4.13N 100.36E

Sunday 29^th January, 2012

Left Port Dickson yesterday for overnight trip to Pangkor Island (actually the marina is on reclaimed ground on the mainland). Quite why a country as vast as Malaysia with more islands than almost anywhere, needs to ‘reclaim’ land is beyond me but then I never was much good at finance. Soon after we set off, a strange clunking started for about 10secs every ½ hour. C thinks it’s something round the prop but it sounds more a malfunctioning pump to me. Anyway we did 150nm safely with no overheating etc. and are coming out of the water in 2 days’ time, hopefully all will then be revealed.

I have a very precious 45 year old watch and a rubbish one. The latter eventually packed up so I splashed out £2 each on 2 more rubbish ones; both of these have failed within 24hrs! I’ll go back to the old one and try not to fall in the water.

As always, rubbish wind overnight but sea like glass. At dawn today I counted 28 boats around me, mostly fishing boats but several were anchored tankers. No wonder the Radar, with additional sea clutter, was a waste of time. Avoided all, including a fishing boat which tried to run me down – I think its name was the Marie Celeste.

K

The same sea water inlet that cools the engine also flushes the loo [strange design]. Having cleared this, the engine no longer overheated but we couldn’t flush the loo with the engine running!

The bottom of the boat needs antifouling and maybe some fibreglass repair after our grounding fun and games in Indonesia and this is apparently a good place so hopefully all will be sorted.

I am hoping to be able to spend a couple of nights in the resort next door…Yippee.

Going up the Malacca strait we have been listening to the big ships in the shipping channel on the VHF. They are incredibly rude to each other: ”What you doing..what you doing?” “Keep your course, Keep your course “.  Anyway it keeps me amused at 2a.m. while trying to dodge the fishing boats.

C