Larkabout 2009

Singapore to Penang

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Our second go at the Malacca Straits. The water is a poisonous green and the whole coast is heavily polluted. You can’t even see Sumatra. It is very busy, but we are wobbling up the outside lane, far enough over not to be bothered by the big ships and just inside enough not to get all tangled up with the millions and millions ok I’m exaggerating but not by much of fishermen. (We learnt our lesson after a fairly stressful night sailing down to Singapore). Not much sleep (“spleep?”) the first night so around dawn after the second we pulled over off Port Dickson and had a nap before going in to a marina there for fuel. Much cheaper than Singapore. (Oh really.)
Wednesday night was the Night of the Living Fishermen and I’m not going there without therapy so we took a break on Thursday and anchored at an attractive little island called Pulau Pangkor and had a quick swim while trying not to get any of the water on us.
And thus to Penang. We pulled in late Friday night and went ashore and got pissed at the Marina bar while watching the local Salsa Club go large. Saturday we wobbled all over town seeing the clearing-in dudes and had Pizza Hut for dinner. What? It was only because we couldn’t find McDonalds.
Yesterday Jack and I jumped the buses and did all the Christmas shopping and are feeling very smug today. I’m feeling particularly and disgustingly smug as I made a Christmas cake in Singapore. Mo and Ian arrive here tomorrow and we join them at their hotel for the nights of the 24th, 25th and 26th and will leave Penang for Langkawi on the 28th. We have (yet) another contact from Glen here. Bruce has spoken to Ronnie on the phone and we are hoping to catch up with him before Christmas. He sounds like another fascinating chap – an ex diamond dealer who is an authority on Chinese opera and deities.
The only other news and I suppose it’s quite big is that we have decided to go around the bottom of Africa instead of through the Red Sea. We really don’t want to miss the opportunity to go to Chagos and also to South America and as things stand we can’t really afford to go to Europe anyway…(It also means that if things get really grim we can sail back to Australia from the Indian Ocean).
We are all really happy on “Tantrum”. A few glitches here and there but she’s been good to us and comfortable. We still haven’t changed the name on the starboard side so it still reads Wirlinga. We’ve taken to telling people that it is Aboriginal for tantrum.
Reluctant though he’s been to focus hard, Jack has been coping really well with the whole distance education thing. He got lucky early as all his work for the year was due in Australia by the 28th November, so he finished up in Bali and has been on holiday ever since. We got his report the other day through Mo and Ian and he got As and Bs, one C (my fault – we had missed part of a unit) and an E for Art because we didn’t do it. No prejudice there, just a lack of time to start the units when we first got going. He misses his friends of course and gets very bored while we are under way – but hey so do we all. We’ve got plenty of power when we get going thanks to big prop shaft generator so he can do some gaming and watching of movies. Speaking of which, we seem to have got through the pirated DVD thing relatively unscathed – they all appear to work with the notable exception of the new James Bond movie which has appalling sound quality and also switches to Russian half way through. I still have no idea of the plot, but it was very exciting.
We settled in to the routine about 2 days before we got to Singapore, finally. It has taken a while to get the groove back, but it is very good and we like it a lot. Jack is just brilliant – he’s getting really confident and starting to soak the whole experience up more (when he’s not bitching about the boredom) and is now as tall as me. We’ll be bringing back an unrecognisable young man.
We miss you all and send lots of love and Merry Christmases and good wishes for the New Year and I hope it won’t be as long between letters.
I have attached some photos – I’m not sure as I write this that I’m going to be able to caption them so if they arrive sans captions you’ll just have to work it out amongst yourselves. They should be in chronological order.
XXXXXOOOOO Sal and Bruce and Jack

En route to Malaysia – Java and South China Seas

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:58:00 GMT

Well, see opening comments, really.
As I speak (11 30pm ish 1 December), we are anchored about 25 miles south west of Singapore, having a wee breather from the noise and inexorableness of the always efficient Perkins and will leave tomorrow morning to bolt across the Straits of Malacca and head up to Port Kelang, where we hope to haul the boat and paint its bottom .
And I spoke too soon…the gear box failed about 4pm when we were about 6 hours clear of Singapore(yess had successfully sneaked past without spending any money) and were obliged to sail back down the hill at a thumping 2knts or so through the night so that we could pull into Singapore with our tail between our legs and our credit cards in our holsters. The nearest marina that we could drift into was of course the most expensive one and once the boys had removed the gearbox, it was all over bar the whimpering at the end. Still, nice breakfast at the marina – penang fried rice noodles, and mango lassi. Delicious.
Things to recommend about Singapore:
The satay is better
Well, all the food is amazing really
The trains are really efficient and the taxi drivers have a good sense of humour.
There is a Borders there and books are quite a bit cheaper than Australia.
The night of my birthday, we came out of the movie theatre (“Bolt” – do yourself a favour and go to the matinee) onto Orchard Road and Lo! The government had really thoughtfully strung up millions of lights all over the joint for me. I’ve written to thank them.

There were redeeming features at Raffles Marina though – outrageously good pool with slides and water cannons and room to do laps, a gym (and an 8 lane bowling alley, although that wasn’t free) and interesting company. We took advantage of all three.
People we met:
Mad Charlie from Liverpool and his crew Uruguayan Juan
Chas from Tas – legendary Australian Skipper with his own website and drinking problem
Strange Norwegian Tom
Young Arun from Hungary who is circumnavigating on a 16’ boat and no I’m not kidding
South African Morne and his American wife Colleen who were really helpful about stuff and their just too gorgeous 2 year old son
Philippino Mikey who looks about 16 and is actually 37 and who we worked out we had met at the Americas Cup in ’99.
And of course Hyder Nair Singapore local retired Warrant Officer who looked after security there and took such a shine to Jack that he rustled up a full Singapore Army uniform including boots and embroidered name tag for him and took us all out to dinner. Charming man. Had trained the bar manager at the marina, of whom he said “He’s a better bar manager than soldier”. Singapore of course has national service for all men at 18. Not the women though – Lee Kuan Yew decided that their wombs were too precious. Mr Lee is still has an official title – he’s known as the Minister Mentor, and still jets about representing Singapore and giving advice.
Bruce’s friend Glen in China had given us more contacts other than Kim in Bali, so we slightly warily called his mate Alistair who promptly called around to the boat and turned out to be the nicest guy, possibly in the world. Ex-yachtie merchant banker (as you do). He came back the next day with another friend and all their families for lunch. And what a lunch it was. By this time we had been in Singapore for such a long time that Mo and Ian’s itinerary had caught up with us and they flew in to Singapore late on Saturday 13th en route to Phuket then Penang, which is where we were supposed to see them. So Sunday they came to the Marina for lunch as well. Weeee. We had planned to leave early on Monday morning (the gearbox had been refitted on Friday)but were too hungover so we left on Tuesday at 5am for Penang.

Bali and Lembongan

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:55:00 GMT

The crew at Ashmore were not only friendly and professional, but useful –Cameron (Customs) had passed on to us a phone number for a friend of his (Mickey) in Bali that might prove handy, and boy did he.
We left for Bali Monday evening and arrived early Friday morning at Benoa harbor. Ah ha finally our first foreign port . Just the usual plastic bags. We hoped to catch up with old acquaintance of Bruce’s who he had last seen about 18 years previously.
Kim was one of the first Aussies to surf and conquer Bali back in the day, and even now was known as a “Legend” i.e one of the founding fathers of the Kuta scene, with complementary Balinese businessperson wife, bar etc. His phone didn’t work.
We were concerned about getting out and about while we were there and packing in as much Bintang beer, satay and Nasi Goreng as we could so after the very relaxed organized clearing-in activity at the yacht club and a night in Kuta and a bit of a look around by taxi on Friday night, we had a discussion and called Mickey who instantly whisked us off for la tour de la tour, incorporating the unexpectedly expensive but groovy Bali Zoo, and the Monkey Sanctuary at the Temple at Ubud which is where we spent the next two days. No, silly, not at the Temple but at a nice hotel with a shower and beds and no monkeys and everything. The Nasi Goreng was a bit more expensive up the hill there, but by golly we found one of those amazing places that one sees in the weekend newspaper travel section and were very impressed. The following day we spent driving up to the north to Lovina Beach (give it the big miss, was the general impression) and then back to the boat via, you guessed it, Kim’s place. Yes, The Legend was finally returning his calls.
The Legend was also, as it would happen, in slightly different circumstances than when Bruce had last seen him – smaller house, new wife, more bintang. Glorious new son of around 14months called Genghis (yesss) an immodest fixation on Samurai and well quite a lot of bintang really. We had a really invigorating visit and stay with Kim and Fida overnight and were quietly pleased that we had not been there for 4 days.
Jack and I were pretty much the only people who live in Australia left on the planet who hadn’t been to Bali. I had no idea (I assumed it was more on the scale of Pacific destinations) that it was so big and busy I mean two million people live there. We went down the street where the bombs were detonated in 02 and the street is like this wide (I am stretching my arms). It is so much easier to understand the terrible carnage once one has seen the venue.
When we left Bali we spent two days just across the pond at Lembongan, which is where Mickey our guide was from at his invitation. We met various uncles and cousins and had fresh box fish and rice for lunch. The rice was great (seriously, very nice varieties of rice in Indonesia) but I still can’t recommend box fish. Mickey took us for a tutu around the Island and found us the best – you guessed it – nasi goreng – and the obligatory overpriced but excellent massage. Jack became addicted to the fresh juices served there and a local cold tea drink called Tebotel in a charming self-explanatory way. I hasten to add that we did eat other food but I wasn’t that keen on the gado gado. Lembongan is a day trip Island from Bali so each day that we were there the big charter boats would wobble over around 10ish and disgorge their punters onto the pontoons moored in the bay. Cool set up along the lines of those on the barrier reef, but they had water slides. Mickey got his mates to take Jack and I up on the parachute towing thingo for a discount. The other activity they do there is farm seaweed for cosmetics and medicine which is exported to the Philippines, I believe, where it is processed. The whole bay is divided into small smallholdings and looks just like paddocks when one overlooks the bay. We left Lembongan on Sunday morning 23 November.
Postscript. Bali was a lot more expensive than we had hoped with the exception of a couple of meals in Kuta and naturally, the scores of one dollar DVDs we shoveled on to the boat. At this rate we will be home for Christmas.

Ashmore Reef

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:53:00 GMT

And so we motored all the way to Ashmore reef, arriving about 11pm on Friday. Now here was a surprise. There was a bloody great boat in the anchorage when we got there. And just as we had finished shuffling about In the dark looking for one of the moorings that our government so thoughtfully provides, who should race up but two of Australian Customs finest to lend assistance and say hello. The “Ashmore Guardian” is permanently stationed at Ashmore – apparently since around April this year – and is charged with um “hosting” the errant Indonesian fishermen who may have inadvertently wandered be-netted into Australia’s farthest flung marine park, until their pick-up and relocation by the quicker navy vessels who sweep through. The ship has about 6 Customs and Fisheries staff and the same number of crew, as the vessel is leased to the Govt. They rotate through monthly. The boys (yep – the only female crew was the cook, who incidentally used to work for Kerry Packer, and does a nice line in Greek salad) also watch movies, work out, have a swim and run around Cartier Island. I think that pretty much covers it. And they invited us for lunch. Nice fish and chips (not locally caught), a lovely salad and a tour of the ship. All incredibly pleasant and like, totally whoa out of left field. After lunch they guided us to a mooring closer to the Island so we could go ashore and swim and stuff.
So the three of us (and our guardians) had a lovely couple of days at Ashmore. We did go ashore, being careful of all the big holes – the turtles were coming ashore to lay their eggs each night. The coral was healthy, there were turtles swimming all over the joint – curious little tackers – and an abundance of your tropical fish. Interestingly, there were few good size fish, and those were very wary. The water was warm. Very warm, actually – about 38 degrees close to shore. We left thoroughly impressed with our tax dollars at work, and a carton each of orange juice and yoghurt from the “Guardian” that was about to go off.

Darwin

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:50:00 GMT

We sailed almost all the way to Darwin (this is significant as we basically haven’t had any wind since the day before we arrived there – that day was so calm we stopped the boat and the boys jumped in for a quick swim) and got in about 2am Monday 27 Oct. Darwin was very hot and smaller than I thought. I had assumed that it was about the size – population and sprawliness – of Cairns. We did Darwin tourist stuff for a while – it was actually quite difficult to find something to do that didn’t involve crocodiles - and spent part of most evenings at the Sailing Club at Fanny Bay as it had a) showers b) cold beer and c) cheap fried rice . We can also highly recommend the new Coen Bros movie Burn after Reading, and to a slightly lesser extent Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Body of Lies (particularly Crowe’s line “ you’ve gotta work out which side of the Cross you’re on, son, we need nailers, not hangers”). As you may have gathered, Darwin has pleasant, thoroughly airconditioned movie theatres. Two other points of interest : the Woolworths in Darwin is the same size as the one in Mission Beach (or vice versa); and you can buy cask wine before 4pm in Darwin – you just have to sign for it, and tell the people in the bottle shop where you are going to drink it. They were not particularly amused when I said that I thought the park next to the library looked nice. We left Tues 4 Nov, and we had had a really nice time.

Things to remember:

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:49:00 GMT

Cape Melville, completely covered in boulders the size of cars as far as you can see.
Bruce chucking a line over the side and snagging a 10kg Spanish mackerel about 3minutes later. Fish fish the family dish. Dinner, lunch, dinner again…it was jolly big, and if I’m not mistaken there’s some lying around here still.
Tootling past Cape York the tip of Australia! just ever so casual. We were so excited that the photos are all blurry and had to be deleted. There were people there so we waved.
Posting mail including Jack’s distance education work from the Thursday Island Post Office, unable to shrug off the feeling that none of it might arrive.

Being the only people in a shop that sold $12,000 pearls on T.I and wondering who else may drop in and actually buy something.

Mission Beach to Thursday Island

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:43:00 GMT

Left Clump Point and Nellie who came to see me off 28 Sept and arrived Cairns that night at about 8. We had 5 days in Cairns sorting last minute stuff as much as one can, and had a really pleasant time catching up with Ray and Christine who had moved up in the meantime and settled onto their boat. Caught up with Terry too, who looked really well and seemed to be making headway with sorting some contacts for mine work and some other options. Including Robbie, whom he met at our going away party…Took Jack and Christine’s granddaughter Ashley to see “Stepbrothers” and had secretly enjoyable time. Oh, and did some provisioning for the boat. Did you know that it is illegal to buy cask wine before 4pm in Cairns?
First stop out of Cairns on 3 Oct was the Low Isles off Port Douglas for the night then on to Hope Is en route to Lizard the next day. Hung out there for a week – bit longer than anticipated but we waited a handful of days extra for a new battery for the anchor winch because it wouldn’t pull the skin off your custard. The anchorage had beautiful water with damselfish that bite you on the shin (or perhaps it was just me) and nice snorkeling and was full on windy as we had about 20 – 25kn anyway and we got hammered by the wind bullets coming off the hills there. Weee. We got terribly excited and did the walk to the top of the hill where James Cook stood and looked for a passage out past the reefs (known inevitably as Cook’s Look). Jack signed the visitor’s book. He said “my cat’s breath smells of cat food. Jack Larkin, 13, Mission Beach”. We had oranges and water and came back down again.
Lizard has a terribly expensive and exclusive (though a bit run down and dated) resort on it which normal people are not able to infiltrate, not even with a floppy hat and Italian sandals and a ridiculous tan, we are however allowed to use the staff bar which at the time was hosting the annual marlin fishing competition and which had very cold beer and surprisingly good pizza and sold phone cards. So there we were in the anchorage, along with about a couple of dozen or so other sailing boats and about 50 big power boats. It was like a city at night, big generators flood lighting all the expensive decks and powering those really cool electric blue underwater lights that the flash gits have but which look amazing and we’d like some too. Funnily enough we didn’t see any of the marlin fishermen ashore – it may have been something to do with the fact that there was police boat stationed at the anchorage (50 miles offshore) for the duration of the tournament, the occupants of which spent their waking hours inspecting people’s boat licenses and registration and making sure no one had a beer. Happily they didn’t get around to us.
The yachties who were already there had a curious nightly ritual whereby they dinghyed to the beach every night at 5 and had pot luck dinners. All of them. Every night. I guess they all knew each other from previous years, or just knew to participate. We were invited over and went that night, and talked to a few interesting people, but it was weirdly cliquey.
While we were there we took the boat out to the “Cod Hole” at the edge of the outer reef and Jack and I had a dive and we all had a snorkel. Just amazing. It is so called because of the enormous resident cod there which I understand are fed by the dive operators, but which were not apparent the day we went. We did however see some other huge fish, fish I’d never seen before and just well, fish galore. Breathtaking.
And so on up the road. We day sailed up to Thursday Island, leaving Lizard 14 Oct and arriving at Horn Island /Thursday Island 19th, depart 22nd.

Sunday 30 November 11pm

tantrum — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:41:00 GMT

Crossed the equator at 8pm. Didn’t bust out silly hats and bubbles because forgot to pack them– Jack said oh for goodness sake it’s not like you didn’t know. Oops. Will have to do it next time or the time after that or the time after that. Quite a few more to come this trip.
Anyway we are now in the Northern Hemisphere. Jack immediately went to flush the toilet but I don’t think boat loos count.
So, back to some sort of narrative.

Moments from first watch Thurs 27th night

tantrum — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:37:00 GMT

Our sail last night started in a spectacular fashion, both the coasts to the left and right of us were subject to successive percussive lightning strikes and looked nothing less than that they were being bombed.

We noticed on our way past the east coast of Bali that each of the beaches we passed were completely covered by what looked like carelessly flung white sticks but on closer inspection (Minolta 7 x 50) were small outrigger fishing canoes, lots of canoes, sometimes 3 and 4 deep on the beach, beaches which would have been easily 500m and 1 km long, one after the other after the other. Who knew that so many fishermen lived in each and every coastal village? Who knew that so many fishermen didn’t work on Sundays?
We went with Mickey, among other places, to an extensive Temple complex on top of the hill overlooking the volcano. The people there, the vendors, were the only people we were to meet on Bali who were pinched looking and unhappy and pushy. We wondered whether it was to do with living in the shadow of a large recently active volcano. Maybe they were just pissed off because I didn’t buy any postcards.

Thoughts from night watch v. early Thurs 27 Nov

tantrum — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:09:00 GMT

There is some speculation that merely being present on a moving boat gives the body a measure of anaerobic exercise – this may be true but nevertheless we are all getting a tad floppy. In my own defense I wonder whether my body had been holding itself relatively well together all year in anticipation of a return to its normal routine and has quietly but suddenly given up with a sigh. It has been harder than I thought to get motivated to establish some sort of programme – it doesn’t help that it has been either stiflingly hot or blowing like a coke addict and hard to stay on your feet, and a few nights here and there hanging ten in the cockpit doing arm twirls doesn’t exactly cut the mustard . One is hesitant about attempting some sort of pilates or similar for fear of remaining in an embarrassing posture for the long term. (Although Jack and I amused ourselves for a few minutes this morning freestanding in the galley while the boat was heeled over, in a stance reminiscent of trying to stay upright in Wellington in winter.) (Or summer).
We have however been diligent about swimming when we are at a clean anchorage – Ashmore and Lizard – and walking as much as Bruce’s knee can stand when we are ashore.

The first night we left Lembongan we sailed at dusk into a cluster of small fishing boats, all lit and, we soon discovered, stationary. We navigated with care, hoping to be soon clear. It became soon apparent, however, that this was no isolated cluster, but part of a much bigger pattern – the boats kept appearing as we moved along, and there was no relief from alert watch till dawn. This is the third night now and we are just astonished at how many boats there are out here. It is like navigating through space veerrrry sloooowwly, with each glow on the horizon taking ages to resolve itself into a light and us gliding past at, well , not exactly ludicrous speed. And, let’s face it, not exactly gliding either – this is also the third night that we have alternated between having no wind (pas de vent, not a bleeding sausage, not a skerrick or even a bit) and gusts on the nose up to the 50 knot gale that Bruce had to deal with on his watch the night before last – and so have been motoring donk donk donk for gosh is it that long.
I would love to see a satellite picture of us all. We are after all (now) in the middle of the Java Sea about 100 miles off the coast of Java and 350 miles from Sumatra.
Of course just as in space there are the random objects down here too like the meteoresque boat who appeared seemingly from nowhere about 50m to port –moving, no less- while I was down below plunging my coffee. One of the problems with these is that they give a very poor radar image as they are mostly wooden, and the lights from the little close ones can remain hidden in the swells. That is boats, not coffee pots.
Speaking of space objects, I don’t suppose now is the time to describe the bright pulsating light I saw twice earlier that was flitting erratically about 30 degrees in the sky and then abruptly disappeared? No? I thought not.

Gallery: departure

tantrum — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:33:00 GMT