We anchored off the yacht club, in sight of the marine police base and for MYR150 per boat were given temporary membership of the club. Dealing with essential business first Phil organised to fill up with diesel on the first day. To buy more than 20litres in Jerry cans you have to have a licence, so the filling has to be done via a local who has a licence. Two of us managed to get diesel on this first day whereas others had to wait a day or in one case go without altogether as there were no more licences available. It definitely pays to keep topped up whenever possible, our next leg on the rally was to take us 50 miles up river into the rain forest so no chance of sailing that.

Just outside Sandakan there is an Orang Utan rehabilitation centre and a Sun Bear conservation centre both close together so easy to visit. The Orang Utan centre cares for young orphaned animals and the Sun Bear centre cares for bears most of which have been kept as pets until they stop being cuddly little animals. The Sun Bear is Helarctus Malaynus and for various reasons we had called the catamaran that Phil built back in the 80’s Helarctus, we had never had a chance before now to see one.

These visits only took a morning so we came back into town and had lunch at the English Tea House, a colonial house and garden overlooking the city, visited Agnes Keith’s House and then walked back down the 100 steps heritage trail into town.

Agnes Keith was an American writer who came to Sandakan with her English husband and wrote three books about living in Borneo. Her best known Land Below the Wind tells of the time before the war the others tell of life as a prisoner of the Japanese and returning after the war. We have copies and will read them eventually. Sabah Tourism has taken the title Land Below the Wind as its nickname for Sabah as it lies just south of the typhoon region.

The hundred steps are supposedly the route Chinese farmers took bringing their produce to market and are now brightly painted but like a lot of things out here badly maintained.

In town there are people beside the road with sewing machines carrying out repair work on clothes and others with needle and thread repairing shoes. We took advantage of both, Phil’s sandals are repaired and a skirt of Sarah’s.

And for some reason we couldn't work out, this street is decorated with umbrellas.

On our final night we had a buffet dinner provided at the yacht club with the commander of ESSCOM, our security escort around this coast from Kudat to Tawau, as the guest of honour and then in the morning a sail past which we missed as we wanted to ensue that we caught the tide for crossing the bar into the river Kinabatangan.