So this is what four days of motoring was all about... it was to get to somewhere
like this, cover ourselves in factor fifty suntan lotion, and find one of
these golden sands desolate little tropical islands. This one in particular
is surrounded by a lot of terns, so we've got terns nesting on all the rocks all
the way around the northern side of this island, and every now and then if you
disturb them... here they go!
I think terns are my favorite seabirds. They're a sailor's friend. When you're on
long passages they're on long passages as well, because they stay out at sea
for a long time, and they'll come and rest on the rigging and spend a bit of
time with you sometimes. But they're beautiful birds, fantastic little birds.
So we've come ashore to Pulau Tinggy and both of us are amazed about how much it
reminds us of the Maldives. Obviously it's a Muslim area here just like the
Maldives. So ladies that are covered, not completely covered but their hair
and so forth. And we've got lots of just tiny houses
Not much going on, very quiet. There's a mosque right behind you, and what looks like a
school or municipal building of some kind. There's one small resort hotel
which we're going to have a look at, but really it's just a very, very sleepy island
with the most magnificent water in front of it. Shallow for ages, lots of coral,
lots of reefs. It's just beautiful here.
On this rather laid-back island we have decided to stop off and get a light
refreshment. Coconuts, fresh coconut, very refreshing, very tasty. Liz said that
this was very similar to the Maldives and it is it really is. Almost everything
about it is identical. There's just one difference and that is that we have
mountains here. Of course in the Maldives they are 2 meters high above sea level
and that's about it. Whereas here we've got the big mountains.
But aside from that, pretty much everything else is the same.
Spent a nice bit of time on Tinggi. Nice little break, not doing anything,
just hanging out. We've got some quite strong winds today, I don't know what
they registered probably a good ten knots, and it's not even 9
o'clock yet, which is always quite good. So we're gonna take this opportunity to
now head up to Tioman, which is approximately 35 to 40 miles away.
Early start, well early-ish. Gonna weigh anchor. Hopefully we're gonna sail all
the way.
So we've just left the lee of Pulau Tinggi and now we've got proper wind. There's a big high mountain on the island, so we're doing four and a
half knots, no engine. It's about 25 miles to go and it's just glorious. The wind's
on the beam, just slightly broad to beam reach at the moment so it
couldn't be better.
This is all very pleasant, we've done a consistent four and a half knots pretty
much most the way. We're it's closer now to Tioman than we are to Tinggi and
there's been a few fishing boats passing over the bow. Esper heading in a
sort of southeasterly direction. Some have their nets out some don't.
I just had to make a slight detour round one fishing boat, but it's not half as
bad as it is on the west side. And it's just so nice to be sailing again!
You know this is the longest that we have sailed in I think months. Well as soon as
we turned that engine off, that's it. We've just done a consistent speed, winds been
consistent, the sea state has been pretty calm...
And the winds picked up, so we are now cruising along at over seven knots which
is great. Shame it didn't happen earlier but anyway. Got the Sun above us now, it's
lighting up the west side of the island.
It's an overcast Tuesday and we need to check in. The deal is around Malaysia
you check in and out of the port of entries, and it doesn't include
Immigration, it's just Harbour Master and Customs so it's really just for the boat.
And we were told that it was somewhere along this little strip. Now we've just
come to the little marina here which is always full, so we just brought the dinghy
in, tied it up, and behind me are the offices. Empty. Closed. Locked up. Empty,
empty shops. There's a little sign on the door saying that we actually have to go
to the main town jetty, which is there. So now we've got to figure out how we get
there. it's all new to us, so yeah, we're just going to do a little bit of
investigating and see what we can find out.
We have quite a bit of laundry to do, so we've been trying to find the local
launderette, and after asking a couple locals we have found somewhere. They haven't
got a dryer here, but doesn't matter. They've said just leave it out in the
sunshine to dry. This is the laundry, gotta just leave it here behind the door,
apparently.
Next on our list of priorities and it's really top of the
list is to find the duty-free store. Apparently there are two on this island.
Tioman is a duty-free island, so it's a good place to stock up on beer, and my beer
supplies have been depleted somewhat. And I think Liz is after a couple bottles of
something, so we're just having a look now but one thing that strikes us immediately
coming ashore is that everything seems closed. It's only ten o'clock so it
is quite early for a lot of local people, but there isn't much open at the moment.
This is the big duty-free complex. Everything's all shuttered down.
So we're at the main ferry terminal now, and supposedly the Harbour Master is here.
Well we found his sign, but of course it's closed.
Right I'm off to do a diesel run.
Yesterday we took in our diesel jerrycans
to a shop, and they said to return today at about 3 o'clock. We used a lot of
diesel over the last couple of weeks, and our tanks were really quite low, so I've
already dispensed the first lot in there. Probably gonna have to
do at least another two runs which is a bit of a pain. So I'm going to go
inshore now and see if I can pay for that, sort that out, and also nip to the
post office because we've got a couple of things coming to us in the post. Let's
see if they've turned up.
No post-its not going to be here till at least Tuesday, and we're planning to
leave on Monday. So I will just have to pick it up when we come back. It's not
that urgent really. So that's that done, now I've got to head to the marina
to park up the dinghy (excuse the noise) and see if I can find my diesel.
Meanwhile back at the marina, this is Aznol, and he's one of the guys that did
the diesel. Spent a lot of money on it actually, four Ringgit, that's about
80p. Not that much compared to the UK of course, but quite expensive by Malaysian
standards. I was told it should have been three Ringgit, so I'm not sure what's
going on there. Anyway needs must and all that I guess. I should help this guy get
what, ten jerry cans into the dinghy? Ain't going to happen.
So that diesel run was a bit of a bastard wasn't it?
Yeah it's very hot and sweaty, and it's a lot of hard work carting all those...
We did two runs in the end, and then of course we have to fill it up at this end.
But anyway, it's done. So that's one of the big preparations out the way.
You've also been doing a couple of things in preparation for our trip to
the Anambus Islands. What are they? Yeah, just clearing out the fridge and getting
everything sorted. And we also bought whatever fresh food we could find here,
on Tioman, so potatoes and tomatoes, onions and stuff like that, nice cabbage.
And in order to keep them for as long as possible, what we do is spray them with a
bleach water solution, clean them up, get rid of any bacteria that's about to
burrow in there, and then I dry them off in the sun up here. And then I put them
carefully away hanging or in the fridge. And then there was one other thing
we had to do, which you've just put on your iPad. Yeah, the
charts to the Anambas are very interesting because Navionics is what we have on the
boat and on our phones and so forth. But it's notoriously inaccurate
for the area. The area is charted, but it's not really that accurate so we were
advised to get C-map and you found an app for that didn't you? Yeah, I mean I
think a lot of cruisers know C-map through MaxSea.
They've had it for a while I think, their app. And yes, you were you were told, and
we were told, that it was more precise. And also Ovitalmap...
Ovitalmap we use, but I think perhaps we're going to talk a bit more about apps
generally at another time. So there's Ovitalmap which is basically
Google Earth, and so we cache the Google Earth images, so by using Google Earth
and the C-map charts we'll hopefully be a little bit closer. But I think it's
all going to be about eyeballing. We cannot rely on any any of the charts, so
we have to go in with the sun behind us. That's sort of 3:00 in the afternoon so
you can see right down into the water. We've done this many times before and
we'll have to do it by eye-balling. Yeah, definitely. The other thing of course is
I've got the cruising guide, the pilot for Indonesia. I downloaded the whole
pilot for Indonesia because we'd like to go further afield at some point. It's by
Andy Scott, and you can get it, you can just download it. Couldn't get the
hard copy at this stage, but we've got a whole area for the Anambas, and he goes into
quite a lot of detail there and gives us some anchorage ideas. And also on Noonsite
there are a couple of blogks that have been written about trips to the
Anambas, so a lot of useful information there as well. Thank you the Howarths.
And with that cruising guide, of course, they also give out waypoints as well, so
you can download waypoints either on Google Earth or as GPX files, which you
can then install on your chart plotters. So they should be good. So that's it.
Preparation done. We're going to spend a bit more time in Tioman when we come
back so you haven't seen so much of it this time, but hopefully when we come
back we'll do a bit more exploring. Until then this is it, we're off. Yeah,
we're out of here! So good luck to us, and fair winds to us! Peace.