Around The World On Hokule'a
Malaysia
Sunday, July 6, 2014 – Puteri Harbour Marina, Nusajaya, Malaysia
Nearly two months have passed since we returned to Puteri Harbour from our amazing land trip and on
the day we got back (May 7th to be exact) our focus shifted to getting the boat and ourselves ready for the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean has a nasty reputation for a reason and we know that this could be our most challenging leg of the entire trip. So our Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday daily routine became Jackie heading to the gym early while I worked out at the pool, then working on the boat for roughly 8 hours, then showers, dinner and off to the "office" (aka Starbucks) where we could get internet and work several more hours on the administrative side of cruising. Thursdays the marina ran a free shuttle in to the market from 10am to 1pm, so we could only work on the boat in the morning and afternoon, but Tuesdays and Sundays generally consisted of 12 hour days working solely on the boat.
It really is amazing the amount of work that goes into keeping an older boat in shape for cruising (not to m
ention what it take to keep an older cruiser in shape for cruising). While there were a few upgrades that we accomplished, such as the new emergency tiller, the bulk of the time was spent on maintenance items and repairing things that had broke n (for anyone that is interested there is an abbreviated list of what we did below). A biggie was the watermaker as it had stopped working whenwe left Langkawi. After completely taking it apart, I discovered that the 4 small check valves I needed to fix it were not a part of the rebuild kit that we purchased before leaving the States. To get new check valves sent to Malaysia was going to cost the same as what it would cost for the manufacturer to completely rebuild the unit, so we ended up shipping back to the States. I also did an extensive inspection of both our standing and running rigging and found a disturbing number of failed shackles and snap shackles in addition to discovering that our s
taysail stay had a cracked fitting. Fortunately Iwas able to have a replacement stay made in Singapore. Both the watermaker and the staysail stay were serious issues that made us thankful that we decided not go the northern route to South
There is the old cliché that says cruising is simply working on your boat in exotic places and there is certainly a lot of truth to that. But the thing that still surprises me is how much time the administrative side of cruising requires. Things like researching and planning sailing routes, studying weather patterns, charting, researching destinations, researching entry requirements, ordering parts and spares for the boat, banking, applying for visa's and cruising permits, making advanced reservations in marinas, planning for provisioning, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately what usually falls to the bottom of the administrative list is updating the website. Hopefully we will have time to post some updates about our Southeast Asia land trip soon, because it was spectacular.
We have made a lot of great friends here in Puteri Harbour and it has been a wonderful place to b
e even if we were working our butts off. Tonight is our last night here and we had a really nice dock party where the kids from several boats including Totem and Capricorn Dancer put on a wonderful dance show for everyone. Tomorrow we head a few miles down the river to Singapore for what we had hoped would be a relaxing 2 week vacation before we started our journey south, but alas there are still a few boat items and administrative items that need to be done while we are there.
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Here's the abbreviated list of what we did get done:
" Rebuild watermaker (ship to States for repair)
" Replace watermaker feed pump and plumbing
" Inspect rigging
" Replace broken shackles and snap shackles
" Replace staysail stay
" Install chain plate and mini-stay to better structurally support staysail stay
" Tune rigging
" Take down, inspect and repair all sails
" Replace jib sheets
" Replace spinnaker halyard block aloft
" Replace 1st and 2nd reef lines
" Reinforce spinnaker pole attachment point
" Install chafe protection on outhaul
" Remove and refurbish boom and gooseneck
" Rebuild manual bilge pump
" Install relay and second float for high volume bilge pump
" Inspect and service all thru-hulls
" Install a below deck alarm for AIS and anchor watch
" Install cockpit harness attachment near helm
" Dingy and outboard maintenance
" Repair leaking galley sink drain and install secondary shutoff valve
" Replace exhaust flap on engine
" Sew waterproof top for dodger and fabric to water proof zippers
" Remove, rebuild, and flush hydraulic steering components
" Fabricate and install new emergency tiller
" Reseal deck prisms
" Reseal cockpit teak
" Engine and Generator maintenance
" Detailed engine inspection including compression testing
" Adjust engine valve clearances
" Service windlass
" Service all winches
" Load test house and starting batteries
" Replace bearings in roller furling unit
" Inspect and adjust life raft mounting
" Make up new foreguy and afterguy for spinnaker pole
" Fabricate and install bushing for tiller arm connection
" Tighten and adjust steering chain
" Rebuild both heads
" Clean and polish all stainless
" Wax deck house
" Obtain enough provisions to last for 3 months
" Inspect and update abandon ship bag
Tuesday, April 8, 2014 – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Well our land trip started off just a little bit stressful.
Our plan was to have a relaxing morning on the boat and then catch an 11am bus that would get us to Kuala Lumpur late this afternoon. We booked a guest house near the airport since our flight to Cambodia was scheduled t
o leave Kuala Lumpur at 7am tomorrow morning. By early yesterday afternoon we were both packed and ready to go, which is pretty rare for me as I am usually packing at the last minute. I was also really impressed (and surprised) that Jackie had been able to pack all of her stuff for a 4-5 week trip in a backpack. So with nothing else to do I got online and did a little more research about Cambodia. I happened to stumble across a “helpful hints for travelers” site and one of the tips said to make sure that you have enough visa pages in your passport. Suddenly I remembered overhearing a piece of a telephone conversation between Jackie and her mom, where Jackie mentioned that she would probably need more visa pages before her passport expired. So I grabbed our passports from my backpack and started flipping through them. Sure enough Jackie had only one tiny little space left for a single stamp. A single space meant we couldn’t even leave Malaysia.
I panicked for a few minutes thinking that we were going to lose all the money that we had just paid for our plane tickets and guest house, but then remembered that friends had made a trip to Kuala Lumpur specifically to get more visa pages from the US Embassy there. After a few phone calls, emails and internet research we learned that we could get same day service for additional visa pages at the Embassy between the hours of 9am and 11am. The challenge now was could we actually get there in time. After a bit more research, I found that all of the overnight buses to Kuala Lumpur were sold out, so we had to pay through the nose for an early morning flight from Johor Bahru, but at least there were seats available. So this morning, a cab picked us up at the boat at 4:30am (so much for our relaxing morning) and took us to the airport. To make a long story short we arrived at the US Embassy at 9:45am and were walking out the door an hour later with Jackie’s new visa pages. We were absolutely amazed and kept thinking that there was no way that could ever happen in the States.
There was no rush to get to the guest house, so we spent the rest of the day exploring downtown KL o
n foot. We wandered through city center park, had lunch in the central market and visited the Petronas towers. The Petronas Towers by the way are the second tallest buildings (tallest twin buildings) in the world at 1,483 feet tall. Having been to several other large cities in Malaysia we were really surprised to see that KL city center was so clean and modern. We were also impressed by their metro rail system that got us to our guest house near the airport in 35 minutes versus the almost 90 minutes that it took the taxi to get us to the city center from the airport this morning.
Well it was a rough start to the trip, but it ended up being a really good day. Can’t believe that we will be in Cambodia for breakfast tomorrow….
Tuesday, April 1, 2014 – Puteri Marina, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
We just arrived in Puteri Marina in Southern Malaysia where we will be hanging out for a few months before heading off on the journey to South Africa. We had an amazingly good trip down the Malacca Strait with no squalls (at least while underway) and no incidents with fishing boats. We basically got really lucky and like a former bo
ss of mine used to say “sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good”. The only downside was that we had to motor nearly 75% of the way from Langkawi to here.
As I mentioned previously, one of the advantages of doing the “southern route” from Thailand to South Africa is that we have time to go visit some places in Southeast Asia that we can’t get to by boat. So next week we are going to hop on a bus and head out on a 4-5 week trip through Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Northern Thailand. We are really excited about the trip, but have quite a bit of work to do to get Hokule’a cleaned up and into “stationary mode” before we go. The other challenge will be getting Jackie to figure out how to pack for 4-5 weeks in just her backpack…
Sunday, March 30th, 2014 – Malacca Strait, Malaysia
It has been a quick trip back down through Malaysia. We went back to Rebak for a few days to catch up with Giles who is a paddling buddy of mine from back in SoCal, then spent a night in the gorgeous “fjords” anchorage watching the Dusky Leaf monkeys feeding at sunset, spent a week back in the amazing Straits Quay marina on the island of Penang enjoying the amazing food and mix of Malay/Chinese/Indian culture, and then stopped in Pangkor to do an inland trip up to the tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. We have been doing day hops all the way down from Langkawi and tonight we are anchored in the Malacca Strait nearly 3 miles offshore in 15 feet of water. It’s nice and calm, but it’s a weird feeling being anchored so far from land and you really feel exposed to all of the fishing boat traffic. The good thing is that there are 4 of us ( Kite, Solstice, Shango, and Hokule’a) anchored fairly close to each other and we have a lot of lights on.
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Saturday, March 8th, 2014 – Telaga Harbor, Malaysia
Ok, this one is kinda silly, but here goes. So we just got back into Malaysian waters and heard from a friend in the UK that Hokule’a was in a music video that was shot while we were at Phi Phi Le in Thailand. Our very brief (as in don’t blink) cameo is about 1 minute and 40 some seconds into the video. Regardless it’s a pretty cool song and video. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHCYHldJi_g