A weekend sailing

It was Friday morning and we were anchored off an oil terminal without much of a view or anything planned. The weather forecast promised a possibilty of wind, a current that would sometimes help us along and the ever present risk of thunder showers so a good forecast for Malaysia.

We lifted the anchor and immediately put up the sails and were off sailing north west along the Malacca Straits. We enjoyed a cup of coffee in the cockpit while hand steering in the right direction. The Straits are about 30 miles wide here and there is no land to hit to the west until Indonesia. Life would be great if only there wasn’t a shipping motorway right down the middle of the straits that limits you to a four mile strip between the motorway and Malaysia. The four mile strip is where you try to sail and avoid the fishing boats, the tugs pulling massive barges and the occasional fishing net.

Just like every day, the sun went down at seven and things got more exciting. Then you are trying to avoid all the stuff by looking at different colored lights and working out what you are seeing. A red light should be a ships left side but can also be a fishing boat who got red lights cheap. A green light is a ships right side but sometimes they are cheap as well. A fast moving yellow flashing light could be a ferry but a slow moving one could be on fishing buoys. Tugs have three white lights above each other but often no lights on the barges they are towing or flashing christmas tree lights. A white light is a ship at anchor or a house on the near by shore or a fishing buoy.

Ideally we maintain a constant course and speed so that other vessels know what we are doing and can plan to avoid us. With the current pushing one way and the wind gusting another, we are sometimes the least reliable boat out there so have to be even more careful to try and keep out of the way of others.

Despite all the above challenges, we still managed to cook and enjoy a tasty evening meal and sleep on and off while the other one kept watch. We sailed to just before the entrance to the Klang River and would have arrived before dawn if it hadn’t have been for the storm. The first warning is always the approaching lightning and then when the black sky gets even blacker and the stars start to go out. We heeded the warning and took all the sail away except a tiny bit of the jib. Minutes later the howling wind hit us and drove large waves towards us. The rain was very cold so it was nice when a wave swamped the cockpit with warm seawater.

In such situations we have a standard plan. I take over the steering from our windvane while Heidi closes everything up and starts serious navigating. We were in the middle of an anchor field so there were ships everywhere. Using the AIS system Heidi could filter out all the anchored vessels and warn me which ones were moving and which way. She also kept us away from land and the few wrecks dotted around. She also supplied chocolate brain food. It was impossible to make any progress upwind so we just tried to remain heading in to the wind and lose as little of our previous progress as possible. The storm lasted nearly two hours and by the end we had lost two miles. As the storm moved on, the wind stopped and we motored back to the river and anchored around a bend to be better sheltered from the next storm. Unsurprisingly we slept a lot on Saturday.

On Sunday we were once again functioning humans so we sailed back down the river with the tide and turned in to the main channel. We were pleasently surprised to find that the current and the wind were both going our way. We sailed along the edge of the shipping channel and past what must be one of the biggest container terminals in the world. There are ships, tugs and pilot boats everywhere and rows of monster cranes unloading and loading ships. From our side of the channel, across the river it looked like the cranes were stacking lego blocks but each „block“ was a full size cargo container that could hold a folded up house. Amazing!

The current was (strangely) with us all afternoon so we finally reached the tiny islands of Angsa and Selatan which are some five miles from the mainland. The larger island has a lighthouse on top and we are anchored behind it and enjoying a relaxing Sunday evening after an exciting weekend of sailing.

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