The yellow line bottom left on the map shows the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. From the artificial island at Roach Reef which provided us with a good overnight anchorage Tawau is 5-6 hours away and the journey was not uneventful. Before we reached the entrance channel to Tawau winds reached 36-38 knots with very heavy rain, the cockpit was soaked and Chris resorted to his wet suit again.

Having had several of these squalls now this was no great surprise and as we gained some shelter from the land the seas were not too rough. We made our way under little sail to the entrance channel and set the anchor safely outside the Tawau Yacht Club where we spent a happy time.

The yacht club provided us with easy leisure and living for a week. A very pleasant pool, quite a good restaurant with Malay and Chinese food, and a reasonable bar selling the usual Tiger beer, spirits and some wines which are usually expensive out here as they are difficult to keep in this climate.

The town is walking distance and provided us with a Dhobi for some much needed laundry; good supermarket shopping and an excellent wet market where we were able to buy delicious fruit, vegetables, nuts, tofu, fish and shellfish. Always the biggest problem out here is sourcing decent cheese, there are always stocks of processed slices that look like plastic but the real stuff can be elusive. Fortunately we managed to find some NZ Cheddar, Mozzarella (from Australia) and tinned Camembert from France. Tinned butter was also available so we stocked up. I have rather forgotten which of our favourite provisions we can get in Indonesia but know that it is more difficult than Malaysia and remember that often I couldn’t get strong bread-making flour.

Tawau is a surprisingly busy container port like a mini Felixstowe.

There is a flourishing cocoa industry here but we were interested in what else Tawau is shipping. In the Yacht Club bar we met an interesting Malay Chinese businessman who enjoyed chatting with us about the area. One of the items manufactured here is the piano key – Tawau is an important supplier. The keys are shipped off to China to become keyboards for the world’s largest producer of the modern piano. This seemed very surprising but Borneo has all the wood a piano key maker could want so a perfect product for Sabah, a pity they don’t make the pianos as well. Palm oil products dominate the economy and fish products contribute but there are other small specialist businesses which rely on the location such as cultivators and exporters of important marine plants, carrageenan which is used in the food and pharmaceutical industries is one of these

It wouldn’t have felt right if we left Sabah having had a week of calm weather although most of it was. The strong winds gave a blow here too but in this relatively clean harbour no anchors were fouled and no yacht dragged. Together with all our other adventures and experiences of the past five months, the squalls and strong of winds of East Malaysia/North Borneo will be something we won’t forget in a hurry.