Penang Island - Food Heaven!

Current Position: Georgetown Tanjong City Marina - North 05*24'829 East 100*20'652

If there's ever been a place where you wouldn't want to eat at home this has to be it! With a great mix of Indian and Chinese cultures the selection of restaurants is fantastic and ridiculously cheap. We're in Georgetown, the main city of Penang Island, and snuggly tied up to the docks at Tanjong city Marina. We're here to pick up our Thai visas which will allow us a three month stay instead of the regular one month we'd receive on arrival. The city is like an older version of Singapore, without all the high rise buildings, and so still has all beautiful old historical buildings and alleyways packed with little shops and restaurants which come alive at night.

Yesterday was an exciting day on Blue Moon after we came to the conclusion that we must have something wrapped around our propeller and shaft as the boat wasn't handling right in reverse gear as we came into the dock. Unfortunately the water here is like mud with zero visibility, strong undercurrents from the ferries, extremely smelly and has big jelly fish swimming around (no one could tell us if they were poisonous or not)....not a tempting place to go for a dip!!

But like any good boat owner Jimmy donned his dive gear and slipped off the dock into the murky depths to feel his way to the prop (I have to admit there is no way you could have ever gotten me in there). So as he bravely disappeared with just his bubbles showing that all was still okay, I stood on the dock with the fishing gaff trying to divert any wandering Jelly fish who looked like they were floating his way. After ten minutes he surfaced with a handful of fishing net and floats that had melted themselves to the shaft! It took an hour of blindless cutting with a kitchen knife and pair of pliers to finally remove the tangle of plastic netting, with his dive tank running out of air just seconds after the last piece was cut free Jimmy was feeling very lucky!

With that drama over we hit the town for a great $6 celebratory feast of Chicken Masala, fried rice and Naan Bread...Delicious especially washed down with a mango Lassi (yogurt drink)!...no beers available at the muslim restaurants I'm afraid. Today we plan to find the Tesco supermarket, on the very confusing bus system, to restock with some products we won't find anywhere else and then back to town to discover another great place to eat...chinese today I think!!

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Chinese New Year & Australia Day!

Current Position: Rebak Marina-Langkawi: North 06*17'642 East 99*41'863

We moved out of the town anchorage of Kuah yesterday and headed around to Rebak Island Resort Marina to fill up with water and take a look at the haul out facilities. We haven't socialized with other cruisers for over three months so we were really happy to hear that they were holding an Australia day BBQ (also coinciding with Chinese New year which is huge here) underneath a catamaran in the hard stand area. We wandered up with a couple of drinks and met a big group of cruisers all hanging around this area for the next year or have been here for the last season. Lots of great information was passed around which has helped us make our final decision to spend an extra season here in Asia.

It's been a really tough choice to make as we wont be seeing many of our long time cruising friends again (now currently in Sri Lanka) and we'll be adding an extra year to our circumnavigation. On the good side though we'll be able to relax with no big passages and enjoy some of the most beautiful cruising grounds in the world. Around May time we'll haul the boat for a few months during the wet season and make a trip home to visit family and friends and hopefully build up the kitty a little at the same time. It's been over three years since I've been back to England and over two for Jimmy so we're really looking forward to having a taste of the old life for a while even if it is just to see how good we have it out here!

Tomorrow we plan to make a trip back down to Penang island, roughly sixty miles, to apply for a Thai visa which will give us three month cruising instead of the usual one month we'd get without it. Then we'll head back up here to re-stock before crossing over to Thailand.

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Anchored in the Langkawi islands!

Current Position: Kuah town, Main island of Langkawi: North 06*18'774 East 099*50'678

We made it!! After seven days on the move we are now anchored in the beautiful Langkawi islands just south of the border between Malaysia and Thailand. We had a great trip up and were able to sail most of the way, the first few nights we anchored up behind small islands but the last two nights we just kept on going. On the final night the weather turned bad on us and we had to beat into head winds and big seas while trying to avoid the hundreds of fishing boats with two mile long nets strung out across our path! It took both of us to keep a watch and try and figure out where one net would end and the next begin, if we got caught in one of the nets at night we'd have been in serious trouble in rough seas in the dark.

Luckily we avoided that situation and at 4am yesterday morning we dropped anchor in a very peaceful anchorage off one of the Southern Langkawi Islands. The engine is working perfectly although we have a little wobble in the propeller shaft which we'll look into more here and the packing in the stern tube that was put in by the yard was much too tight so Jimmy had to remove some of it underway. Other than that we are very happy with her performance!

Yesterday afternoon we moved around to the town of Kuah where we checked in with customs, Immigration and the Port Captain. They're all located at the end of the ferry terminal and it was one of the smoothest check-in's we've ever done, very quick and best of all - Free! We had just enough time afterward to head into town to pick up some duty free rum and Chocolate!...Langkawi is a Duty free port which means while we here we can buy as much duty free as we like and alcohol and Chocolate seems to be very popular here with about twenty different shops selling mostly that. We picked up a one litre bottle of Captain Morgan rum and three bars of Toblerone Chocolate for just US$10!!

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On The Road Again!!

Current Position: In the Melacca Straits - North 01*27'602 East 103*15'248

We are very happy to report that after more than two months of sitting in Singapore having repairs done of the boat, we are today finally back out on anchor off a small island on the west coast of Malaysia. It was a strange feeling to back out on the open ocean getting used to the movement and sounds of the boat after being tied to a concrete dock for so long but I have to admit we're loving it!!

The plan now is to head up to Langkawi, a group of duty free Malaysian islands just before the border to Thailand, as quickly as possible and then review our time line on whether we can still head to the Red sea this year. Our friends in Phuket will be leaving tomorrow for Sri Lanka and the season is running late, we still have to stock up on food, water and fuel and replace some rigging... It really all depends as usual on the ever changing, unpredictable weather!! We should be in Langkawi in roughly one week as long as we can keep moving every day.

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Happy New Year!

Position: Raffles Marina, Singapore.

Happy 2009... It was a quiet celebration here on Blue Moon as we counted down to midnight along with the party on the huge mega yacht 'Asean Lady' who's moored to the outside dock near us here in Raffles. Our plans have changed back and forth many times in the past few days, whenever we feel close to getting the engine fixed we dream about the next leg of the trip through to the Red Sea...but when we hit yet another set back we have to face the realization that we may have to stay in Asia for another year!

Our cruising friends in Thailand are all preparing to leave, they've re-stocked all their food and fuel, made sure the rigging is safe and everything on board is ready to head back into the big blue. For us we feel confident that the boat is ready; we just have replace the piece of rigging wire between the two masts and stock up on food, fuel and water, get the new computer chips for our chart plotter...oh and of course have an engine that runs!!
Time is our main worry now as the group is planning to leave Phuket in Thailand around the 15th of January to head to Sri Lanka, it would take us roughly a week to get up the coast of Malaysia to the duty free port of Langkawi where we would stock up on everything (much cheaper than here in Singapore) before a two day jump to Phuket. Obviously that doesn't leave us any time to see any of the islands and that would only work if we were underway by this coming Tuesday!

As for the engine the current update is that we are without a transmission at the moment, it's a long story but we hired yet another mechanic to find the cause of the grinding, rattling, knocking noise that we get when it's in gear. This guy is very sure that the problem is the clutch plate which he thus removed, however, instead of ordering the same kind to put back he somehow convinced us to get a dampener plate instead which is having to be manufactured by an engineering firm here. So at a 'much' larger expense we've decided to trust him in the hope that this will fix all our worries...except he doesn't seem to realize how much of a rush were in and keeps making the time frame longer...ahhhh!

To be honest we really don't know if this is causing the problem but there's nothing else we can do, Jimmy has already had to lower the v-drive unit as the yard never aligned it correctly as they seemed to think aligning it to the hole in the hull where the shaft goes through was adequate...not according to every other engineer we've spoken to!!
So as I'm sure you can imagine we're going absolutely crazy..we've been here over two months and feel no closer to completion than when we arrived, fingers crossed 2009 will be a little luckier for us and we'll be underway soon.

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Merry Christmas from Singapore!

We were really hoping that we wouldn't still be here for Christmas instead we should be sipping cocktails on the beach in Thailand but as events turn out Blue Moon is still crippled and we're trying desperately to figure out how to fix her. We have a lot of mixed emotions at the moment, mostly missing family and friends who we couldn't be with for the festive season and also the frustration of being unable to move on with the situation we're in here. We've been working day and night but two steps forward always seem to result in four backwards.

However, today has been a welcome break as we headed into the city this afternoon to have some time off and enjoy Singapore's beautiful Christmas lights. At 6pm we visited the 'Cathedral of The Good Shepard' for evening mass where we sang Christmas carols alongside hundreds of local people in the beautiful historical building. The streets and malls were packed with shoppers making the most of the Christmas sales as most of the population are Chinese and Indian and don't celebrate the holiday as we do - This means everything runs as if it were a normal day and as usual the consumers are definitely consuming as if there were no tomorrow!!

After a quick stop into and English style pub for a Christmas drink we headed to the Carrefour supermarket to pick up some Sushi take-away and back to the boat for a not so traditional dinner. We've found that being away from home on Christmas day makes it impossible to re-create that traditional feeling especially coming from two different countries and backgrounds, it's just not the same no matter how hard we try so we've decided - 'When in Rome do as the Romans do'- Last year we celebrated with an Aussie BBQ in Sydney, in 2006 it was a Colombian fiesta in Cartagena, we find it makes us feel a little less home sick and we get to enjoy some local treats in very different settings...so sushi in Singapore - Why not?

We'd just like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and hope that wherever you are and whatever your doing your having a great time. Our thoughts are with you throughout the miles that separate us and we hope all your Christmas wishes come true!!

Patience and sanity test - Not quite a Johna story but getting close!

Ahoy to all!

Quick update on our status in Singapore!

Without mechanical knowledge previously tested or "required to date" - we have replaced, refitted, removed and just about re greased everything attached to the propeller shaft all the way back to the engine... On the positive- we now have knowledge about bearings, sheaves, splines and of course the various composites making them up which I must add a non-industry person should never be exposed to. This intimate experience also includes various installation techniques of said bearing, not limited to but definitely including: pressing, heating, pounding, tapping and just pure hard driving never before nor ever "again" to be attempted by the himself. The good news is the entire drive line, v-drive, transmission, hydraulic pluming, water system and not to mention the mounting, adjusting, removing to adjust again.

This of course just helps us get to the really fun part...the ever simple "ALIGNMENT PROCESS" HA! - Well our heads are still spinning over counting the planetary gears - no kidding - We have removed sun gears, moon gears and just plain old planetary gears - WOW! Like celestial navigation all over... It is just that the universe doesn't make crunching/rattling noises while they ellipse - must of had a good mechanic - (note to self: need to get him on the problem)
After real effort, time, money and knuckle cracking it has been concluded that there is a real problem and it required additional professionals.... Wow! #*@#%!!! - OR- SON OF A GUN!

Not a very exciting time on old Bluemoon... Christmas keeps screaming closer as if the pages on calendar were the odometer on a formula race car... The ripping of the pages just a constant reminder of friends and family afar and dollars tearing from our bank account.... We believe there is an end in sight - just holding onto hope and a constant positive outlook.

Just to top off the situation the immigration department will not issue us another extension without a written estimate of repair time and this needs to be from a locally recognized marine yard... Yippee! This was great news as we wasted 3 hrs getting out to their office only to be kicked back. Fun being on a boat sometimes - Arrive by bus or plane get 90-days - Arrive by boat get 14-days - get a one time 30 day renewal and then put up $3000 or who knows what..... So we have to hurry to get a letter explaining our problem on local letterhead...

SO - Now we need to return to the Raffles Marina Yard - not the people we ever wanted to deal with again- let alone ask for assistance... But we need to set the drive train correctly to insure the costly yard repairs were done correctly before departing... What luck!! All else is great! No cruisers in sight and the locals are to busy trying to out purchase the entire world for x-mas, if you think the economy is in trouble - Singapore will keep it rolling.

Enough for now! We will keep fighting the fight.