Last of California Visit

DANGA BAY, MALAYSIA 01' 23 N 103' 43E

After another bit of a lay off I'm back with the final edition of our trip to California. so for those that know me well where would you expect the final photos to show but at least at one time
my other home. So here is a little bit of home and some of those that also reside there.

Looks to be a quiet morning

They're sorry to be open but we're not

A dog's life, why can't I join in

Local Color

Ray in back, Mike, Anna, and Walkie

Kenny and Gary

Bartender's Pat the mixologist and Steve

Now here is real local color Kathy and Chris

Scotty and ???????

Mikey
So there we have a short visit to Blackies by the Sea. As you would expect I did manage several trips but alas was without the camera or just to busy visiting with the local color.

A short three weeks after my new hip the doctor released me to fly back to the boat. It's now been a little over three months and I definitely feel and act like a new person. Kathy says I am happy again.

We know that we missed some of you back in California but we truly enjoyed seeing most of our friends and relatives.

Since getting back to the boat it has been WORK WORK WORK! That will be the subject of the next edition.

TRIP TO CALIF. THE UNPLANNED EVENT

Danga Bay





As you faithful readers know it had been three years since our last visit to the land of plenty and we had lots of things planned to do. One was a doctors visit and check-up for Jerry's hip that was replaced back in the dark ages of 1998. Looking at the x-ray the doctor said everything looked fine BUT what about this left one. So I admitted to the lack of mobility and pain that I now had in the left hip, the doctor said "I can fix that". A decision was made and eight days later I went back under the knife.





They now use a more frontal approach and super glued the incision.

Not long after surgery and a visit from Kathy. I'm a happy camper even without the morphine that I got last time.

Six hours post op and they have me up and walking with the carrot of being able to be discharged the next day.
Out of the hospital and back at Debbie Jo's house for recovery. Notice the nice socks!! As I had had similar surgery 13 years ago I could really tell a great difference in technique. Last time it was four days in the hospital, this time only 30 hours. In one week I was at the same stage that it took almost a month to reach. So now almost 8 weeks later I'm back on the boat in Malaysia and busy with all the various projects that are required.

As I said earlier it had been three years sinc our visit to the land of plenty and we felt that it was our duty to help the sagging economy. We had a list of items from boat parts to linens and whatever might fall in between.

Just the begining of the things to come.

Three of our clocks had failed over the years but thanks to a lifetime warrenty were replaced.



More Stuff








I hate to think of the dollar amount of what was brought back to the boat or the influence on the waterline as on returning I had two fifty pound bags though out done by Kathy and her three fifty pounders plus a carry on. Then of course we just received another box that was mailed. The upside is we now have plenty to keep us busy for awhile.

TRIP TO CALIF. PART 2

DANGA BAY 01' 23N 103' 43E


The big event number 2 for our trip to California a visit to Jacob, grandson number 1 and for the arrival of his two brothers.


Jake is just turning three


One short week after our arrival the twins came into this world seven weeks premature. Both Jackson and Jonathon along with mom Lori came through the ordeal just fine. Of course "the boyz" had to stay in the hospital for about a week but were soon able to join the rest of the family at home in Huntington Beach

Jonathan

Jackson

As you can see now about 9 weeks in this big world they are doing great. That's all for this morning as it's time to return to the never ending list of boat projects.

TRIP TO CAILIF. PART 1

DANGA BAY 01'23N 103'43E

Allright Boys, Girls and Blog readers, I realize that I have been quite lazy in the updating of our blog but you know everyone can use a break now and then. So when last we left off Kathy and I were returning for a vist to California. Our first in three years. We had two big events planned, three if you would count a few trips to "Blackies by the Sea". As "cruiser" plans are laid in Jell-o another major event came into play. First our trip home. We left Danga Bay and made our way via taxi to a hotel in Singapore in preperation for our two long flights back to California. The first Singapore to Tokyo - seven hours, next on to L.A. - fourteen hours. Now the bonus in flying to the east and across the international dateline is with twenty-one hours of flying and two layover hours in Tokyo we arrived on the same day we departed and only two hours after taking off the first time. Of course the trip back west would be something else.


Kathy managed to spend her time watching movies

Jerry spent most of his time watching the track line of our progress across the globe, I also managed to read a bit. Neither of us slept much but as you see below Kathy looks pretty chipper as we await our ride from LAX

Kathy's girlfriend Debbie Jo picked us up and transported us to her house where we spent part of our time in So Cal.

Now our first scheduled event was the 60th wedding anniversery party for Kathy's parents Ralph and Sally. Wow 60 years!!!

Here's a pre party look with Sally on the left then youngest daughter Kim, her husband Mike then Ralph and Debbie Jo. Though their anniversery we some how did not get a photo of the happy couple.

Sally is quite the artist and has just finished re-tiling the pool!

Ralph and grandaughter Leslie enjoying margaritas at the fiesta.

The three daughters- Karen, Kim and Kathy

This does it for planned event number one and my first posting for awhile.

Malaysia, Boat Projects

DANGA BAY 01'23N 103'43E

Our first project here has been to get our newly aquired air conditioner mounted and get the interior of the boat cooled off. Now boats are not designed for window mounted units so a bit of fabricating had to be done. After placing the unit in the main saloon hatch we then had to make a cover to keep the rain out.

As ours is a U.S. boat our shore power wiring is for 110 volts not the 240 of the rest of the world.
I'm sure this setup does not meet any code but it works. One drawback to being able to keep the interior temperature down at a "cool" 84 degrees is we tend to turn into moles and not venture outdoors.

Once the air was working it was no problem keeping Kathy happy as she worked on her sewing projects. As with all the other jobs we never seem to truly finish. You just make repairs to things you made several years ago or find something new to construct.

There may not be a lot of floor space but we manage. On new construction I do the design and Kathy the stitching. Here she is working on the cover to seal the air conditioner to the main hatch.

Of course there are outside jobs that need to be taken care of too. Several years ago we learned that by painting our exterior canves sunshades with a latex type house paint we could extend there life. This has been my recent job. Due to the outside temps being in the mid 90's, yesterday I suffered a bit of heat stroke; today I started at 0700 and quit the outdoor stuff at 1000. This will have to be my routine when I come back from the states and continue on the never ending list of jobs.

As you can see here as we enjoy margarita's on friends John and Jan's boat in Langkawi before heading down to Danga Bay our life is not all work.

We are now in countdown mode, 5 more days, for our trip back to Southern California. It's been 3 years since our last visit to family and friends. I'll attempt to keep the blog updated from there but for a while there will be no sea stories.

Malaysia

DANGA BAY MARINA 01'23N 103'43E

After surviving our close encounter with the dredge ship we were ready to be off again. The next segment of our journey took us to an anchorage just north of the city of Port Dickson. An uneventful day, fine with us.

Monday the 18th a day of about 46 miles was intended, until I started trying to figure fuel consumption as we were motoring more than we had hoped. So only 10 miles away was Admiral Marina where we could get fuel. Better to stop then run out.


Here at Admiral Marina the gate guard is quite formal. We purchased fuel at $3.50 U.S. per gallon and were then ready to head off again the next morning.

The last three days of our journey were again adjacent to the busy shipping lanes of the Melacca Straits. The big ships do keep to their own lanes but it is amazing to view the numbers of them as they move along. Anytime you look in that direction you see 10 to 15 hurrying on their way.

Nearing Singapore there are 100's of these monsters anchored , doing maintenance and waiting to load cargo. At the bottom of the brighter red stripe is a crewman of a hanging scaffolding with paint brush in hand.

We arrived in the marina here in Danga bay in the city of Johor Bahru on the afternoon of the 20th. Marina check in is easy and and we even managed to be in the same slip that we occupied when here 5 months ago. One great advantage to this marina is there is no charge for moorage, yes FREE. We're not sure why but it's fine by us.

We have till the 2nd of May to get some things done and the boat ready to be left on it's own while we travel back to the states.

One of the first things done was a new hairdo for yours truly. The Mr. Clean look.

As it's warm here and we have dock power we decided to splurge and buy an air conditioner. We managed to find a used one for $400 RM or $130 U.S. now to figure how to mount it. Where day temps are in the low to mid 90's it will make doing interior projects nice.

Most of the jobs to be done now are small ones to get ready for our states trip, the big ones will be put off until my return the end of May.

MALAYSIA

Admiral Marina, 02'28 N 101'50 E Since our last update we have continued on our way down the coast of Malaysia, navigating thru the Melacca Straits. We are heading back to Danga Bay Marina in Johor Bahru just across the river from Singapore. Prior to leaving Langkawi which is a 'duty free shopping port" we took advantage and did some provisioning. Having bought new batteries for the boat along with other such necessities we stocked up on some liquid refreshment. Now you must realize a case of beer in Langkawi is about $8 US. Once we get to Johor Bahru it's $38US for that same case. So we saved $900US on this stockpile.

As we move down the west coast of Malaysia we again had the pleasure of dealing with lots of shipping traffic.

Our plan had us only moving during daylight hours. There are just to many fishing boats plying the waters during the night and most without any sort of lights. Even during the day they want to come right along side just to look and wave hi.

Our first stop was in Penang. On our way up to Thailand we had left off two of our spare anchors to be re-galvanized. We actually got to sail almost the entire 60 miles from Langkawi. As we arrived over a weekend it was Monday the 11th before we got our anchors so we only moved a short distance to the most southern point of Penang island. This at least got us through the area where they are constructing a new bridge to the mainland. A distance of over 6 miles.

Our day trips continued. As we got moving from our anchorage in the river just south of Port Klang the weather turned nasty. Winds in the 25 to 30 kt. range and from the direction we were headed. Hey a reason to take a rest day.

By late morning the weather had cleared but we were settled in. Next we had a close incounter of the worst kind. We watched as an approximately 300' dredge ship who was anchored down river from us pull their anchor and head our way. They looked to be getting ready to anchor again. Kathy got on the VHF radio and attempted to call the vessel to find out their intentions.

Soon it was obvious they planned to anchor again and almost on top of us.

This was our view as the "Inai Tulip" started to swing towards us. On the bridge wings they were yelling for us to move as we were in their way. As they swung towards us our only recourse was to slip our anchor and move as quickly as possible. We managed to dump all 280 feet of chain and another 30 feet of line along with a float before getting run over. Our last view of our buoy to our ground tackle was as it went under the "Tulip".

Thankfully we incured no injury or damage. Whomever was operating the "Tulip" did not seem to have any idea of what he was doing.

Next we managed to get secured to a dock at a nearby marina and launch the dinghy so I could look for our float and hopefully recover our ground tackle. As I neared the "Tulip" no one seemed to understand or speak any English and did not want to have anything to do with me.

We were later able to locate and recover our anchoring gear. We also have made telephone contact with someone in the office of the company that owns the "Tulip" and have attempted email contact with the parent company.

We were very lucky for here in the third world had we been damaged it would have been tough luck.

We now have four more day trips before reaching the Danga Bay Marina where we'll leave the boat to return to Southern California for a visit in early May.