Our friends, Pam & Harry, flew from Australia in mid May to join us on the first stages of the East Malaysian Rally that was going to take us from
Puteri Harbour to
Kota Kinabalu on Borneo. "Windy Spirit" had been sitting at the
Puteri Harbour Marina for the past 7 months so we were excited about finally being under way again after our long stint home in Australia. The weather was extremely hot & humid which was a nasty surprise for our friends who had come from winter in Australia, but with the thought of many adventures to come over the following weeks, the heat was soon forgotten as we made our way toward Singapore & then on toward
Desaru, which was going the be the next rally stop.
It was great catching up with old friends who we hadn't seen for ages so we were very excited to find "Bach & Byte", with Kay & Jim
on board. They had decided to do half of the rally along the east coast of Malaysia to spend time with us so we looked forward to the following weeks, catching up on each others news & socialising while we had the chance before our return to Australia. Above is a photo of "Bach & Byte" passing under the bridge that links Singapore & Malaysia. The clearance is 25 metres & although it looks a little scary when you are right under the bridge, there is actually plenty of clearance for a normal yacht at any tide.
Winding our way through the Singapore Straits, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, was a nightmare as the sea looked like a moving city of container ships that stretched for miles & miles. It basically took us all day to pass this area & knowing that an accident between two container ships had occurred the previous day, we were on a constant look-out to see if we could find the boats involved. The water was contaminated with thousands of litres of oil which sprayed up onto our hulls as we motored through it but fortunately it was easy enough to remove when we had the first opportunity of clear water. Finding this huge boat with a massive hole punctured through it's hull was unbelievable! To think that a ship of this size was unseen by another was hard to believe, especially in these extremely busy waters but the proof is in the photo~!
The two ships involved in the accident are rafted together here & although there was a lot of activity involving tug boats etc, we were still left wondering how they would deal with this catastrophe. The oil was thick & heavy in the water, creating it's own nightmare, so although we were glad to have seen this spectacle first hand, we were certainly glad to clear those waters as soon as possible.
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