november 3 2005 : bali, indonesia
We spent a couple of boring days back on the boat getting a few more things taken care of there. We had our screecher sail picked up by a little guy on a scooter. The sail has a small tear in it and after looking closer at it while it was down we realized that a lot of the stitching was coming apart as well, so all of that should be fixed up. Changed the oil, and on and on. We also realized that we’ve gotten a nice family of ants who have moved aboard since we arrived in Bali. Other than that there wasn’t a whole lot happening at the marina. We are about the only cruising boat left, everybody else has long since moved on.

Yesterday we headed back to Kuta again. A few more days of relaxing surf and sun before heading north. We did finally agree on a plan for the next leg of the trip. The original plan was to stop in Singapore, but we’ve decided that a few days there just isn’t worth the hassle of sailing through all the shipping traffic to stay in an expensive marina. So instead we are going to sail past Singapore and up to the Malaysian coast. The area around here is called the Malacca Straits and is the busiest shipping lane in the world, but by sticking close to the Indonesian coast and then cutting straight across to Malaysia we should be able to stay out of the way for the most part. It’s about a ten day sail from Bali but shouldn’t be much more work than the last passage.

Last night in Kuta we tracked down a Mexican restaurant. Fish taco’s, mmmm. They cook everything good here. After dinner we were walking along the beach and noticed there were hundreds of people milling around. At first we thought there must be something big going on, but then we realized everybody was gathered around for the sole purpose of watching the sunset, something you start to really take for granted after seeing so many out on the boat.

november 4 2005 : bali
The last couple of days Kuta has really filled up with people. It’s a Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan and there are suddenly tons of Indonesians from other islands here. During the day you wouldn’t notice anything different around here, but last night we were walking home from dinner and saw the busiest restaurant we have ever seen. The restaurant only had about ten tables but there were easily 300 people there having dinner. And what fancy delicious restaurant was it? Macca’s! Chock full of Indonesian Muslims on holiday.

Yesterday we didn’t do much except surf and beach. The surf was awesome all day long. I caught hundreds of waves on the day and despite there being hundreds of surfers, there is never any competition for waves because the break is so long. The gang at the beach were all happy to see us again and they all remembered our names which we found pretty amazing. Ali had herself another massage while I drank a can of sweat.

Today Ali was really crazy and got her hair cut. To be on the safe side she went to one of the fancier hotels along the beach that had a spa. Of course they just called in a local hair stylist who came in and told Ali she should have just come to her shop where it was much cheaper. Her haircut cost six dollars so she didn’t feel too bad about overpaying. She also had a facial while I surfed out front of the hotel.

Once again we spent the afternoon surfing and lounging around at the beach. Then at the hotel pool. In the evening we went back to the beach for some sunset surfing. The surf was pretty tiny but the sunset was great and the beach was jam packed with 1000’s of people playing soccer, building sand castles and taking pictures of the sunset. We don’t know where all these people are during the day, but they sure enjoy the evenings.

november 5 2005 : bali
And the student becomes the teacher. This morning we were up early and at the beach before the rest of the crowds showed up. Ali pulled on her rash shirt for the first time and we waded out into the surf. The first couple of waves the student seemed a little peeved with the teacher, me, because she was hardly able to hold onto the board, much less stand up on it. Apparently I wasn’t doing a very good job. But suddenly on about the third or fourth wave she was much more stable on the board and on about the fifth wave she was up and riding the wave nearly all the way back into shore. After that she was almost automatic, even getting a little cocky and looking back over her shoulder for her photo ops. Walking back down the beach to the hotel later she said, “We’re coming back tomorrow morning.” Next thing I know we’ll be searching the surf shops for her own board.

Last night standing on the beach Ali suddenly asked where the seagulls were. It felt weird to be on a beach without those annoying, screaming birds.

Among the thousands of shops in Kuta are DVD/CD shops where you can buy any bootlegged movie or cd ever made, including movies that haven’t even been released back in the U.S. yet. The restaurants in town buy the new releases and then play them loud and proud starting at about seven o’clock every night. All the restaurants in town do this and each of them has a little board out front with the movie times listed on it. The movies at the stores cost a dollar each or buy ten get three free. Or at least that’s what the sign says, we of course aren’t admitting to anything, the movies still have the FBI warnings at the beginning.

november 7 2005 : bali
Before leaving Kuta yesterday we stopped at Macca’s for a little going away present. The place was crawling with Indonesian’s on holiday and do you know what they order when they go to McDonald’s? The rice and chicken combo. Actually it was a piece of fried chicken, scrambled eggs, soup, and rice. It felt really strange to be sitting in a Macca’s eating a Big Mac surrounded by people eating rice with their fingers. It seems weird to us that they would want rice and chicken, but we suppose it would seem just as weird to them that we would want hamburgers.

When we got back to the boat yesterday we found our sail sitting on the boat waiting for us. We put it on and hauled it up and it looked good. Today the guy came by for his money; all fifteen dollars of it. We usually pay more than that just in cab fare to take us to the sail makers. In the afternoon a 120 foot private sailboat pulled into the marina. They have been holding the outer wall open ever since we got here just waiting for this boat to show up. The customs officers seemed impressed when they were on our boat, I can’t even imagine what they think when they climb aboard something like that.

Today we finished getting ready to leave for Malaysia. We filled up the diesel and went grocery shopping. We hired a cab to drive us around for a couple of hours. First we went back to the big Makro store to buy 3 big plastic jugs so we could take along another 15 gallons worth of diesel for this passage. Then we went to the gas station since the marina only has diesel, no petrol for the dinghy. And lastly we went to Bali Deli, which it turns out is the store in Bali that all the ex-patriots shop at. It’s a little store but is packed full of non-Indo food. There were bratwursts direct from Germany, spicy Mexican sausages, and my favorite, Cool Ranch Doritos direct from the mighty U.S. of A. Haven’t seen those in two years. We ended up loading up on snack food, or what some might call junk food, for the passage.

Back at the boat I found the dinghy was completely deflated once again. This thing is really in tough shape these days. We looked at a picture of it when we bought the boat and compared it to today and it is truly a sad sight. Definitely should have invested in a dinghy cover before the trip. I pumped it back up and it only took about two seconds to track down the new leak. It was a big seam that the glue had just completely let go of. I pulled out the dinghy first-aid kit and put it back together yet again. Hopefully this is the last leak for at least a couple of months.

We also found out today that my mom and brother are coming to visit again. They are meeting us a couple days after Christmas in Phuket. It’s good to have a little motivation to move on because we were really starting to like it here. We could easily spend a month at the hotel, surfing during the day, and drinking Bintangs at night. The people are just great. There isn’t a single person at the marina who doesn’t greet us by name. On our second day at the marina I went up to the restaurant with a bowl and ordered five scoops of ice cream to bring back to the boat. Today, three weeks later, I went back up for the same thing. As I was walking up the girl smiled and asked, “Ice Cream?” I said yes, and she said, “Two scoops of chocolate, two vanilla, and one strawberry?” Crazy, how would she remember that?

november 9 2005 : en route to malaysia (malacca strait)
Yesterday we finished getting the boat ready to leave by filling up with as much diesel as we could. With the new jugs we are now carrying about 115 gallons. We also washed the boat of three weeks of marina grime. There was a big oil spill in the marina yesterday as well. Apparently one of the large intra island day cruise ships managed to drop about twenty gallons of oil in the water. It was floating everywhere. The marina jumped into action with its emergency plan which consisted of a rather old man using a rather old rake to sort of push the oil into one corner of the dock and then scoop it out with a plastic jug. Crisis averted.

In the afternoon we also got to see the owners of the huge sailboat show up. It was obvious they were showing up today because all of their crew had on uniforms and were busy shining up the boat all morning. We were hoping for some big celebrity-type people to show up but instead got a perfectly plain looking overweight couple. As they boarded the boat one of the crew had two cool wet hand towels on a silver platter for them to wipe their brow and their hands off on and within about thirty minutes they dropped the lines and left. I also found out yesterday that I have once again failed at repairing my dinghy. I didn’t have a chance to try and track down what area is leaking now but am really looking forward to working on that some more soon. It’s really nice to have an ongoing project like that.

This morning we headed into the marina to pay our bill and collect our passports. Since we aren’t planning on stopping anywhere else in Indonesia we cleared out here. The other cruisers were all clearing out in Batam which is just across from Singapore. They said that it should be much easier to clear out there; but for us we just told the marina that we wanted to clear out and they took care of everything. We never saw an official and yet this morning our passports had our exit stamps and we had our clearance papers.

We managed to get out of our slip without any problems. We were pretty well hemmed in by a big sailboat on one side and a whole line of small powerboats with nasty outboard props sticking out on the other side. Visions of thirty-five foot gel coat scratches danced in our heads. After that we negotiated our way through the channel leading back out to the ocean. As we were leaving through here I was even more impressed with our midnight arrival three weeks earlier. The smallest mistake in this pass and we would have been on a reef.

Once we were out into the clear water we fired up the watermaker. We had been a little nervous about this because our water tanks were pretty low. You could tell by how high the boat was sitting out of the water; it was a good two inches higher. The problem is that the watermaker runs a few gallons through itself before it starts and if it doesn’t start the first time it has to do it again and again until it does start. Fortunately it started up on the second try and we were able to spend the day making water. The marina didn’t have drinking water. If you wanted that you needed to take a taxi to this shop that would sell you water and rent you containers to haul it in. Not very convenient.

The days sail went pretty well. We caught the tide and were flying along in ten knots of wind. In the evening, we got to the northeast tip of the island where we found Indonesian fishing boats lining the horizon. We could also see that there were thousands more on the beaches. Quite a few of them sailed right up alongside of us. They would smile, wave, and take off again.

Right before dark the wind suddenly picked up to thirty knots and we were once again stuck with the screecher out and no way to get it rolled up. We put out the jib to try and block the wind but that didn’t do much. Eventually we decided to furl it the best we could and then release the halyard to drop the whole sail onto the trampolines. It should be easy to yank it back up when we have light winds again.

We had hardly seen any wind since leaving Australia and the forecast for the next four days shows nothing over ten knots, so we were surprised by this little burst. Almost as soon as we got the sail down the wind began to lighten up, but now two hours later it is howling again. We shouldn’t be complaining though as we’ve got over 1200 miles to go.

november 10 2005 : en route
As expected the wind died down overnight and by morning there was none. Ali watched the sun come up and was a little frightened by what she saw. All around us, some close, some far away, were fishing boats. After dark last night we only saw one, and we only saw him by moonlight. So we spent the night sailing in blissful ignorance to how many boats were actually out there. We’re pretty sure that they would be working throughout the night and would make a point of staying out of our way, but then we saw these other things.

There are these floating rafts all over the place. They are about 15 feet long by 10 feet wide and are just log platforms with a few poles made up into a teepee looking structure, some with a little white flag flapping at the top of them. These seem to be what the fishing nets are attached to. We passed pretty close to one and could see at least three large nets flowing off the back of it, presumably attached to the other raft we could see floating about a quarter mile away. We passed a bunch of these as well this morning and they didn’t have anybody anywhere near most of them. So we could quite easily have sailed right into one of these without warning.

Ali woke me up at six o’clock this morning to come up and help her decipher what one fisherman was trying to say. He was waving his arm to try and direct us away from his nets but it was almost impossible to tell which way he was trying to point us. You would think it would be pretty universally understood how to point somebody in a direction, but this guys arm movement had us bewildered. Eventually he took off in his boat and we just followed him in that direction. Once he seemed sure that we wouldn’t do something stupid and run over his nets he circled around and went back to work. Ali said how easy it would of been for us to hit something in the night out here and I tried to convince her that the odds of us running into something out here in the great big ocean were nearly zilch. But after seeing all the crap floating around this morning I’m not so sure I believe myself.

With no wind this morning we also took the opportunity to get the screecher back up. Now hopefully we’ll see a little bit of wind so we can use it again.

november 12 2005 : en route
This is shaping up to be the slowest passage ever for us on Bumfuzzle. We have yet to even make a one hundred mile day and in fact have averaged under 4 knots for the trip so far. That’s slow. Yesterday what little wind there was was right on our nose. Combined with a current of 1.5 to 2 knots against us we were barely moving despite running the engines. We kept expecting the current to change a little bit along with the tide, but after a dropping tide, slack water, and then the rising tide we still couldn’t get the boat going over 3 knots. Eventually I even decided to stop the boat and jumped in to have a look underneath to make sure we weren’t dragging a fishing net or something. We weren’t.

We spent the day once again dodging fishing obstacles. That last picture of the raft with the nets trailing behind it was what the fishermen used near Bali, but since then we have been dodging rafts with no teepee on top. Instead all there is is a tiny little flag made of different colors for the fishermen to be able to identify them as their own. The rafts are virtually impossible to see during the day and are completely impossible at night. At night you are flying blind. Last night during my first watch I was sitting in the cockpit when I suddenly saw a flag go floating by just inches from the side of the boat. I jumped up and braced myself for some sort of impact or at least for the boat to suddenly drag to a stop from catching the nets, but somehow we missed everything.

Ali’s watches were pretty uneventful last night until this morning when a boat began following us. We’ve had a lot of boats cruise really close to us in order to satisfy their curiosity, but this one was different. They were crossing adjacent to us about 100 yards back but then turned straight in line with us and closed to about 50 yards and just continued to follow directly behind us. On the boat Ali could see at least ten men. After a few minutes of that she woke me up to have a look. I agreed it was strange. Since we were sailing very slowly in light winds at the time we decided to start the engines and speed up to see what they would do. Within about a minute of us speeding up they suddenly turned and continued the way they were originally going. I’m sure it was nothing, just seemed weird.

Today things went a little better. Our speed was still ridiculously slow but at least we were able to sail most of the time. I know that in order for us to make it to Malaysia we will need to sail a total of four hundred out of the twelve hundred miles. So far we’ve gotten about 100. If that doesn’t improve soon we’ll need to get more diesel somewhere along the way. Problem is that we are already cleared out of Indonesia. But we’ll worry about that when it comes up.

I know that from watching movies and reading books it sounds as if every day at sea is a battle against mountainous waves and terrible storms, but the reality, at least 95% of the time is much different. Here is an example of a typical day for us on passage.

“A day in the life of Bumfuzzle at sea”

7 – 10 p.m. Ali’s sleeping, I’m on watch staring out into darkness waiting for the inevitable impact of a floating Gilligan’s Island hut and wondering why they don’t put headlights on boats. I’m also listening to Peter Mayle’s book A Year in Provence on the iPod and decided there is nothing more lame than listening to a Frenchman talk about French food, except maybe listening to an American talk about American food.

10 – 1 a.m. Ali’s watch. She spent her watch reading, writing emails, and sticking her head outside every five minutes to make sure we weren’t going to run over any fishing boats. Right at the end of her watch the wind finally picked up enough for us to put up the screecher sail.

1 – 4 a.m. My watch again. This time I emptied the 3 new diesel containers into the gas tank, wrote a couple of emails, played a little poker on the computer, and sat outside anxiously awaiting the end of a very boring book and looking forward to going back to bed.

4 – 8 a.m. Ali’s watch. More reading and writing emails. Then waking me up at 6 to keep an eye on the mystery boat. I went back to bed and she downloaded and read new email.

8:30 a.m. Ali goes back to bed while I try to wake up. Have an apple, a glass of water, and read email. Then sit outside and weave my way through the fishing nets scattered all over the place. At least it is still cool enough to sit outside.

10 a.m. Ali’s up and it’s time for a snack. Some pretzels and a can of pop. We both lay on the couch reading and taking turns having a look outside every few minutes.

11:30 a.m. We go outside and do our exercise routine of 200 sit-ups and 200 push-ups each.

12:00 p.m. Time for a snack again. How about some more pretzels and a hunk of spicy Mexican sausage? Mmmmm. Funny thing is that we really enjoy it and start to talk about how we should have bought like 4 more of the sausages and at least a couple more bags of pretzels. Then we realize we might be getting delirious when we start discussing the merits of pretzels and where they rank in the snack food hall of fame. Oh by the way, I was joking about the exercise routine. Are you kidding me? It is so hot that we sweat just turning the page of our book. Instead we continue lying around and trying not to do anything but survive the heat.

1:15 – 1:18 p.m. Read SAIL magazine. Find that there is nothing but articles about racing and safety. Boring. Now I remember why we didn’t renew our subscriptions to a single sailing magazine.

2:00 p.m. Frustrated with the state of the sailing magazine industry I sit down at the computer and bang out an article. I proof read it and realize that if I submitted it I would just be contributing even more to the dullness that is the sailing magazine. Delete article. Ali is sweating and staring blankly at the ceiling. I debate whether or not to give her our last can of Sweat, but decide it is too early on in the trip.

2:15 p.m. The wind is gone again. We roll up the screecher.

3 – 4 p.m. Now we are getting excited. This is the time of day when the heat has topped out and it starts to gradually cool down. We sit outside in the shade and wait, and wait, and wait. The wind is back, but barely. We put the screecher out again.

4 p.m. Dinner time. Ali’s not feeling so good so I don’t get a full on gourmet meal. It’s all right though, it’s probably best not to have chili dogs three nights in a row. Instead tonight it’s a can of soup and some bread. Delicious. Best of all is the fact that the whole meal took five minutes to make and only made one pot dirty. To us, those two things are the basis of a good meal. Describing even that simple meal would have taken Peter Mayle six pages.

4:15 p.m. The wind disappears, bring the screecher back in.

4:30 p.m. It is finally cool enough to shower. It’s a fine line because if you shower too early you will be wallowing in your own sweat again and all will be lost. But you can’t wait too long because you are so excited to be clean and refreshed.

5:30 p.m. We are motoring and the sea is smooth. A perfect combination for a little television. We watch an episode of Survivor that Katy brought to Darwin for us. We also eat some weird cookies from Holland. They’re pretty good, but I think they are called biscuits over there and are supposed to be eaten with tea.

6:30 p.m. Back outside for the best half hour of the day. It’s cool outside and we watch another beautiful sunset. We have the discussion about how many days we’ve been at sea and how many more are left until we get where we’re going. Usually this conversation doesn’t come up until after the midway point of the trip but this time we’ve only made it a third of the way. Uh-oh.

7:00 p.m. Ali leaves me for 3 hours of blissful sleep and I sit typing this.Repeat

That’s it. That’s our day at sea. Obviously things are a little different when there are strong winds, but not much. In fact this day was probably more active than most since there is so much stuff out on the water to be watching out for. On a normal passage you can easily go twenty minutes between looking around. Here in Indonesian waters we’ve had to be much more alert. So anyway, that is a very typical day for us out here as we slowly make our way from one great place to the next.

It always makes us laugh when people that haven’t been out here like this tell us how much they are going to enjoy the solitude when they do go sailing, and are going to teach themselves Spanish and how to play the guitar and how to cook French pastries. Maybe we’re just weird, but on passages we just can’t get motivated to do much of anything. And we really find it hard to believe that people spend all day out here preparing and cooking meals. That’s what all the cruising books will tell you. We just can’t imagine it. For one thing we just don’t have much of an appetite and for another, who has the energy?

november 15 2005 : en route
I just wrote an entire paragraph about the last three days but after reading it through I realized that it can all be summed up in one sentence; there is nothing going on out here. That’s really all that needs to be said, but I’ll say more anyway. There is little to no wind, flat seas, very few ships or fishing boats, no more of those fishing net structures, a couple of dolphins who have managed to survive all the fishing nets, a few disgusting yellow sea snakes, a ton of broken up pieces of styrofoam, and that is it. It’s not all bad though, at night when we are sailing along at a super slow three knots with no waves slapping against the boat we sleep like babies. Staying awake during our watches is the hard part.

november 18 2005 : en route
We continue to move along at a blistering pace, with an average speed now of close to 3.75 knots. Today we were lying out in the sun, motoring headlong into a two knot current, when Ali suddenly said, “We can’t even say we’re sailing around the world. We’re just going around the world on a boat.” Meaning that we never seem to sail, we are always motoring. My advice to anybody going out to “sail” around the world would be to carry at least twice as much diesel as they think necessary. And the upgraded larger engines probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Her comment got me to thinking about when I was planning our first big crossing, from the Bahamas to Panama. I calculated the mileage and then figured out how long it would take at an average speed of five, six, or seven knots. At the time I thought that five knots would be the absolute slowest speed that we could average. Now, after a whole lot of passages, I realize that when they are over three days we have only averaged better than five knots twice. Now when I calculate how long a passage is going to take I use four knots as our average; and even that seems to be a reach most of the time.

The last few days have been truly uneventful. We did manage to sail for a couple of days, albeit extremely slowly in very light winds. But it was enough that I began to think that we were within motoring range of our destination, which was a good thing because the wind has abandoned us again the last couple of days.

Yesterday while motoring between a couple of islands, we decided to pull over for the afternoon. Nice thing out here is that you can anchor pretty much anywhere because it is so shallow. We dropped the anchor about two miles out from land in forty feet of water and got some much needed rest. Even on an easy passage like this we find ourselves exhausted after a few days and it feels really good to not have to worry about anything for a few hours. We thought for sure that we’d be visited by fishermen at some point during the day but nobody ever came anywhere near us. Surprisingly to me, other than the occasional holler and wave, we don’t seem to arouse much interest from the small fishing boats.

Around seven o’clock the tide had turned and the current let up, so we hauled in the anchor and headed out again. We’ve had some really nice night watches lately with a full moon and cooler temps. In fact last night was the first time I’ve put a shirt on since we left Bali over a week ago. Not even weather like this will bring us any wind. We couldn’t even manage to get rained on. I don’t think we’ve even seen a whitecap in a week.

Right now we are motoring through an area for which our cruising guide says, “Recent news suggests avoiding Selat Bangka, especially at night.” And that’s all it says. It doesn’t say what that recent news was, or why we are supposed to avoid this particular area. It seems that no matter what, you just can’t avoid the pirate threats. We’ve only got 100 miles to go until the infamous Malacca Straits; home of Blackbeard and Captain Hook I think. But I’m not sure, I’m not really up on my pirates.

november 20 2005 : en route
This is turning in to one monster of a long passage. Due mainly to the ferocious currents running every which way except with us. Shortly after writing the last log and making a comment that we couldn’t even get rained on and hadn’t seen any whitecaps we got nailed by a big storm. The sky off to our west was really dark and Ali mentioned it looked like we were going to get rain. I said, “Nah, the wind is coming from the east, that should be moving away from us.” Within a half hour the clouds were on top of us. The lower layer of clouds looked like they were right on the water and were clearly rolling over and over themselves as they approached us. We closed up the hatches, rolled up the jib, and made sure everything else was good and secure because we could tell we were about to get blasted. Then about 100 yards away you could see the waves appear magically out of the calm water, and seconds later could feel the blast as the wind went from the east at 10 knots to the west at 25.

That turned out to be as bad as it got though and within a few minutes I was rolling out the sails and trying to watch for ships while having rain absolutely dumped on me. Ali assumed a position inside where she could stay nice and dry. While I was standing in the rain at the wheel we had one of our little birds come join us. He flew right under the bimini and landed 18 inches in front of my face. He then moved over into the cockpit and laid himself out flat. We put a jib line out next to him and a little later he made himself a little nest in there. At first light, as always, he gave a little tweet and flew off with his friend who had taken up a much less desirable position at the front of the boat. The next day we actually had decent sailing weather for a few hours and sat outside getting sunburned and enjoying the cooler temps that we’ve had the past couple of days.

Gradually the wind died and we were back to motoring. Throughout the night our speed continued to plummet until at two a.m. we were only moving at one knot. I was searching the charts for some solution, but we were 10 miles from land and at least six miles from anything under 40 feet. But seeing as the seas were pretty calm, there hadn’t been much shipping traffic, and the water was only 85 feet deep I decided to wake Ali up and drop the anchor. It was strange to be anchored so far out in the sea with nothing protecting us. Even stranger was that it felt like we were anchored in the middle of a raging river. The current was about 3.5 knots and kept the boat bucking against the anchor chain the rest of the night. We continued our watches to make sure that we weren’t run down by a ship while we slept and by seven the current had let up quite a bit so we took off again. Oh yeah, we had also sailed over the equator two miles earlier, so we are now back in the northern hemisphere where we will stay for the rest of the trip.

This afternoon it was once again calm and we were motoring along. I was down below trying to sleep and Ali was outside trying to avoid all the crap in the water when I suddenly felt a vibration in the engine. I went upstairs and found Ali looking over the side of the boat. We shut down the engine and she said that there had just been a long line of garbage that she couldn’t avoid. We assumed that we had snagged something in the prop. I put on my goggles and stuck my head in the water but couldn’t see a thing. The water here is the color of coffee with milk. We were only about four hours from where we had decided to anchor for the night so we decided to leave it until we got there, and just use the other engine in the meantime.

That was going well enough until about an hour away from our anchorage the current kicked back in and we really needed the other engine in order to get us there. So we stopped the boat and I jumped in. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face, so I had to just feel my way around the bottom of the boat. I found the prop and grabbed hold of a big plastic bag wrapped up around it. Fortunately it hadn’t gotten too tangled up and I was able to quickly pull it free and get us back underway. Just as we were approaching our anchorage for the night the skies opened up again to make sure that we were thoroughly soaked during the anchoring process. Ali didn’t get to avoid the rain this time.

november 21 2005 : en route
After anchoring last night we settled in had dinner, did dishes, and work around the boat. Then at 7:30, just before dark, we had a boat come puttering up alongside of us. I went outside to say hello and found three guys on a wooden fishing boat hanging on to the side of our boat. I smiled and tried to make conversation but they basically acted as if I wasn’t there, wouldn’t make eye contact and just tried to look around the boat. Eventually they moved towards the back of our boat where they could get a good look in the back door. They sat staring and talking amongst themselves for what felt like forever while I smiled and tried to act friendly. They continued to ignore me and then one of them climbed onto our back transom and began walking towards the cockpit. Still trying to act nice I made hand gestures in front of him indicating I wanted him off the boat. Ali also stepped out in the cockpit looking mad. He turned and talked with one of the other guys and then climbed back onto his boat. Without a wave or saying a word they motored slowly around the boat and headed towards shore.

It was a weird experience and we didn’t feel like it was at all friendly or even just locals being curious. It felt a lot more like we were being scoped out. We decided that there was no way we would be able to get a good nights sleep there and should just get moving again. Within minutes we had the anchor up and were on our way again. The wind was in our favor for a change and we zipped along at 7 knots for a couple of hours.

Around 11:30 the wind gave up on us and the current also set against us so we decided once again to pull into shallow water and anchor. Fortunately this time nothing strange happened and we were able to get a few hours of much needed rest. By six the current had spun around and we were moving again. Almost as soon as we raised the anchor it began to pour. It didn’t let up at all the rest of the morning while we dodged between these huge platforms and little fishing boats. A few hours later we were stopped dead in our tracks by the current again. We are cutting things very close with the diesel again, so whenever our speed drops down to two knots we have to stop and wait it out.

We anchored for a few hours and the rain finally stopped. However the wind has started to pick up. Anchoring is getting pretty uncomfortable so we decide to get started even though the current was still against us. Within about half an hour the wind is up to 25 knots and the waves are getting really big. We were beating into this and barely making any progress for about an hour before we finally decided we had to figure out a plan B. I had a look at the charts and found an island about ten miles away that we could hide behind for the night. The only problem with this place was that it would take us right next to the main shipping channel and now instead of crossing the Malacca Strait up north near Port Klang we would have to cross to the south right around the corner from Singapore and the hub of all of the shipping traffic.

We altered course and started towards the island. A half an hour later Ali came outside and said the computer was dead. It had been giving us warning signs lately but now it had officially packed it in. In two years it has died on us twice. Guess it doesn’t like the boat life. Of course, either do we at this point of the passage. We get out the old backup computer and get to work on it. The new C-Map charts still needed to be loaded, along with their new software, so along with rebooting a bunch of times it takes nearly an hour to get things up and running again. By which time we are right in front of land and really counting on the charts coming up. We manage to motor through the pass between the islands and get ourselves anchored. There is a break in the islands that lets a lot of swell through, so it’s not exactly ideal, but as protection from this crappy weather it does the trick. Ali makes dinner and I work on all three computers. I’m trying to revive computer one, plotting a new course on computer two, and trying to get all the charting software to work as a new backup on computer three. Finally we collapse into bed after what feels like a very long day tacked onto the end of a very long passage.

One thing we’ve noticed while sailing along the Indonesian coast is that our charts show all sorts of different navigational aids but in actuality there are none at all. I don’t know if they get stolen or what, but there is not a single green or red beacon to be found.

november 22 2005 : en route
What a day. We managed a whopping twenty-four miles. This morning we woke up to the fourth day in a row of pure ugliness. The sky has been a solid dark gray sheet that sits on top of the murky brown water. After a few hours of waiting for the weather to clear we gave up and decided we’d go cross the Malacca Strait, the busiest shipping channel in the world. Why not, we had nothing else to do.

We motored out from behind our little island and found conditions just about as bad as the day before. We motorsailed into the wind for a couple of hours until it was time to make our turn and cross the shipping lanes. There was a pretty steady stream of ships going in each direction but we found an opening and sailed into it. We just made it through the southbound traffic before the biggest container ship we’ve ever seen charged past us.

In between the lanes there is a “median” a couple of hundred yards wide. This area was covered with local fishing boats with their scattering of nets all over the place. Negotiating the nets was more of a hazard than the ships. We waited in the middle while three ships cruised by, and then finished the last couple of miles without incident. Definitely not something we’d like to do at night, but it wasn’t bad during the day when we could see clearly just how far away the ships were. We were happy for the well charted shipping lanes and for the fact that the ships actually stay in between them.

Once on the other side we were basically out of sailing room and with the strong headwind we were pretty well screwed as far as getting anywhere the rest of the day. Fortunately there was an island nearby which we could tuck in behind, and that’s where we are now after our twenty-four mile day. We are really in about the worst state of mind that we have ever been in on this trip. Even allowing for a very slow passage, my worst case scenario for this passage was twelve days. Now fourteen days in we are still a minimum of two days away. All of that to cover just 1200 miles. Brutal. We should have bought a speedboat.

november 24 2005 : en route
70 miles to go. Looks like we might make it after all. Although it is going to be a close call. Our diesel situation is dire, but by my calculations we should make it with three gallons remaining out of the 115 we left with.

We woke up yesterday morning still anchored behind a small island that wasn’t giving us any protection any more and wouldn’t offer us any on the other side either. The waves were probably around five feet and we were bucking pretty wildly and uncomfortably. So finally we decided to just go for it and hope for the best. The wind would be right at the angle limit of where we could use it to motorsail so that’s what we did, with the shipping lanes running right along our left side and the shallow mud flats of Malaysia on our right. After a few hours the wind and waves started to lighten up a bit. For a while we almost thought the sun would peak through the clouds, but after a few seconds, and me belting out a few lines from everybody’s favorite John Denver song, it tucked back in behind the clouds never to be seen again.

In the afternoon Ali called me down to the nav station and said she thought we had a problem. The computer wasn’t charging. The regular charting computer is the only one we have a DC (cigarette lighter) plug for, so the other computers need to run off the inverters AC power. The inverter was on, but after quickly testing a few of the outlets we realized that none of them were working. The computer meanwhile was flashing the low battery alarm so I quickly copied down the waypoints off of the chart that we would need to get us to our destination and keep us from running into any islands. We’d still be able to use these along with the GPS (which runs on DC power) to figure out where we were going. After that was done we took a look at the inverter. It looked to be working fine. The inverter has two outlets directly on it and I wanted to plug something in to those to determine if it was working or not. Of course, the battery charger had been mounted too close to the outlets to get a plug into it, so I first had to remove the charger. With that off we plugged in an extension cord and ran it to the computer. It worked. So that was good news.

Now we just had to figure out why the outlets weren’t working. I was mulling that problem over when Ali asked, “Is the Earth Leakage breaker popped?” Oh yeah, this happened to us before, back when we were still in Florida and I dropped a power cord in the water. We checked the breaker and sure enough it had popped. We flicked it back on and we were fixed. A few minutes later though the breaker had popped again. Then Ali mentioned that earlier that morning there had been water on the counter above the couch. It had been raining so hard for so many days that she hadn’t given too much thought to a little water inside the boat. One thing our boat is not, is waterproof. Well there was an outlet near where that water had been so we flicked the switch for that outlet off. After that we didn’t have a problem. Of course we’ll have to figure out where that leak is and do a better job of sealing that wiring so it doesn’t short out again, but for now we were just happy to still have our computer and our charts.

Throughout the night the weather continued to calm and by two a.m. we could even see a few stars and the moon for the first time in about a week. This morning we woke up and the weather had magically transformed to what it was before all this rain came, 95 degrees, sunny, and calm. Now hopefully it holds out one more night and allow us to limp into Port Klang, tired and nearly dried out.

And I guess today is Thanksgiving. There is a holiday that doesn’t translate very well around the world. Don’t think there will be any turkey and stuffing onboard Bum tonight. Can probably forget about watching football as well. The fridge is officially empty. We’re out of bread, fruit, vegetables, and meat. That doesn’t leave a whole lot to work with for a Thanksgiving feast does it? I think we’ll have soup and crackers for dinner. If the soup has chicken in it we can pretend like it is leftover turkey made into soup. Yeah, that should work.

november 25 2005 : port klang, malaysia
At last! Wow was that a long passage. Sixteen days to cover just 1200 miles. That’s got to be some sort of record. There were a few times where I really felt like slamming my head into a wall I was going so crazy. Ali did pretty well with it all since she had gotten all of her frustration out of her system after only about six days on the boat. The weather on the passage wasn’t great, but the currents were the real killers. We just could not ever seem to make the boat go over three knots. The currents just didn’t seem to be related to the tides at all. But hey, it’s over, and now we’re only about a three day sail away from Thailand.

So last night, after a delicious Thanksgiving feast consisting of steak, bacon, potatoes and herbs all delicately prepared and canned by Campbell’s, the wind kicked in again. It seemed to know that we were only 12 hours away and running dangerously low on fuel. Then around 11 the rains came. What fun. By morning though, we had reached the entrance to Port Klang and started the ten mile motor inland to the marina. This is a huge shipping port and not very attractive, but we knew that the marina was supposed to be very nice and a safe place to leave the boat while we travel to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore

After getting in we set out to visit the different offices around town to get cleared in. It all went really smoothly until the Port Clearance office wanted a 6 ringitt fee (about a buck fifty). Even though they know you just arrived in their country they stare at you like they are shocked that you don’t have a pocketful of ringitts. A local guy who was sitting nearby actually offered us a 10 ringitt note, but we thanked him for the offer and asked where an ATM was instead. So we walked farther into town searching for an ATM.

We finally found a bank but couldn’t get our card to work so we just went inside figuring we could just get a cash advance on our VISA. Within minutes we had a half dozen employees on the phone with the home office. After about fifteen minutes they brought our card over and sorrowfully told us they could not do it, but that we should go to the bank next door and use their ATM instead. Well, there’s an idea. So we got the cash and walked back to the Port Clearance office to pay our fee. We handed over a 50 ringitt note (which is roughly equivalent to our $10 bill) and the guy looked at it like we had just given him a $100 bill. Apparently he would have preferred that we go find cash and exact change. He was actually really a nice guy but we were completely exhausted and just wanted to get back to the marina for some lunch and a beer. Somehow he found us change, and after filling out a receipt, longhand, in triplicate, we were cleared in and free to roam about the country.

Back at the marina we ordered three Malaysian meals without really having a clear idea what they were. Two were really good and one was marginal. The local beer here is Carlsberg, which really doesn’t have a very exotic sound to it does it? It cost 300% more than Indonesia which was a bit of a shock, but we think those might just be our fancy marina’s pricing. We’ll see when we get away from here for a few days. The plan at the moment is to spend the weekend here at the marina getting the boat ready to go for the next passage, then taking off inland for Kuala Lumpur on Monday with the hope of finding a place to repair our computer, then take a train down to Singapore for a couple of nights before swinging back through KL on the way to the boat. After lunch we had a swim in the huge pool here at the marina and then sat inside and used the free wireless internet for a while.

november 27 2005 : port klang
Haven’t done much besides boat work the last two days. Washing the boat was the first project and was a lot of work. I don’t know what is in the air the last few hundred miles but every time it rained we got a thicker and thicker coat of black soot on the boat which took some serious scrubbing to get off. Then there was the stains from the water which have turned half the boat brown. I’ve realized that once the dirty water is washed off the sun bleaches the boat back to white. We also changed the engine oil again since we ran the engines so long and hard on this last passage. We filled up the diesel, Ali gave the inside of the boat a good cleaning, installed new winch holders, and tried to resecure our kitchen sink faucet which just plopped off the other day. It never sounds like a lot of work when I type it, but seriously that is like two hard days worth of work.

This afternoon we decided to walk into downtown Klang. Turns out that was a big waste of time. There is absolutely nothing in Klang worth expending the energy for. It’s basically a main road with a lot of run down shops along it. And not interesting shops, more like a hardware store containing 2 hammers and 3 buckets, or a hair salon with a picture of a guy who looked just like Billy Ray Cyrus in the window. I think the mullet is going to be the next big thing in Malaysia. Then in the midst of all these great shops we were suddenly faced with a huge dilemma. Standing side by side were a Macca’s and a Pizza Hut. We hadn’t been eating all that great lately so decided we’d better fatten ourselves up with a three course meal at Macca’s. Anyway, Port Klang is a pretty boring and uninspiring place so we’re off tomorrow in search of some stimulation in the big cities of KL and Singapore.

november 28 2005 : kuala lumpur, malaysia
This morning we took the train into Kuala Lumpur. Getting around in Malaysia is pretty simple because everything is written in both Malaysian and English. In fact English is more prevalent here, and most people speak it pretty good. The train ride was about an hour long and dropped us off right in the middle of KL. We then took a cab to a hotel we had checked out on the internet. Once we dropped off our baggage we set out for the HP Tower to have our computer fixed.

We took a cab who we later found out charged us $10 too much, and dropped us off at the wrong address. While we were wandering around I tripped over one of those two inch steps leading into a building and broke my flip-flop. Now wandering around barefoot we found a store and bought a roll of tape to fix it with. Then flagged down another cab who drove us another mile to the HP offices. After about a half an hour wait at the technical support office we were called up to drop off our patient. They told us it would take five working days to get it back, which wasn’t going to work for us, so we ended up paying $95 ringitt ($25 USD) to give us same day service. Once that was done we took a taxi back into the city and had him drop us off at a shopping mall to buy me a new pair of shoes.

The mall was huge and was located at the base of the Petronas Towers, which were until very recently the world’s tallest buildings. We found a new pair of flip-flops for me but were surprised again by the weird prices here in Malaysia. The shoes only cost about $5 less than our hotel room which is a pretty nice place. Then on the way out of the mall we were walking along and saw a Chili’s Bar and Grill with a sign out front mentioning it was happy hour. We sidled up to the bar and ordered a couple of beers, then had a look at the menu. That’s when we noticed that our draft beer cost $20 ringitt ($5.25 USD); a huge cheeseburger with everything and french fries only cost $18 ringitt. Prices just don’t seem to be in proper relation to anything around here.

After that we walked around the park that surrounds the buildings. It’s really a beautiful place, with fountains, walking paths, and even a huge public swimming pool with waterfalls. And all in the shadows of the two towers.

Back at the hotel we had a voicemail that made me feel physically ill. Our hard drive was gone. They couldn’t recover anything from our computer. There are certain things that we have always been good about backing up, such as the website and our pictures. But other things we just hadn’t done. We had all our charts and programs backed up on our other computers, but the file that recorded our track is gone. We lost our chart record of our entire trip. We also lost a file that we had kept track of all sorts of miscellaneous Bumfuzzle stuff on. Things like our maintenance log, our anchorages list, and our trip log that we recorded every 12 hours while we were on passages. Basically every thing that we had recorded regarding our trip so far was lost. We also lost our calendar program where we had all our important dates and addresses.

Let’s see, what else? Recently I had deleted all of our music files off our oldest computer in order to free up some disc space, leaving all 3000 songs solely on this computer. Hadn’t bothered to back those up yet. They are still on the iPod, but I have no idea if it is possible to reverse them off of there and back onto the computer. We also had a stack of emails that we hadn’t replied to yet, so if you emailed us around November 21st and haven’t heard back from us please send them again.

So all in all not one of our better days. Hopefully things turn around tomorrow and we’ll get out to do some sightseeing.

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