Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Kuching to Miri
We anchored at the Santubong River along with several rally boats and over the next week most of the others arrived.
As we were coming in we spotted 2 Irrawaddy dolphins unique to the area and kept a keen eye out for the crocodiles—no cleaning your hull in this anchorage!!
Our first day we went up the hill to the road and caught the little mini bus into Kuching to explore the city.
Kuching—means cat—is a city which despite the 600,000 people never seems busy. The city sprawls over a vast area with no high rises giving a great tropical laid back atmosphere. There are multitudes of many small stores selling multitudes of things—the mix in some stores is amazing—does the paint shop sell boots because he got a good deal on them? Perhaps the fishing store did not have enough sales volume and introduced coffee and bananas to up their sales?
There are a lot of touristy stores which have a range from extremely high quality crafts and antiques to the mass produced tourist tacky things. Coffee and white and black pepper are the local food items packaged for sale along with Laksa paste which is the base for the delicious local curry soup.
The lunch options were varied and we opted for a Turkish restaurant which was a change from the Malay/Chinese food we have been eating for months. Good quality coffee shops abound so we were able to treat ourselves and avoid the heavily sweetened Nescafe—the normal coffee fare.
We caught the last mini bus back at 4pm—it turned out to be the commuter bus and for 4 ringits—about $1 locals were dropped door to door over the 45 minute trip.
We were surprised at the number of obviously wealthy areas attesting to a successful timber and oil industry.
Once again the people were warm and friendly and were interested as to where we came from. They have a difficult time understanding how we had sailed here from Canada over 6 years with only two of us on board—but then so do most of our friends!!!
The following day we hired a van with Amazing Grace and Babadudu to do our check in.
Ours was seamless, unlike other boats who had conflicting dealings with the officials—one is never sure here what the rules are as it seems to depend who you get at the counter—we managed to get our elusive brown piece of paper which will allow us to get into Miri. We also have 6 weeks to get our visa renewed—may need to go in Brunei which we probably will choose to do anyway.
Lunch this day was the delicious curry laksa which has prawns and chicken and we had a disappointing visit to Cold Storage. These are expensive supermarkets where you usually can buy cheese and non hallal products—bacon and pork. Sadly a tasty cheddar cheese was not to be found. The fruit and vegs were all imported and packaged. We did get some bacon and ham which will be a treat.
Once again I made the mistake and bought the fresh milk which comes sweetened and flavoured!! Need to read the labels—su susu is the key. Apparently it is to encourage the children to drink milk but what it appears to do is develop an amazingly sweet tooth. They even put spoons full of sugar in fresh squeezed orange juice.
We spent the next few days doing boat chores but we did have a successful croc hunt at low tide as one was sleeping on the bank.
The rally get together was on the dock followed by a great Chinese meal near the anchorage.
The next day was the tour to the Orangutans which as we had already anticipated did not compare to our river trip in Kumai. However it is always a thrill as they swing their way through the trees to come and get the food which they are supplemented with.
We visited the National Museum in the afternoon which was interesting with photos and artifacts of the “real Borneo” on display.
The following morning we set sail to explore Bako National Park which is on our way to Miri—our next stop on the eastern side of Sarawak—in the hope of seeing proboscis monkeys.
We dropped the anchor for the day close to the ranger station and went in to register and get a trail map. There is a restaurant there and some cabins with resident macaques hanging around waiting to share lunch.
The rangers told us that the proboscis are likely to be spotted later in the day near the mangroves so we opted for a hike first to climb up and see the amazing varieties of pitcher plants.
The rainforest growth and roots growing all over the paths will never allow “a walk in the park”. One clambers over and under roots, branches and rocks. It is obviously well maintained as I am sure otherwise would be impassable with the growth which abounds.
After successfully finding the pitcher plants we descended to a beach on another of the myriad of trails. While taking a break on the lovely bay we saw the trees rustling and realised a troupe of proboscis monkeys were there. There were about a dozen and although they were camouflaged and fairly high above us we could see them interacting and feeding. It was quite a thrill and we watched for a long time.
As we started back toward the ranger station we spotted several in the palm trees between us and the beach. We then climbed down to the beach and made our way to the ocean side of where we had seen them and were rewarded with a close view of a family as they sat unperturbed by our presence.
It was thrilling and made our day!!
After returning to our boat we motored to the recommended anchorage for the night to join several other boats. The day finished with “happy hour” on Babadudu.
We set off the next morning and were delighted to get a 1-2 knot current with us and 15 knots of wind on our beam—a dream sail!!!!
As we reached the top of the peninsula we found the tides would be favourable to take the river which wound inside the island for 30 miles giving us a protected anchorage for the night.
Along with Amazing Grace we were assisted with the 3 knot current as the Irrawaddy dolphins swam around us.
Tony had caught a huge wahoo—we had not caught any fish for so long we had given up but obviously there are one or two left—we joined them for a great fish fry.
The next day we motored once again with 3 knots in our favour through the enormous waterway which was about a mile wide and had several ferry's crossing and the ubiquitous fishing boats. We kept a lookout for floating logs which are common in the area but saw very few and other than a few small thumps did not hit any large ones.
I managed to find enough internet—no small feat as the cell towers here despite the phone signal give very low internet signals—to book our flights to the Mulu Caves and the head hunters trail. This involved going close to a tower and as soon as my device changed from red Ken had to slow the boat while I painfully waited as I followed the prompts to book the flights. It timed out several times but finally success and we are now booked on Friday so need to get going and do an overnight trip to get to Miri on Thursday in time to pack and leave.
We left the next anchorage at 5am and are currently sailing with flat seas and enough wind to sail over 6 knots—once again the perfect sail—finally rewarded after so many weeks and months of motoring—yeh!!!
The rest of the trip was uneventful as we passed through the oil platforms—we are close to Brunei so it stands to reason the the oil does not respect borders. We arrived in Miri early on Thursday morning so will have time to get the boat ready to leave for the six days we will be away in Mulu.
Monday, July 02, 2012
Back to Redang and across the South China Sea to Borneo
I am writing this on a beautiful moonlit night crossing to Borneo when I am reminded of why we have loved this life. It is a life of frustrations and incredible rewards.
Last night was a stark contrast as we bashed into 1-2 metre swell with a 1 knot current against us. As it got dark we had to cross the shipping lane dodging the tankers carrying freight from Singapore up to Vietnam, China and beyond. We then had to avoid the fishing boats which fortunately were well lit as they sat at anchor. All of this with 20 knots of wind at a close reach. We needed to make sure we would avoid the Anamba Islands which have pirated boats in the past. The tight point of sail meant that despite the winds we needed to run the engine and could only make a speed of 5 knots.
By the morning the hazards were passed and the wind veered more to the south allowing us to sail at a more favourable angle and make 7-8 knots all day despite the 1 knot current against us.
Now in the night I am on watch as Ken sleeps and the seas have calmed and the moon shines bright as we glide through the water at a comfortable 6-7 knots. We are still crossing Indonesian waters but for some reason unbeknownst to us we are in a no fishing zone which means no fishing boats which is a rare treat.There are several around which obviously do not heed the non fishing zone but nowhere near the numbers we are used to.
If we can mantain the speed we will anchor at the NW tip of Borneo tomorrow night and travel the last 50 miles the next day to Santabong, the anchorage from which we will explore Kuching and the surrounding areas.
I am writing this on my new computer—our last one kept turning itself off, fortunately without the “blue screen of death” which meant with the help of yet one more cruiser computer expert—luckily there is always one!! We were able to copy the last couple of months pictures onto the hard drive—yes I know I should have done it more often!!!—Maybe will be more vigilant from now on—but with a brand new computer will I need to????
Previously we had made our way back from Redang to Tioman fighting current to get south again.
First stop was Terangganu to restock at the main supermarket and enjoying the great restaurants of Chinatown. Ken and I both had haircuts which came with a wonderful 15 minute head massage and shampoo for a total cost of $8 each.
We also were able to purchase our new computer at a reasonable price.
Next was Chukai where we were able to once again take our jerry cans and fill them at gas station prices—60c a litre—after our motoring into head seas coming south we needed to refuel. We stocked with yet more mangos but were sad to see the season appears to be ending and is being replaced with durian. This is the fruit described as the one which smells like dirty socks which is fairly accurate—one of the smells of this part of the world along with dried fish!!
Then an overnight anchorage at Pahang and the following day arrived at Tioman. We are with number of rally boats all getting ready to cross to Sarawak, Borneo, the next main stop of the season.
Previously some boats had crossed from Redang and gone straight to Miri, at the east end of Sarawak and although we had talked about doing this we opted to go south to Tioman and head to Kuching at the west end.
Returning back south down was such a slog with adverse currents and one particuraily uncomfortable day bashing head seas, we are not convinced we made the right choice.
If we were to do it again we would pick one of two routes, either cross to Kutching directly from Tioman or, if we wanted to go up as far as Redang would then cross straight to Miri.
We had one last day in Tioman taking advantage of the duty free liquor managing to procure a case of Trapiche Malbec wine from Argentina which we love. Until now we had not found much palatable wine at a reasonable price so were delighted to be able to buy this at $12 a bottle. Gin and rum generally are about $18 a bottle and beer at $15 a flat of 24 it does make wine a luxury.
The following morning we left along with Brother Wind and Camille to do this 390 mile passage in a straight run. Several others opted to go as far as Pulau Aur which would allow them to cross the shipping lanes in daylight but we are feeling Borneo is calling and want to get there as soon as possible.
We arrived on schedule anchoring as the sun went down at the eastern most point of Malaysian Borneo—the tip is owned by Indonesia and then the north coast to Malaysia. We arrived to have a glass of wine to toast Canada day—I did try and photograph our flag as we sailed in but there was little wind—perhaps it is an unhappy flag as it is definitely a bit ratty!!!
Awakening early the next morning to birdsong unfamiliar to us it was an awesome feeling that we have made our way to this exotic part of the world on our own boat.
We are now motoring across the last 40 miles to the Santubong River where we will anchor and start our Sarawak adventures.
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