Sailing back to Singapore for repairs after a lightning strike.

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There is an electric-generating plant in Juara Bay using water from the high hills down a column of water - we’ve seen the same thing in Western Samoa and the Solomons - and the water is then piped into the village for community water. There’s a ball valve close to the water source, and we rigged a hose to get the water there, filling the jerry jugs while still in the dinghy - best way, since the three big jugs are incredibly heavy - takes both of us to get them out of the dinghy and onto the boat. The water started out quite clear, but got dirtier and dirtier as we went along. Really silty. So Peter rigged up a filter system using the sediment filters he bought for the watermaker, and a large funnel. Works, gets most of the silt out before it goes into the water tanks. However, it is slow, several hours to filter about 40 gallons. So we’ll rig a better system. As we get older we are less able to throw off infections and nasties than when we were younger, and they pose more of a risk. I’ve been reading “Control of Communicable Diseases in Man” and if a person were to take it seriously, he would never leave his home. Though there is no place we are safe!!!!!!!!! (exclamation points for the timid who think we are brave, or foolish, or both. The world is not perfectly safe, anywhere, any time. The risks are just different in different places. Think of the last automobile accident you/your friend/family had.)
We waited out bad weather at Tioman Island for over a week, finally leaving on Sunday, September 6, and sailed straight through, arriving at the customs dock at the entrance to Johore Strait early Monday morning. The wait was worth it, because we had a calm, uneventful crossing.

Well, uneventful if you have a sense of humor. We became concerned in the middle of the night as we sailed down the coast because a few fishing boats headed straight for us, only swerving at the last minute. We had visions of finally encountering the pirates that we've been pooh-poohing all these years, but nothing happened, except that our nerves were a bit strained worrying about the reason for these boats' peculiar behavior. We later learned that fishing boats having a bad night blame their poor catch on evil spirits on board, so they will try to get really close to another boat in the hopes that the spirits will jump ship and haunt some other poor souls instead. We were told that this is what was probably happening to us. I don't think it worked, because we continued on with good sailing and good fortune.

The customs and immigration people were typical Malays, laid back and unconcerned about our checking out of Tioman for Thailand and showing up at the entrance to Singapore instead. The immigration fellow was a bit concerned, though, telling Peter that we only had 1 month left on our visa, but Peter said that that was okay, we’d be taking the bus into Singapore, and when we came back that same day our passport would be stamped for another 3 months stay. The Immigration official said that sounded okay. We weren’t supposed to check in to that port office, there’s another one we are supposed to check into, but Peter said he really didn’t want to do that. So the officials asked where we were going after we left the Causeway, and Peter said we’d go to Sebana Cove Marina. They said, “well, that’s okay, then. We’ll just check you in for Sebana Cove, and you can be ‘in transit’ while at Johore Bahru.” The silliness of this is: Sebana Cove is about a mile from this particular port office, and we would be traveling 30 miles past it to go to Johore Bahru and have to turn around and come back down 30 miles - that’s “in transit?” They do make it easy for us. Nice people.

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