new home looks spacious and beautiful and there was one video of Ziggy eating Thanksgiving Dinner that is a true classic. I have never seen such an attack on food. Ziggy is full of life and his photos show it. Look out, Justin and Jo.

The friends who came over for drinks last night left the marina today, but not before we snatched a great bit of information from them. Ed and Lynne of Constance (a US boat) have been out here since 1994 and they have learned all the tricks of the trade. And add to that the fact that they are avid National Public Radio (NPR) listeners. They have a WorldSpace radio that allows them to receive all NPR and BBC news programming, news from all parts of the world, as well as music from around the world including classical and jazz. They bought the radio in Singapore for $70 US and they pay about $5 US per month for the satellite service. This morning I heard all those familiar voices from NPR on their radio and decided that I just have to have one of these. We will try to contact the guy in Singapore where they bought their unit and hope that we can have one sent here. You can receive NPR and the BBC on HAM radio, but the times are strange and the connection is always noisy. This satellite version is as clear as can be. So we’ll hope we can purchase one of these units for the upcoming months of . . . who knows where we will be.

Day 32, Year 5: This Way or That?

Day 32, Year 5: This Way or That?
Date: Friday, November 27, 2009
Weather: Beautiful Day with Blue Skies, Rain in the Evening
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

The good thing about a daily log is that you know what we are thinking and doing at all times. The bad thing about a daily log is that you know what we are thinking and doing at all times. And in these times, our minds change on an hourly basis. There has been a new development in the saga of the English sailing couple presently being held hostage in Somalia. A day or so ago, the Somali pirates issued a video of the couple saying that if the 7 million dollar ransom for their safety is not paid in the next week they believe they will be killed. Then we talked to Jack on the boat next to us this afternoon and found out that he and his wife just recently delivered a boat from the Med to here. He described how chilling it is to transit the Gulf of Aden and to see one ‘supposed’ fishing boat after another. Any one could be a pirate boat, so he said the passage is quite tense. Then we had another couple over for drinks this evening and found that they are going around South Africa. So we are spending a great deal of time researching the South African route and are seriously considering changing our minds . . . again. Our original plan was always to round South Africa, but in August as I was researching the details of that trip, I decided that I didn’t want to be out of video Skype range for as long as we would be if we go the southern route. So we decided to go north to the Med so I could see the grand babies via Skype and then have the possibility of having them visit us in the Med as early as June of next year. Going around South Africa, it will be another whole year before we could see them again in person. That seems like a VERY long time, but better to see them in a year and half than spend time in Somalia as a captive and run the risk of never seeing them again.. Obviously this decision is probably the most important of our circumnavigation to date, so we are going to take our time making the final decision. Tonight South Africa is looking like the way to go. But that could change at any moment. Stay tuned on this one.

I continued working on the website today while Mark did internet research on the South Africa route. We talked to my sister Patsy via Skype video and made arrangements to talk to our siblings this weekend. I cleaned the dinghy and applied a coat of 3 M UV Protectorant. I had cleaned the port side of the hull a couple weeks ago and mark got in the dingy and cleaned the starboard side today Lots of little jobs around the boat keep us busy

By the way, pumpkin pie is even better the day after Thanksgiving.