North up the Mallaca Strait to Pangkor
Serenity of Swanwick
Phil and Sarah Tadd
Sun 1 Dec 2024 13:33
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We left Puteri and headed North for Pangkor where we were booked for a lift out on the 13th. It is the wet season now and we experienced a lot of rain and regular thunderstorms. Some of these storms, known as Sumatras, form as a line squall over the island
of Sumatra, on the west side of the Straits of Malaka and travel across to peninsular Malaysia. They can last for a few hours or be very short lasting and have the potential to bring heavy rain and up to 50 knots of wind. Usually, we will watch these storms
as they come toward us on our radar but this has been playing up recently and often failing just as we would like to use it. Without this useful tool we had to be prepared to reef quickly as soon as we felt a drop of rain or saw showers approaching.
This passage was to take us 9 days to cover the 280 miles but we did stop for two nights at Pulau Pisang, three at Port Dickson and two at Pangkor island. We prefer in this area not to sail at night as a lot of the local fishing boats carry no lights or sometimes
just a single strobe light so are difficult to spot. Add to this that they may be fishing with nets or long lines just below the surface adds to the challenge. There are also floating islands of vegetation which are impossible to see in the dark and can vary
in size from very small up to about 3-4 metres wide.
Arriving at Port Dickson on Monday and leaving again on Thursday we had hoped to be able to avoid clearing in as this means visiting three offices in the town. At Pangkor it is possible to stop for a few days without clearance but not at PD, so Tuesday saw
us getting a Grab (an Asian version of Uber) to town visiting the harbour office, customs and immigration. We asked, but harbour and customs wouldn’t clear us in and out in the same day, immigration did. Wednesday, back to PD town to clear out. This is the
only country we know where you have to do clearance in every port.
We have been able to make good use of the ebb tides on this trip which flow to the north and we could time our days to use the full ebb which some days gave us over six hours of fair tide. The further north you go the later the ebb starts, very useful especially
as we had the wind against us on most days or no wind at all. The longest leg of this trip was from Port Klang to Pangkor Island as we didn’t fancy any of the possible anchorages on the way which are very open or reportedly full of fishing boats. This did
require some night sailing but most boats were well lit and not actually engaged in fishing and we dropped anchor at about midnight in an area we have used before on the west of Pangkor Island, a bit rolly but not too bad. Again we spent two nights here before
heading into the marina and work time.
Maintenance
Our main planned job on haul out was to redo our antifouling. This had been applied by a local contractor in February but had started to fail within three months, this time we would do it ourselves. Although we ordered and paid for the majority of the paint
the contractor did give us some of the paints we needed in small quantities so a bit of compensation. We ended up rubbing down the whole underwater area of the hull with wet and dry paper as H & S here is almost non-existent. Employing the boatyard or a contractor
to do the sanding of hulls is a poor option as it is done dry with no dust extraction and the noxious dust goes everywhere.
The local Raymarine agent came and checked out our radar, of course it worked, but he did say it was failing and he just happened to have a new one in his car. A more modern scanner which uses less power, is able to detect more targets and will hopefully last
us a good few years. He came back two weeks later to fit it an option which gives us a better guarantee.
We have taken an offered opportunity to send our anchor and chain away for re galvanising. The galvanisers are in Penang and it needs a number of boats to get together to pay the transport costs but as we have anchored a lot these last few years our chain and
anchor were looking a bit sad and starting to rust.
We had considered changing the propellor as we have needed to use the engine so much in this area and our little two bladed propellor does not have much grip on the water. When motoring into wind and waves progress is painfully slow. Modern propellors adjust
their pitch to suit conditions and a three bladed one would give us more drive, they also feather to cut down drag. To order a propellor requires details of the shaft that it will go onto, the taper, size of thread and keyway. This required our prop to be
removed, Phil borrowed a puller from a local engineer who was too busy to come and do the job for us. This didn’t work so he made one which fitted better but still couldn’t shift it and eventually asked for help from another engineer who applied a lot of heat
and off it came. Unfortunately in trying to remove it Phil had hit it too hard in the wrong place and damaged the thread on the prop shaft, three days have now been spent removing the prop shaft to take it to an engineering works for sorting out. We won’t
be ordering a new prop for a while yet.
Sarah has been doing lots of cleaning of cushion covers, curtains and the whole boat as well as applying most of the antifouling and doing some varnishing while Phil battled with the engineering. The good side of being out of the water is that there are apartments
here to rent with air conditioning so our nights are comfortable.
Just a couple of photos, as we've been here before so haven't taken very many.
Unusual holiday accommodation on Pangkor Island. All made from shipping containers.
So many Ocean Cruising Club members here at the same time, with more coming north on the Sail Malaysia Rally. Old and new faces to us.
So pleased we have an apartment to retire to, especially on evenings like this when the rain is pouring down. Who would choose to do maintenance in the rainy season?
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