And as the world turns

Oh yes, we’ve moved again. Surprise, surprise….but we missed the Chinese New Years in Penang. We’ve missed the elections in Italy and we are missing the preparations for the election in British Columbia. Yikes, where’s life going? Ah well perhaps in a couple more years we get to grow up and participate but in the meantime we are continuing to move on.So, I think Penang is where I last left off and it was there we picked up Luisa, a friend from Italy Connie had visited in the summer of 2012 in Milan.

Luisa checking out the fishing boats’ nets.

Luisa had come to join us for the sail to Thailand and so this is where the adventure began.

We would have loved to stay in Penang but the marina was a heat sink. Straits Quay is a lovely marina but one does feel like one is in a fish bowl. On top of that it’s all concrete and when the sun shines it sucks up the heat and it takes all night to let go so the boat never cools down. I know all of you north of 35 degrees north latitude have no sympathy.

So leaving Penang we headed north to Langkawi with our Italian crew member. An uneventful 24 hours apart from tying to a mooring buoy late in the afternoon at a national park to avoid sailing at night through the fisherman’s nets. Well our plan didn’t work out well. After having sailed all day and being only 25 miles south of Langkawi we were looking forward to a nice peaceful night and waking up to a park and island to explore. Had a great dinner, cleaned up, checked the anchorage on anchor gear to ensure we were tied well to the mooring buoy. And by the way, we rarely use someone else’s mooring buoy not knowing what condition the lines are like. However, in this instance we were not willing to drop the anchor in 82 feet and have to haul it up again.

Relaxed, yes. Climbed into bed and within 30 seconds we heard the mooring buoy banging against the side of the boat. Heh, this isn’t supposed to happen. The wind usually blows one away from the mooring buoy but in this case there was a strong tidal flow and we found ourselves lying sideways to the wind and within seconds the line was stretched between the prop and the bow pulling on both ends of the boat. Panic. Wind is rising, darkness is full on us, we’re on the windward side of the island and we are tired.

OK – fast action. Cut the line carefully while taking up on a second line on the mooring. Why? We still didn’t want to go to sea. Well that’s stupid. We tried it but that didn’t work so off to sea in the middle of the night. Plan? Connie and Tony to keep 3 hour watches all night long, put up the main sail and slowly, at 2 knots, make our way up to the entrance of Langkawi and the town of Khua.

It was an uneventful night but we were hard on the wind with just the mainsail. The sky was clear, the stars out but no moon and Sage handled it all well banging away to windward in 12 knots providing good sleeping conditions below for our precious guest and off watch crew member.

Finally Langkawi – So what did we do in Langkawi?

We visited the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club to check out the facilities for our boat-sitter coming in April/May. We agreed the facilities were up to snuff:

Checked out a friends boat in storage.

Checking out our friends boat Strider which is currently in storage in Langkawi

We climbed mountains to look at the view:

Overlooking the anchorage in Telaga Harbour, Langkawi

Ate with the Russians at their favourite restaurant

Russians are in Telaga. A collection of posters at the Russian restaurant

We checked out the ikats in the resorts art gallery

A great example of a Borneo Ikat seen in a hotel art gallery

And the swimming pool at a resort close to our anchorage (check for Sage in the background)

Checking out the quality of the swimming pool in the anchorage

Checked out the facilities for the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club

Looking south from the deck of the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club

Found unique anchorages around the Langkawi archipelago

Anchorage located metres away from an inland lake accessible by a short walk through the jungle

And we ate croissants for breakfast – the first since leaving San Francisco!