A very big fast forward...

To make a long year short...
From Penang up to Phuket via Langkawi and islands in between. Lots of new gear and improvements in Langkawi, both on the way up and on the way down on our way to the Philippines. Phuket sucks, Langkawi is much better. Relatives visit and like the boat very much. Another stop in Sebana Cove, then up to Tioman and cross again to Miri where we see old friends from Hamamas. We participate in the Borneo International Yacht Challenge. In spite of motoring a lot we still manage to get a prize and are treated to complimentary 5 star hotels and plenty of other perks. We get to sail with old salts and have a great day out in KK. Slowly but surely we arrive back in Cebu, planning to go back into the Pacific via Palau, PNG and on. Crew arrives we set off around xmas time. We have an horrid time getting out of San Bernardino strait, then head out to Palau but the weather gets quite shitty, the steering box disintegrates. We turn back beaten for repairs in Cebu, the return to the Pacific isn't happening.
One month in the sewer that is Cebu harbor getting new hydraulic steering installed, we also decide to remove all teak from the deck...instead a coat of epoxy and then paint makes the boat look much fresher and cleaner. Down we go back to Bombonon to visit Bruce (I tell you what!), then straight across to Kudat. A strange vibration from the shaft: haul out, change cutlass bearing, packing, straighten shaft, new antifouling. We get to hang out with some old friends from Philippines and meet the Norwegians guys of Berserk: lots of fun evenings, these guys are cool.
Hoppity hop we are back in Miri, see Hamamas, Tom rid of his malaria fevers, so we get to do the crossing together once again...like in the old days of Micronesia...
We both get to Tioman on a beautiful but scorching day. After a few days resting and restocking there we set off north for the season (east coast). There are some awesome islands on the way, some very touristy (Perhentian, Redang), some nearly deserted (I won't advertise them) with incredible coral gardens and visibility. Slowly but surely we arrive in Ko Samui in order to pick up the first Italians in nearly four years of taking crew...in the meantime we get to be a little more social and mundane than usual, enjoying the bars in Bo Phut beach and going this weekend 29/5 to the full moon party in Ko Phangan. Lots of details, happenings, situations, memories were left behind in this summary but at least I am finally up to date. From now on this Log will take a more "scrapbook" shape with less literary descriptions but hopefully more up to date recount of events.

May 2009

A couple weeks go by, relaxing in still waters, enjoying plentiful fresh water, a restaurant, free access to a swimming pool and tennis courts. The boat needs quite a cleanup, and the overheating problem disappears, someone suggests we exchange the temperature gauge, will do so in Singapore. We attend one birthday on the dock, as usual being just about the very few people below 70 y.o. treating us like we just flew in from the office and have never seen open water before, not to mention sailboats. Sometimes such people came from Australia on one of the many "rallies" which means being like sheep in a herd with everything arranged for them. Often they haven't seen the outside of the marina for six or more months...A sure sign of another stuck yachtie is the satellite TV and air conditioner, things that inexorably seals their fate of never being able to detach themselves from the dock ever again.
By the time we leave the marina, we are very happy of doing so, but for the time being only in order to go to Singapore. We check in through Changi general purpose anchorage. The arrangement for such a busy nation-state is smart and yet baffling considered the reputation Singapore has for a control-freaked state. We hail immigration on Channel 74, the immigration drops by and we drop all the documents in a basket they stretch to us. A few minutes later and few questions over a loudspeaker and the documents are returned via the same basket. We could have tons of illegal immigrants or drugs and nobody would ever notice!
Singapore is quite interesting, a bit expensive, very clean and efficient, everyone is extremely polite. Kind of a Switzerland surrounded by much more chaotic and messy neighbors. The marine supplies are extensive, though often catering more to huge tankers and oil rigs rather than small yachts. We do lots of “window shopping” and price research on various items. One thing we find out mostly, is that Singapore is no longer very competitive on electronics. We bought a good Nikon D-60 in a little family shop in Kota Kinabalu, and found out that nowhere in Singapore they could give us a better price!
Careful especially of Sim Lim Square, do your research on marine electronics, but for consumer electronics it’s just a big sham. Everything seems to be of the same price at first, it's baffling, and then the Chinese sellers will act like one is vampirizing them while charging you the highest price in town! Malaysia is still much better, one can rest assured the price written there is always final and truthful. The only exception is Mustafa’s, run by Hindus. As we say, there you can find from the pin to the hand grenade. I even found my favorite style of bathing suit, a nearly extinct design.
Naturally with all the shopping, the restaurants, Cold Storage supermarket, and the very nice assistance by Changi Sailing Club we ended up spending in Singapore more time than anticipated, so we scoot off in a hurry when done with it all. A full day of motoring through hundreds of cargoes, carriers, LPG ships, horrible black oily sludge that is considered water etc. and we anchor to rest by Pulau Pisang. The day after another long motor to Pulau Langka, south of Melaka. We endure the first of many night squalls, with incredible winds and rain while the sea all frothy and shaky thanks to the strong currents opposing the wind etc.. I was out in the cockpit but all I could see was a nasty windswept blackness where everything seemed twirling and frothing, like an Alice in wonderland time warp.
Onwards north, stop at good old Sembilans getting polluted and overfished thanks to the Fisheries department, we've seen them putting fish guts IN plastic bags before chucking them in the water...how civilized! The arrival of a mega yacht with jet skis gets me to leave late afternoon thinking of a quick motoring to Lumut, but the engine, surprise, overheats again in spite of the expensive new temperature gage and we lose precious time, we stop at Pulau Pangkor, by the (used to be) backpacker town on the NW side. A turn of the weather sees us quickly out of there, just to take shelter in Lumut, at its old Yacht Club, where, bad weather persisting, we almost get wiped out by a dragging dismissed navy crusader in the middle of the night. Though we were supposed to enter Malaysia in Penang, the days go by and big festivities approach Lumut, so we decide to stay awhile and relax.
When satisfied of quaint little Lumut we move on to Penang, the big city. Penang is the only city I've seen so far in Asia with true flavour and own mystique. Most backpackers barely stop while the place is a deep pool of alleys, drinking dens, chinese theaters, hindu shrines, sleazy corners where deals are casually winked in motion.

Kudat to Singapore - Dec. '08/Apr. '09

Kudat is a pleasant, friendly, safe, quiet, picturesque fishing town, which luckily the main guides have managed to overlook –perhaps because it is missing a reggae bar—(?!?). Being a frontier town facing the Balabac strait (a main smuggler area) Kudat is populated by very mixed ethnicities: Malay, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Bangladeshi, and Indonesian.
There are several fantastic restaurants, notably the “Dragon Lady” (Chinese); the mee-goreng place ran by Bangladeshi, a Golf Club where one can eat for 1 US dollar (to think that it is so common to associate Golf with expensiveness), and the Crown Café that stays open late. The hotel by the golf club lets cruisers use its showers and swimming pool for free, while for boats there is a fantastic boatyard catering to fishing boats mostly and a few hardware shops with some basics.
In Kudat also there is an unfinished marina that is still free to stay at, and there we have the pleasant surprise of finding two boats previously met in Puerto Princesa and another met two years before in Fiji!




One boat is Utiekah III, of which I have many photos and memories. Both I and my girlfriend decide it is a good chance to have a break and go back to visit home (February 2009).






Returned, since the boat was already on the dry in Penuwasa boatyard, we decide to redo the bottom paint, and after a few weeks of painful sanding and painting the boat is back in the water. In Kudat we are joined by Carlos and Jenny which both helped tremendously with the work and with which we had such a good time while in the boatyard and after, when, all charged up by the mounting desire to go, we finally set off. We round the tip of Borneo and have a first stop by Kulambok Island. At low tide Kulambok is joined to the mainland by a baring strip of white sand, making the little bay a very pretty sight to behold. There are several villas and resorts being developed nearby, but not being in operation yet the bay and white beach is still all ours and for the fishermen to enjoy.
When we feel like we rested enough and we’ve seen enough of Kulambok we set off for Mantanani Island. Quite pretty although not an easy anchorage, Carlos gets to perform for the village with a guitar, we enjoy more snorkeling, relaxing and discovering the island; the only negative aspect is that while the portion of beach being kept for the tourists (though we were there off season and were the only western visitors on the island) is spotless, the villagers think nothing of throwing all of their garbage right in the water, neatly packed in a plastic bag. Will humans ever learn?

From Mantanani to Kota Kinabalu via Usukan Bay and a visit to Kota Belud with its famous market. Carlos gets to climb Mount Kinabalu, Jenny goes to Thailand to spend some time in a “Silence Meditation Center”, wonder how much that cost. In KK we do some price research, eat plenty of Japanese food at the restaurants, sip plenty of Starbucks coffee while using the wi-fi, meet up again with Johnnie of Utiekah III. Then we move down to the duty free harbor of Labuan, shop for some cheap booze and smokes and go see Brunei.

Brunei is pretty nice, with diesel priced at 20 cents a liter, great public transportation. In one day we get to see the capital, one museum dedicated to the sultan (everything in Brunei is about the Sultan), and charter a launch upriver to see the mangrove swamps and the proboscis monkeys and one humongous Monitor Lizard.

From Brunei next stop is Singapore, what better occasion to quit smoking?


All fueled up for the price of a few bottles of wine we set off one bright day for Singapore, 700 nautical miles away. We sail very little or nothing at all passing through endless oil fields crowded with rigs, platforms, production wells and other hazards sticking out of the sea bottom; it is actually a quite scenic and eerie scene all of those bright cities floating in the middle of nowhere and the flames on the horizon coloring the black sky in a red glow. We are not smoking and when the engine starts over heating we still don’t smoke. I figure it’s the heat exchanger getting plugged up like last time in Olimarao, so we clean it but the engine still overheats; it’s not the impeller either. We decide (like we have a choice) to try sailing no matter how slow, and even though we are moving at one knot for three days with the same islands always in sight in a flat calm hotter than hell…we still don’t smoke.
A little breeze picks up and slowly but surely as we approach Singapore, we start seeing huge bulk carriers anchored way offshore and the sea traffic getting more intense as we get closer.

Nighttime finds Keturah sailing (at one knot) right into the “traffic separation zone”. Carlos has the shift approaching Singapore, but I just need some sleep and leave it entirely to him to steer us in. When I wake up we notice how the cargoes are really coming close, all coming in our direction for some reason. Not lightly concerned, I fire up the navigation computer and find out quickly that we are sailing right in the middle of the opposite flow direction. Just our luck some current shifted unsuspecting Carlos exactly where we’re NOT supposed to be!
Quite huffed and fed up at this temporary lack of control over my own destiny, I decide to use the engine at least long enough to get us back in the right way. By late the next morning, after a pleasant day sail zig-zagging between cargo ships and oil platforms, we are safely docked in Sebana Cove Marina, exhausted but happy. We celebrate with a huge burger and plenty cold ales and toast to the fact that in spite of all these stresses and difficulties we managed to become ex-smokers.

Sulu Sea, El Nido, Kudat Nov./Dec. '08

Skipping over the dreadful details of boatyard blood sweat and tears, we are later out of it, back in Cebu, re provision, hurry to Apo, then have a blast in Bombonon Harbor at the southern tip of Negros Oriental. From Bombonon we cross over to Palawan by way of Tubbataha Reef, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tubbataha is yet another natural wonder the Philippines are endowed with. The ranger station is placed on a sand dune that get submerged at high tide, hundreds of sea turtles can be seen early in the morning feeding around the station, while a short swim away more turtles, sharks, sting rays, mantas and all sorts of fish can be enjoyed against a background of pristine corals, super clear water.
We have arrived off-season, which means that we have the place almost to ourselves (saved the rangers) and the rangers being bored and lonely take us to all the best snorkeling spots on their motorboats. Banks of barracudas, shy wrasses, curious triggerfish, lionfish etc. Tubbataha is almost a miracle for variety and abundance of sea life. No wonder people pay about one thousand dollars a day to come dive here!

Puerto Princesa welcomes us at the Abanico Yacht Club with its intriguing and fascinating characters. The provisioning is great the town well supplied and not too chaotic (but for PI that still means borderline insane); we are stuck waiting for a replacement pump for the toilet: when it arrives weeks later the new one is just as defective as the old one. That over with we can depart for Malaysia, though first going around the northern tip of Palawan. On our way to El Nido we first take shelter at the Islas Verde through some wicked reef labyrinth then on to Dumaran. Some pretty nasty weather is expected and just as we enter the cyclone hole Langcan bay the meteo deteriorates rapidly. By the time we drop anchor deep in the mangrove swamp the wind has already risen to 25-30 knots. For a few days we are stuck there with blow after blow of fierce winds and rain squalls. When it all dies down we can get out of the swamp and go to the nearby town of Araceli, located in a lovely enclosure with white beach, quaint bamboo homes decorated with bougainvilleas, blue water and a few islands around dotting the horizon. We befriend the Catholic priest –which we find drunk as a skunk on a Sunday afternoon—who speaks favorably of his smuggling business with the Muslim brothers “Muslims, good people” he proclaims…go figure.
Continuing towards El Nido we make another stop to Linapacan Island, anchoring in the deep but very sheltered Colaylayan Bay. Once again idyllic settings: a few fishermen huts at the feet of steep forested hills, no electricity or phones, just fires in the night and a huge moon rising. Just outside the bay scattered little islets are easy to sail to by dinghy, and for a whole day I explore them. The reef is good, but infested by a species of starfish that loves to feed on coral. I spend a couple hours trying to kill them off hoping they don’t grow back too fast.

We arrive in El Nido one golden afternoon with the sun already pretty low casting shadows and gleaming reflections over the majestic peaks shooting vertically out of the water. The whole scenery is part Jurassic Park, part The Beach. We give up immediately anchoring in front of town (shallow and rolly) and instead go around the corner to Corongcorong Bay. El Nido is truly stunning, like the rock islands of Palau supersized. Leaving the boat in Corongcorong it’s an easy walk into town.
Somewhere we have read that El Nido is the “last frontier” in the Philippines, although quite immediately that is hard to justify. The main town is a backpacker strip, two flights a week coming in from Manila, packed “El Nido adventure” boats loaded with clueless Koreans and Taiwanese in bright orange lifejackets. Reggae bar, New Age bar, Aussie bar, lame beach party here and there competing for the cheapest beer and internet rates…and yet everyone in hippie garb acting stuck up believing themselves hardcore travelers on a genuine “adventure” (with air-con) to the “last frontier”.
From the boating point of view the Bacuit archipelago also doesn’t offer much besides the landscape. We manage to anchor at Miniloc Island in order to see the scenic bay but the resort doesn’t want us there and soon the Coast Guard (on the resort’s payroll?) comes asking us to leave. In other areas of the island anchoring is very deep and our windlass fails once again under the strain. Soon we depart for Malaysia.
On our way to Kudat we stop in two more bays: one by White Island on the SW side of Capoas Peninsula, then we sail clear off Port Barton (though we heard it is beautiful we just want to move on and wouldn’t want to be looked down upon by such hardy travelers enjoying their air cons) and stop for Christmas in Jibboom Bay, by the village of Caruray (definitely no tourists or air con there!). It is rolly and going ashore quite a roundabout way, though we manage to buy some ice and have some cold wine for Xmas. Two Australian catamarans are in the bay, but we’re just bent on getting to Kudat, my Xmas gift a swift sail that take us down there just a couple days later.