Cruising Notes – Malaysia part 2

Port Dickson to Pinang

Summary of our anchorage stops: (We day sailed up the Malacca Straits during the October Transition, and therefore chose anchorages where we were protected from any Sumatras (squalls) arriving from the west)

Johor Bahru –   01’ 27.601 N   103’ 46.403 E – in 20 ft of goo and plastic bags but good holding.

Ketam –           01’ 24.361 N   103’ 56.920 E – mangrove shore. Nice 23 ft mud.

Kukup –           01’19.787 N    103’ 26.371 E – 25 ft mud. Nowhere to drag so set your anchor well.

Pisang -            01’ 28.267 N   103’ 16.346 E  - rather godforsaken. Just an anchorage.

Tg Tohor -       01’ 50.841 N   102’ 44.593 E  - the anchorage from hell. Proved to us that you can anchor here on a totally lee shore with fetch all across the Malacca Straits and live to tell the tale!

Besar –            02’ 06.695 N   102’ 20.302 E – sandy bottom but some boulders around and some spots dry at low tide. All these spots are on the charts so easy to avoid.

Port Dickson – Admiral Marina           

Lumut –            04’ 14.253 N   100’ 39.504 E - in front of Marina. Good holding, good protection. The river water will eat the galvanizing off your chain, so don't stay too long!

Telang –           04’ 25.160 N   100’ 34.748 E – in 35 ft of rubble. Just an anchorage. Marginal, but good protection from west.

Rimau –            05’ 14.903 N   100’ 16.614 E – in 20 ft sand. Just an anchorage. Good protection from west & NW.Pretty.

Pinang -           Police Jetty 05’ 22.252 N   100’19.184 E – in 30 ft mud. Sheltered, safe. Access to Police jetty. Much cleaner than Junk anchorage. Good place to sit and then go to Junk anchorage just to stage before leaving. To get there, go north, under the big span bridge, and carry on all the way up to the Junk Anchorage. Then pull a u-turn and hug the east shore of Penang Island all the way to just north of the span bridge. Anchor near the long rickety police pier. You can take a cheap bus to the big town, or walk around the little town ashore for supplies.

 Port Dickson – The Admiral Marina is pretty well the only game in town for you to leave your boat safely. They post the waypoints for entry on the internet – check in www.noonsite.com for a link to the Admiral Marina site. We used these waypoints and had no trouble – all deep water. The marina is nice but felt a little deserted, as did all the large resort hotels in the area. There is a great pool, they will hold mail for you and you can get fuel there. They will send your laundry out for you – I got them to send out two bags full of sheets & towels; I thought it was a bit expensive but I treated myself.

A short walk away is a little strip mall with several food vendors – Indian, Chinese, Malay – and very cheap to eat there.

The bus is a little walk from the marina out to the main road, where you get a bus for .80 sens or a taxi for 1 Rg per person (they will try to get you, the tourist, to pay more – just give then 1 Rg). This gets you to the main bus stop in ‘downtown’ Port Dickson. From there you can get to KL or Melacca, or anywhere else for that matter. Bus travel in Malaysia is very cheap.

Port Dickson is just a small town, not all that much there but you can get groceries at a couple of large supermarkets/department stores, there is a fruit market downtown and another separate ‘wet market’ (fish & veggies) a short walk from the fruit market. We heard you could get frozen chicken at a Chinese shop and we had a look, but were not impressed and did not buy. They have some cheeses and meats, though.

If you missed JB (Johor Bahru) for movies, software and electronics, the next best place would be KL (Kuala Lumpur) but you will have to take the bus there and find your way around, and maybe spend the night. We are glad, in retrospect, in spite of how dirty the anchorage was in JB, to have had that time there and the convenience of stocking up on electronics. Failing all that, your last last chance in Malaysia is in Pinang (see below).

Port Klang – Most cruisers stop here at least for a nights rest. Either outside of the river leading up to Port Klang, or all the way into Port Klang at the Royal Selangor Yacht Club. We had heard horror stories about how dirty the river is – no place for a yacht – and just a big shipping area, so we decided we’d give it a miss.

Lumut – Sailing overnight from Klang to Lumut, the water anywhere 50 meters or less was thick with fishing boats. Anywhere in deeper water where there was a shallower bank were also full of boats and nets. I don’t think they are there during the day.

We figured out the system though. The fishermen drop their nets off the bow, leaving a light at the end of the net. This light could be white, green or red, fixed, flashing or strobe! The boat then drops back downwind/downcurrent and drifts there. You can see a pattern actually, with all the boats lit at one end with their white light, and the net light at the other end. Almost all the boats using nets are like this – some do not have the ‘net light’ and in a very few cases, the boat itself is not lit. We understand that you can pass between the ‘net light’ and its mother boat, but we did not want to tempt fate!

We stayed out near the shipping lanes and in as deep water as much as we could and had no problems with nets and floats, and much less junk (logs and plastic) than all the horror stories we had read.

There is a little marina at Lumut and we hear the charge is about a Rg per foot, and can be negotiated to about half that. There is a pool at the marina, and the little tourist town close by, with fruit/veggie markets, internet and restaurants. You can anchor in front of the Marina, south of the green buoy (we did). One of the cruising guides we have mentioned that the water in the river will eat the galvanizing off your chain. We were there only 3 nights and it looks like it is true – our chain looks a little lighter in the galvanizing department. If you are concerned, throw down a rope rode, the bottom is mud no coral, and several of the long-term boats had rope rodes down. Or go into the marina.

It is easy to enter and exit the river at night – well-marked channel and electronic charts are right on.

If you want to leave your boat for awhile to travel inland or go home or whatever, Mr Chan is still operating his moorings, very cheap, and his number is (cell) 010-558-1586.

He is just up the river from the marina.

Pinang – We had a pretty horrible sail up to Pinang, stopping overnight just 15 miles north of Lumut at P.Telang to make the next day shorter.  There was a clockwise circulation (High) west of Sumatra, and a counterclockwise (Low) over Vietnam. I think these conditions produce strong Northwesterlies, as this has happened twice now to us.

The anchorage at P Telang was marginal – stony bottom and a very steep shelf dropping off to China (North America?) so our anchor and chain grumbled all night. We dropped in about 35 feet and dropped back into 65 ft. The next morning we were wrapped around boulders pretty good and had to coax the anchor up by pulling up and letting down, and driving forward and around.

The stop at Rimau Island was very nice and protected, nice mud bottom and good holding.

Many cruisers opted for the marina just southwest of the big bridge over to the mainland. It was free at the time but we hear very tight for turning and you need help from everyone to get your boat in (have to pull you in by your docking lines). We opted to anchor in a spot just northwest of the big bridge, near the Police Jetty and that worked out just fine.

Pinang (Georgetown) is an interesting, crowded, hot, busy little city that is fascinating just to wander around until you are all melted from the heat. You have probably read all the cruising guides and stuff, but here are some things we found, from our perspective of anchoring at the Police Jetty and bussing all around:

The Police Jetty – no facilities aside from a place to safely leave your dinghy. Just tie it up to the broken down old floating concrete dock and pick your way along the police jetty. You have never seen such a rickety, falling-down so-called dock in your life! Its great. Supposedly safe, as a lot of people use it, impossible to describe. Make your way up to the main street, over a couple of pedestrian overpasses over the busy streets past all the pretty little ghetto cats waiting for a home aboard your boat. Nearby is a decent internet café and some little shops for bread, milk and fresh stuff, and many food vendors and restaurants.

The bus into Georgetown is .80 sens per person. A taxi from town back to the boat was 18.00 Rg. Worth it if you are carrying stuff and its sweltering hot!

Everything is centered around Komtar – a 60-odd storey office tower/shopping complex. We didn’t even begin to explore all the possible shopping here. Its overwhelming. The central bus terminal is here. Its hard to believe that the population of the entire island on Pinang is only 90,000. It seems like millions!

Georgetown itself  is not exactly a yachie haven, but we found a couple of unique spots:

The Chemical Man – The business name is Liangtraco and he is at 352 Chulia St. His email is liangtra@tm.net.my Look for the green Fuji Film building and he is on the diagonal corner across the street. It is just a little hole in the wall shop; easy to miss but impossible to forget. Open 2PM till 7PM Monday to Saturday so plan accordingly. He will need time to assemble your order and he is a one man shop, so give the guy a break and come back next day if you can and pick up your stuff. You will want another day in town anyway to explore all the fascinating little shops!

His name is Ong Liang Ching, and he has the most amazing collection of every liquid and powdered chemical and substance known to science. He carries everything from acids to perfume oils. All packed and stacked precariously atop each other in various containers and buckets, into a very tiny and narrow shop in a hot and busy part of town – don’t knock anything over! What he doesn’t have, he will make. And its cheap, dirt cheap. If you don’t know what you need, tell him you’re a cruiser and he will make suggestions. Keep in mind that he just packs the powders into plastic bags; so you may want to bring extra plastic bags to protect yourself and your backpack from spills, and then repack safely to store on your boat. Get instructions for mixing and using the stuff from the Chemical Man because there will be none written down on any fancy packaging for you!

Here’s what we got: (The Malaysian Ringgat is set with the US dollar at 3.80 Rg per US buck)

            Oxalic Acid (powder) – have not been able to find this useful stuff since Trinidad – it is a strong bleach for teak and we use it for removing rust from metal and fiberglass. Its safe for fabrics, safer than phosphoric acid, but rinse it off well. Mix ½ cup to gallon of water so a little goes a long way! Just 8 Rg per kg. We paid $8.00 US for 1 lb in Trinidad.

            EDTA (powder) – use 1 tsp per battery cell to rejuvenate your 6V batteries. At 10 Rg per kg we bought way too much.

            Sodium Metabisulfite (powder) – to pickle your watermaker or sterilize your bottles if you make your own beer. Just 5 Rg/kg.

            Potassium Permanganate – use a little spec the size of a matchhead in a liter of water to sterilize your street market fruits and veggies which are suspect. Soak and rinse. They use it a lot in Africa, and I hear it can turn your teeth brown, so we won’t use unless we have to! Just 2 Rg per 100 grams.

            Chloroform – aside from putting people to sleep, this is used to kill weevils. A drop or two in cotton, put the cotton in a little film canister, poke a few holes in the canister lid and put it in your flour and rice. 6 Rg per 100 ml

            Boric Acid – dust it into all dark corners to kill those cockies. 2 Rg per 100 grams.

            Waterproofing for Canvas – made up for us, 42 Rg per gallon. We will see how it compares to that expensive “Aqua Tite” for Sunbrella at 50 US bucks a gallon.

Hose Clamps, Seals, Belts & Bearings – Ban Heap Leong. Proprieter E.H. Ch’ng. Address is  41 Jalan C.Y.Choy. ‘Jalan’ means ‘street’ and the street name is “C.Y. Choy”. Tel 04-262-0455

He has a million belts and is sure to have yours. Also SKF bearings, seals and fantastic prices on good quality 100% stainless hose clamps. We bought lots. If you need seals, bring along your measurement specs for inside and outside dimensions.

The bottom line is – if you need something specific, bring along the thing you want fixed, replaced, or its specs and as many part number cross references as you can get. Armed with a street map, start walking along CY Choy street, or Chulia street. Go into likely looking shops. Start asking around and shop owners will send you to other places. Consider it an adventure. After all, what else do you do all day?

Computers, Movies & Software – The Midlands Park Center shopping mall on Jalan Burma. (By now you know that ‘Jalan’ means ‘street’) It should be an easy bus ride from Komtar city center, just ask when you get to the bus area. (The Malaysian people are so amazingly helpful to us tourists it never ceases to amaze me.) We got a ride from a perfect stranger, a retired Hewlett Packard executive, so did not get the bus information. The mall has JB prices for computer stuff, and is cheaper than Singapore.