by Judy Handley | Dec 3, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 38, Year 5: Waterline is Getting Lower
Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009
Weather: Beautiful Day but Still Windy
Location: Kuah, Langkawi, Malaysia
As we continue to shop and fill up every nook and cranny on Windbird with food and drink, the waterline just gets lower and lower. Mark went with Tina and Robert this morning to get dinghy fuel and to go to the liquor warehouse. Tina and Robert had a rental car until 11:30, but not all of us would fit so I stayed home and got Christmas ornaments for the grandkids packaged and ready to post. Mark returned with two jerry jugs of diesel fuel, a case of wine, and a bottle of Tanqueray gin and Angostura bitters. This is the last resort. When all the beer and wine is gone, we hear that you can mix gin with water with a couple of drops of bitters and that it makes an acceptable drink. So sometime late next summer when you hear that we are drinking gin, you will know it is definitely time for us to make landfall!
After Mark returned he worked with the wind generator. He installed it while we were at Rebak, but we haven’t had enough wind to test it. Now we have wind and he was very pleased that all systems seem to working beautifully. Today we were getting 4-10 amps of powers from 15 knots of wind. That’s a better power boost from the wind generator than we have ever had previously, so maybe the new Air Breeze is really an improvement over the old Air-X. After lunch we went to shore and walked a half a mile in one direction to the post office to mail some packages and then walked the mile in the other direction to town. We had a list of things we needed to get, so we trekked from store to store-picked up underwater photos we took last year with a disposable camera but neglected to get processed, bought a check valve for our plumbing system, returned the courtesy flags we bought two weeks ago for the Red Sea route and got our new flags for the South Africa route, bought a copy of the East Africa Cruising Guide, went to the computer shop to get more advice on how to get our new wifi booster up and running, bought bread, got new prescription drugs to replace outdated ones we have been carrying in case of emergency, bought bread, and then went to the supermarket and filled up the cart with as much as we could possibly carry. We got a taxi back to the jetty as we were now two miles away and the bags were impossibly heavy.
Once back on Windbird the chore of finding a place to store everything began. I have one storage area where I keep sand toys, an inflatable kiddy pool, and a plastic box of Duplo Legos that we bought when Sam came to visit last year. We won’t be needing those things this year, so I put canned goods in that storage area and will find another place to keep the toys. Once everything was put away, we headed right back out to say hello to Darrell and Loretta on CanKata and then over to Safina for Happy Hour. We had a great time catching up with Jean Pierre and Collette. The last time we saw them was when they came to stay with us at the One 15 Marina in Singapore. They are staying here for one more year and will doing the South Africa route next year, so we shared information on that. We went to shore to have dinner but didn’t stay for the entertainment tonight. The agreement with the mosque next door to the jetty complex is that no entertainment can compete with prayer times. So it is not until after 8:30 prayers that the show can go on. Maybe we’ll have dinner onboard tomorrow night and then go in later for the entertainment. Nine o’clock is not that late, but it is cruiser midnight. We are also considering going to the public day of the air show on Saturday with Jean Pierre and Collette. We may never get out of here!
Tomorrow is Friday so most businesses are closed, but the major supermarkets are open. We will try to finish up our grocery shopping and take time to see what else needs to be done before we leave here. If all is on track, we will decide whether or not to stay for the air show, and then check out and be on our way to Thailand on Sunday. Robert and Tina of Shirena should be heading out about the same time, so we can do a bit of buddy boating on the way up. We can’t wait to get to those beautiful Thai islands once again.
by Judy Handley | Dec 2, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 37, Year 5: Unplugged and Properly Initiated
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Weather: Overcast, Rainy, and Windy; NE 20 knots (on the nose)
Latitude: N 06 degrees 18.722 minutes
Longitude: E 099 degrees 50.627 minutes
Location: Kuah, Langkawi, Malaysia
We did it! Windbird unplugged and motored out of Rebak Marina after seven and a half months. As she emerged from the winding canal that takes you out to open water, she was immediately hit with 20 knots of wind on the nose. We couldn’t sail into that, so we just motored to Kuah. It was starting to feel like we would never get away as the list of things that needed to be done just got longer and longer. I was rushing madly this morning to finish up some work on the website while we still had internet, but we’ll just have to continue the work as we can. It feels really good to be back out here on anchor. When we pulled into the anchorage in Kuah, Loretta of CanKata came out to wave hello. I don’t think we have seen much of Darrell and Loretta since Kroko Atoll in Indonesia. And Shirena is here as well as Ed and Lynne on Constance. Ed and Lynne are new friends that we met at Rebak and they are going on the same route as Windbird this year. They left Rebak a few days ago and their auto pilot failed on the way to Kuah. So they are here for a couple of weeks waiting on a new one to arrive from the US. Being here will give us a chance to get to know them a little better.
We lowered the dinghy, picked up Robert and Tina of Shirena, and went to shore for dinner. Because of the air show, we had heard that there were temporary tents set up everywhere with delicious foods from all states in Malaysia. And we didn’t want to miss that. But it was even better than we had anticipated. The air and maritime show is only part of this week’s celebration. The signs call this Karnival and it is like that. There are balloons, neon stick lights, and cotton candy for the kids, foods of all sorts for everyone, and each night a different part of Malaysia presents the entertainment. Tonight it was Sarawak. Sarawak is on the northern coast of Borneo. The Indonesian state of Kalimantan is to the south, and the Malaysian states of Saba and Sarawak and the independent nation of Brunei are on the northern coast. It was not long ago that the people of Sarawak were forest dwellers, but oil was discovered and they are now a very progressive part of Malaysia. The entertainment was interesting. The music was gamelan as in Bali and the women wore costumes and danced much like the dancers of Bali. But the men wore feathered headdresses and loin clothes like Native Americans. So it was a most interesting and fun evening ashore.
We saw David and Patti of This Way Up and Jean Pierre and Collette of Safina tonight. David and Patti are headed out tomorrow for Satun on the mainland to have their boat painted. They have been great friends and we probably won’t see them again unless they make it to the US to do the inland waterway. That is one of Dave’s goals. We will have Happy Hour with Jean Pierre and Collette tomorrow evening and catch up on their adventures. In the meantime, we will shop ’til we drop in Duty Free Langkawi. We are provisioning for eight months and that is a very long time. There will be fresh food along the way, but we understand from those who have done this trek that canned and packaged foods are almost non-existent. And paper products just get more and more expensive. So just how many jars of peanut butter and how many rolls of toilet paper do you think we might need?
by Judy Handley | Dec 1, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
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.
by Judy Handley | Dec 1, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
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
by Judy Handley | Nov 30, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
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!
by Judy Handley | Nov 29, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
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.
