Sailing and cruising around Sibu, Sarawak, Borneo and back to Singapore.

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SIBU, SARAWAK, BORNEO TO SINGAPORE

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December, 1999
We tried to go out the Igan River to head to Bintulu, but the weather was bad and we were warned by the fishing boats to go back and wait for the bar to settle down. It looked as it if was going to take a week or so to improve, so we decided to go back up to Sibu, back down the Paloh or Rajang River and head back to Singapore, since we were running out of time.

We blew it. The morning after we got there, when Peter went out in the cockpit to get us ready to go, he discovered that both our outboards were stolen! The 5 HP was secured with padlock and chain, so they used bolt cutters to get it off. Not the local shanty residents, we're sure. Probably the crew on the barge that was anchored in front of us - it left before we got up that morning. Oh, drat! Our good buy of an outboard wasn't so good anymore.

We lost a day while we went in to buy another outboard; I just wanted to leave, but Peter was right, we needed an outboard, so in we went. We got lots and lots of sympathy from the fellows on shore. Our loss became the talk of the fellows hanging out by the Shell station dock where we always landed. They told Peter to go directly to the Police, and made sure that a fellow guided him there. We knew that we wouldn't get it back, so weren't that adamant about reporting the theft, but it seemed to make the locals feel better, so Peter took the time to do it.

An aside. As in most places, the small criminal element is an embarrassment to the rest of the population. I have always felt that to a criminal, a foreigner is going to be their first choice of a victim, just because he is foreign. And the non-criminal element is more upset by a visitor being robbed, just because he is a visitor. If crime were a deterrent to our visiting a place, we would probably never want to go back to the U.S. Thus, our mentioning the theft is not meant to be a criticism of Sibu, because the thieves probably were foreign crew on the barge, as the locals say, but just as a lesson to us all to be vigilant wherever we are.

Took us two half-days to motor down the Rajang River. I was not amused. It was a more difficult navigation exercise than our trip to Sibu up the Paloh River. At one critical bend in the river, a local in his outboard-driven canoe came alongside to be sure that we didn't wander out into the middle where the rocks were. As soon as we got past the dangerous spot, he sped on with a wave back to us. We try to always remember that 99% of the people are kind, law-abiding, and generous.

Along the Rajang River's banks there are no longer any large trees or rain forest; it's completely logged out. The Rajang seems to be the first of the navigable rivers to be exploited; three of the four cities in Sarawak are on this river, and at the entrance to the Rajang is this very busy shipping port full of large ships whose sole purpose seems to be to transport logs to other countries. We dropped anchor and got the 'Melon ready for her ocean passage the next day.

And the next day the rains came so that the big ships weren't coming in, just waiting outside the harbor waiting for visibility to improve enough that they could see the fairway buoys. So we waited for a day. But the next day there was still no visibility. We knew there was a tropical depression that had just been sitting North of us causing this weather, which meant we weren't going to move until we could ride out on the back of it, so another day all closed up against the rain, waiting. (Yawn).

Saturday, Dec. 11, looked good, so we hauled anchor and motored out of the river into a washing machine. We were being driven out of the river by a two-knot plus current and bounced around by too much wind and a lot of nasty waves, with poor visibility. Waves were breaking across the entire mouth of the river; we couldn't see any clear water, which makes us nervous. Once committed, however, we were stuck. We could not have comfortably turned around and gone back in against this strong current, so we rode it out, and once over the bar, and away from the effects of wind on current things settled down, marginally. But we were on our way, and we made the most of it. The first day we had a few hours of favorable winds, then no wind, and by nightfall the winds were against us, smack dab on the nose. So we motor-sailed all night, and all the next day into increasingly uncomfortable conditions. We didn't get very far for all the fuel that we burned, and it became obvious that we were going to reach the most difficult part of the trip Sunday night.

There is a relatively narrow stretch of water with a lot of little islands and rocks off the tip of the peninsula that is the border between Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo. All the shipping traffic goes through this strait, and we did not want to be dodging rocks and ships in this area at night, so we decided to head for the back of the peninsula to seek shelter for the night and attack the pass the next day if the weather settled down. Lumpy seas and blustery winds calmed down to a lovely night once we were in the shelter of the land, so we were able to have a decent meal and get a good night's rest. The next morning dawned bright and clear, and we were therefore on our way again. True to our luck through this trip, the nice weather only lasted until we had gotten past the islands and out of the confused water of the strait, when the weather again started to deteriorate with squalls rolling over us at irregular intervals bringing howling winds and roller-coaster waves. Again, less than comfortable conditions which made getting enough rest difficult. With the wind on the nose, we sailed almost 90 degrees off the rhumb line. We got through this day and night, and finally on Tuesday the weather started to settle down.

We still had better than three hundred miles to go in a passage that under normal conditions would have seen us already in port, but in the previous 24 hours we had made no forward progress at all, simply positioning ourselves so that we would have a reasonable angle on the wind. This was getting tiresome, but once the weather cleared and the wind shifted direction sufficiently that we could sail almost a direct course to Singapore, our attitude improved immeasurably. Three days of lovely weather meant that we forgot about the previous 7+ days of less than nice weather.

We arrived at Sebana Cove Marina on Friday afternoon. Our refrigerator was completely gone, we have a persistent leak of some sort that sends our engine bilge alarm off just as we are starting to be lulled into a false sense of security. We've got a problem with our propane regulator; our Robertson autopilot packed it in again (and this time we're finally going to junk it and get something that is more reliable!). As enjoyable as it was to go to Borneo, we have had more things go wrong in these two months than ever before.

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