Day 14, Year 5: Looking Forward
Date: Monday, November 9, 2009
Weather: Still Sunny and Hot
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

Our first issue of the day was dealing with the website. The host was able to restore the site with formatting up to November 2, but we lost everything from that point on. That was not a problem as we have copies of everything, but we did lose the comments posted after November 2. So if you sent a comment after that date, maybe you would take to the time to send it again so we have a record of who contacted us when giving us the information you sent along. The second web related issue of the day was that the internet here is off and on. I’m not sure what is happening, but I doubt that I will get to send this log tonight. We are definitely offline right now, so we’ll have to wait until the marina office opens tomorrow morning to see what’s happening with that.

The success of the day was that we got the headsail tack sewed then cleaned and raised the sail. So we now have a headsail and staysail. On Wednesday we will take our mainsail to Kuah to have the new sail cover made and by the end of the month, we will be ready to sail-hopefully. I don’t want to be too optimistic as it seems each time we are, some other issues rears it’s ugly head, like our stove. Today it started acting up and by this evening, we are using the little butane gas stove we bought when we lived on land in Thailand to finish cooking our dinner. We have some electrical problem that causes the propane solenoid to keep shutting itself off. This problem is not one that we expected, but so it goes.

Early this morning our neighbors across the dock in front of us invited us over for coffee at 3 pm to discuss plans for our voyage from here to the Red Sea. Linda and Mike are from New Zealand and their boat name is Hanalike (Ha-na-like-ee). As with many of us, they are a little undecided as to what they will do this season. They will either leave Thailand in January headed for the Red Sea or they will head back home. They wanted to pick our brains as to see what cruisers we know that will be making the trip. Just the fact that they wanted to get together to discuss this prompted both Mark and I to start looking forward. After raising the headsail, we spent the rest of the day searching the web (when it was available) for information from cruisers who went through the Red Sea last year and figuring out just how far we have to travel from point to point. Yikes! It is a long way across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea, but at least now we have a better handle on what faces us. We still have to decide if we are going north to the Andaman Islands and whether we will stop in Cochin, India or in the Maldives south of India. But in any case, we have about 1500 miles from Thailand to either the Maldives or India and then another 1400 hundred miles from either of those places to Salalah, Oman. Just the passages to those locations will take us roughly twelve days each and then it is another 650 miles from Oman to Aden in Yemen. That’s another five days. And then we have the 1500 miles up the Red Sea to Port Said on the Mediterranean side of the Suez. That trip will be done in baby steps-day trips from one anchorage to another, so it could take a month or two. So we have lots of miles to cover before we reach Turkey in the Mediterranean. We have finally started the planning for this part of our voyage and will spend much of the next two to three weeks here in the marina doing just that while we have the internet connection, albeit not the most reliable we have ever had.

One last note. We went over to check on Shirena after a dip in the pool late this afternoon. As I have mentioned before, Tina and Robert of Shirena are back in Australia to attend a family wedding and we are just checking on the boat every day or so to make sure all is well. While there, we noticed that Wild Card is just down the dock. That is Fatty Goodlander’s boat and he apparently came in yesterday. For those of you who read Cruising World, you know his name well. Wildcard was here earlier and Robert and Tina got to know Fatty and Carolyn quite well. We met the Goodlander’s in New Zealand, but maybe if they are still here when Robert and Tina return, we can get to know them even better. I’m assuming they are getting ready for the Red Sea run and I would love to talk with them about that. We also saw Margaret and Patrick of Aqua Magic. They came in today and are right beside Shirena. They will be leaving for five weeks in the UK on Wednesday and when they return, they will start their trek toward the Red Sea. So the cruisers are gathering and it is time for those cruiser get-togethers where we share information and thoughts.

From 091109 Day 14 Malaysia–Headsail Goes Up