Report from 18 October to 31 October 2023
From: Malaysia and Philippines
Sailing trip
18 to 20 October - Kota Kinabalu
When we arrive in Kota Kinabalu, we immediately start working on our current goal: finding a sailing boat to take us over to the Philippines. To do this, we first update our notice board: a note with the heading "Crew available - from here to Palawan". Underneath, we explain who we are and what we intend to do: "find a sailing boat to take us to Palawan". We print out the note and try to post it in relevant places. We also post the text online in various Facebook sailing groups. Everyone we talk to gives us little hope - firstly, there are generally only a few captains who need/accept crew. Secondly, there are currently few sailing boats on the move and thirdly, it's not the best time for a crossing to Palawan - the wind is blowing in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, we are not letting it get us down.
21 october
We want to get to the northernmost point of Borneo, to Kudat, so we reckon we have a better chance. Uuuuuuuand *drum roll* to get to Kudat we can sail Coco and Olivier again! Our delivery fitted in well with the errands they wanted to do. And as we have the same destination, Kudat, we are back on the boat ⛵.
Today we only drive very briefly to an island near Kota Kinabalu. Oliver and Coco have got new spare parts in town and are working on the engine. We grab the stand-up paddle and explore the coast a little. Unfortunately, the water is dirty. There's a lot of plastic rubbish floating around in it. But we do briefly spot a turtle coming to the surface to gasp for air.
And 🥁🥁🥁🥁, it looks like we also have a lift to Palawan, Philippines. I'm currently writing on Facebook with a boat owner who is based in Kudat and wants to head north in the next few days.
22 October
We take it easy this morning. As we are about to set off, a funny spectacle unfolds. Unfortunately, the boat's anchor chain is a bit broken. Rust has eaten away at it so that the gripping mechanism of the roller on which it is pulled up no longer grips properly. This morning we are trying an alternative way to get it up. Take a look at the video.
Somehow I'm restless for the rest of the day, my head is going through an endlessly long to-do list all the time. Always looking for new tasks to add to the list. I try to tell my head that this is bullshit. That these are not important things and that if I don't do any of them, nothing bad will happen. My head doesn't let this stop me and continues to put me under stress. Totally crazy. Not logical. In a dream place, no obligations and yet you're still stressed.
23 October
We sit on deck. There is little wind, but we are slowly moving forwards. The water splashes and gurgles merrily around us. The sun is shining in the blue sky. A few clouds on the horizon. Karli is watching Minecraft YouTube videos, I'm sewing a little. The other two are below deck. Karli and I have the task of observing the surroundings from time to time. These are the moments I enjoy so much here. I do a meditation to calm down even more and enjoy the moment.
24 October
Today we have a short sailing day. We anchor in a bay as early as midday. But then it's time to clean: Karli and Coco clean below deck. Oliver and I clean the deck. Then we "clean" ourselves: we jump into the sea for a shower, swim a little, crawl out of the boat again, soap up and jump back into the water. Just then it starts to rain, which suits us perfectly: we stay on deck and enjoy the rain as it washes the salt water off our bodies. Someone turns on some music. The atmosphere is exuberant and we dance in the rain on the sailing boat.
25 to 28 October - Kudat
We arrive in the small town of Kudat. Together with Coco and Oliver, it's time to visit the authorities again. In the evening, we meet Kevin, the skipper I've been chatting to on Facebook over the last few days. He is Scottish, around 60 years old and has lived in Hong Kong for 30 years. We get on well and there's no reason why either of us shouldn't go on the next trip together. So the next day we move from Coco and Oliver's boat to Kevin's boat. It's a little smaller (1 metre shorter) and also a little older. Coco and Oliver had three rooms: toilet, two "bedrooms" and the "living room" with kitchen. Here there are only three: the toilet, a sleeping cabin where Kevin sleeps, and then the main room with the kitchen. We sleep in the main room: the benches to the right and left of the table are also two beds.
Kevin is still waiting for a repair: the engine of his dinghy is broken. And so we spend another 5 days in Kudat before we set sail on 29 October.
Kudat is the first place we have visited here in Malaysia that is a little more rural. So far we have only been to cities (Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, Miri, Kota Kinabalu). So far I always had the impression that Malaysia is very modern and "new". Here in Kudat I realise again that you can't draw conclusions about the country from the cities. What impresses me most are the cars. Here too (as in Kuala Lumpur) there are only cars - no scooters. In all other Southeast Asian countries, scooters dominate. However, whereas in the cities they were nice new, smart SUVs, here only very old junk cars drive around. Here's a little story: Kevin has hired a labourer here, Jeff. In addition to his main task of repairing the boat, Jeff also helps with earthworks in the city with his car. The first time we looked into his car, we were a little taken aback. Karli can see from a distance that the tyres are completely flat. Arriving at the car, Jeff gets a simple hand lift pump (like the ones we use for bicycle tyres) out of the car and starts pumping up the car tyres. Karli and I are completely blown away.
We spend the days in Kudat doing various things. We are approached by some nice Malaysians in a café who even buy us a coffee. In the evening, we get to know other boat owners.
Sunday, 29 October
We get up at 6am to get an early start. We are really looking forward to our first day on the new sailing boat. As we leave the harbour, we see a large lizard in the water. As soon as we leave the harbour, I'm asked to take the helm. "6 o'clock in Malaysia, I've just had my first coffee and now I'm steering a sailing boat for the first time." Kevin has actually been looking for crew. His boat's autopilot is broken. This means that someone always has to sit behind the wheel. That's almost impossible to manage alone on a sailing boat. So Karli and I now face new challenges: learning to steer, navigate and set sail. We are looking forward to the challenges ahead.
The course is held using a compass. I find it really difficult to stay on course and I keep steering in the wrong direction. It takes me an hour or two to find out how the boat behaves when I steer. Until then, I sail in snaking lines, sometimes smaller, sometimes larger.
Today we had almost no wind and mostly motored. As a result, we were much slower than originally planned. But we learnt to steer by compass and by sight.
In the evening we sit on deck. Enjoying the "cold". We listen to an audio book. Kevin has bought himself a bottle of whisky in Kudat (as medicine for his cold). Now that he's healthy again, he shares a sip of the rest. We sit on the deck of a sailing boat under a full moon and sip our Scotch whisky with relish.
30 October
Good morning! Today we had to get up at 6am again. Among other things, to be able to make more distance - we should have found a place to anchor before sunset. We will find out for ourselves tonight why this is so important.
We then spent the next 2.5 hours navigating between a few islands. And then we can finally set sail! Next stop: the Philippines!
Kevin didn't sleep well that night. At 1 a.m. Kevin goes back to sleep and leaves the helm to us: two sailing novices.
The journey had taken longer than expected. As the sun sets, we are still out at sea - about 30 minutes away from our planned overnight accommodation. It gets harder and harder to recognise anything in the twilight. Is that a boat or a buoy up ahead? Is that rubbish up ahead or is there still a fishing net hanging from the plastic bottle?
The little fishermen here like to attach their fish traps and nets to plastic bottles. The bottle serves as a flotation device. All kinds of ropes or nets are highly dangerous for a boat because they can get caught in the boat's propeller and make you unable to manoeuvre.
Then we head into the bay, Kevin steers, Karli has a tablet with an offline satellite image. I have a mobile phone with a chart in my hand. Karli was still looking at the depth gauge. Everyone was totally tense. It's not easy to convey how stressful it was. At some point Karli says that he thinks there's a lot of rubbish floating around. I get up to take a closer look. The plastic fish are all swimming upside down. Which means that something is attached to the head -> shit fishing net. I walk forwards on the boat "Fishing nets, fishing nets, fishing nets. There are thousands of plastic bottles all around us. We have to make sure we don't get the rope and the propeller. Kevin immediately throws out the gear and runs forwards to let the anchor chain out. We seem to have been lucky. Shortly afterwards, one of the fishermen arrives with his paddle boat and tries to talk to us. Unfortunately, he doesn't speak English. Everyone is totally exhausted after the day and after a quick noodle soup we are already in bed by 9 o'clock.
31 October
I am woken by rain. It's thundering outside. We discuss the plan for getting out of the bay: Slowly weigh anchor and wait for the wind to drive us out of last night's fishing nets before switching on the engine. As we go through the plan, it starts to thunder again. We don't have far to go today and are therefore in no hurry. Kevin takes the opportunity to scrub the deck and Karli treats himself to a typical Asian shower. Showering in the rain is not typically Asian... But cold and with too little pressure, that's very Asian. We wait out the rain and then set off. In fact, everything goes well when we set sail. Around 10 o'clock we pull up the anchor and the wind drives us back the way we want to go.
As soon as we're out of the bay, it's a wild ride. We hoisted the sails and wanted to make metres first... The only problem was that the wind was coming from exactly the direction we wanted to go: The wind is coming exactly from the front - in other words, from the direction where we want to arrive tonight. With a sailing boat, you don't necessarily need wind from behind - you can sail with wind from all possible directions. Except with wind from the front. Crossing is the only way. So zig zag sailing. So first we head out, away from the coast, and as steeply as possible into the wind. Then we turn round and head in the other direction as steeply as possible into the wind. This way we reach our destination slowly and with difficulty, but against the wind.
We thought so.
Janine, the navigator today, realises after a while that we are heading in the wrong direction according to the GPS data. We discuss and compare the location of Karli's mobile phone, my mobile phone, Karli's GPS watch and the compass. We are sure that we are sailing in the right direction, but all the locations show that we are travelling backwards, i.e. in the direction we came from yesterday. After some back and forth, we come to the conclusion that there is a strong current in the water that is pushing us in a different direction.
We try to stick to our original plan of zigzagging and continue out. After about an hour, we make the first turn. The zigzag turns are a manoeuvre in their own right, which sounds really easy at first. The first step is to turn the steering wheel fully round. After turning, the wind comes from the other side, so the sails also have to go to the other side. I had watched the manoeuvre on YouTube in the past few days and it looked really simple and totally logical. But here on the boat we suddenly have 4 sails. Each sail has its own set that you can pull on. For the front two sails alone, there are 6 ropes leading up to the steering wheel. We were totally confused. In any case, the tacking went wrong for us at first. We managed to fix it by starting the engine and trying a second time.
3 hours later we are back on the coast. In theory, we should arrive quite a bit further up the coast. In practice, we are just 500 metres further up. That's really not much. The current simply makes zigzagging impossible because it pushes us in the wrong direction. That's why we switch on the engine back on the coast and head up the coast into the wind and current. I don't like motoring. But somehow we want to make progress. We crawl slowly up the current for more than 2 hours.
We are only 2 nautical miles away from our destination. And then suddenly the engine cuts out. We are close to the coast and are travelling directly into the wind. This is a super dangerous situation because the wind and the current can drive you into the coast so quickly. Kevin turns the sailing boat towards the open sea with his last ounce of vigour and we hoist the front sail. Karli jumps below deck and starts to open the engine cover and gather the right tools. Kevin hands over the helm to me, I take us away from the coast while Kevin joins Karli. The two of them spend almost an hour trying to find out why the engine is running out of diesel. Then they give up. Unfortunately, there is no chance of reaching our planned destination before sunset with the headwind, even though it is not far away. We turn round and sail back to the bay where we started this morning. The wind takes us there. We arrive just an hour later at the start of this morning's race.
You can find out how we solved the problem in our next post - next Thursday.
📷 You can find more great pictures in the photo album.
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