Fw: The journey continues

Simanderal
Michael Hughes and Ger White
Thu 1 Dec 2011 11:35
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 1:54 PM
Subject: The journey continues

Simanderal spent some 2 months in the One15 marina in Singapore--most of the time empty while we returned to Europe for a while. However we did have time to see something of Singapore--an extraordinary and vibrant city--though perhaps over-sanitised--and a huge contrast to Indonesia.
 
Michael returned to Singapore on 21 November and was joined by Michele to crew up the Malaysian coast. We set off from Singapore on 29th--an interesting start--as we pulled astern from the pontoon the thrust seemed to be only a fraction of the norm--away from the pontoon and into forward was little better--no matter how I revved the engine--clearly something was amiss, so with some difficulty we managed to slowly make our way back to the pontoon. A quick check suggested there was nothing wrong with the transmission, so I concluded it must be a "below the waterline" problem--something on the propellor. So on with the air tank and over the stern--the propeller was just a ball of shell growth--never seen anything like it--I don't know what they put in the water in Singapore, but the shells sure like it! It took me an hour of hard work to scrape it all off--and then we again set off.
 
Therafter no problems--little wind, so we had to motor most of the way through the dozens of anchored and moving vessels and round the west side of Singapore Island to the Puteri marina in Malaysia. Lovely weather to start with, but by 1500 we were in rain and thunderstorms--which seems to be the daily pattern. But we managed to moor up before the worst of the weather.
 
Spent today dealing with immigration etc.-- so we're now cleared into Malaysia--followed by a bit of provisioning. And tomorrow we'll continue up the Malaysian coast.