What an amazing couple of weeks. I've just arrived in Kata Beach, Phuket, HQ for the Kings Cup Regatta, the big boat race in Asia. Today is registration day which means shmoozing all the skippers looking for a ride, maybe a big yacht will take me on as rail meat and i can spend my days leaning over the side, scrambling from side to side as we try and take vital inches of
space from the wind. I'm hoping for a smaller boat , 5 to 8 crew where I'll get given a task and will learn something.
i started off on a visa run to Langkawi in Malaysia and dropped in on some of the people i met at the beginning of the year when I was cruising around. Pete and Ben suggested I head down to the Royal Selangor Yacht Club west of KL where the Rajamuda Regatta was due to start. There was a good chance I'd pick up a crew spot on a boat and could come back up with the fleet. Something of a gamble though. I thought about it overnight and got up and jumped on a ferry back to the mainland where i could take a local bus to the big bus station and get harrassed by weird men all to arrive in KL late at night in the pouring rain wandering around in circles looking for a room. One of those days that makes me want to be trapped in a meaningless 9-5 job where everything is safe. but this is my big adventure and I hopped on a train out to Port Klang the next day with all my stuff not sure what i'd do when i got to the yacht club. Predictably i wandered around feeling sheepish for a while after almost running away when I looked at the imposing notice informing that those not introduced by a member would be refused admittance. But no one came to the recepetion desk so I stuffed my pack next to it and went in search of the office. I found an ex naval guy with a pipe who offered me a couple of days slave labour stuffing race paraphenalia in the registration office in exchange for the opportunity to meet all the skippers and plead my case. So there I was bored and baking when Khairul informed me that Jimmy was coming in the next day and would take me on as crew. Do I get a say in this i wondered?
Jimmy was a suave english educated Malay with crazy long eyebrows cultivated gandalf style. A
naturalist/ environmental advisor he was pretty cool and his boat was even cooler. A 31" trimaran that flew like the wind when the wind blew. It folds up and lives on a trailer thus can be carted to the other side of the peninsular which is rather handy! The regatta was organised in a series of long passages, the first and longest distance wise up to Pulau Pangkor, a beautiful tropical island. We left at midday and got in about 4:30 in the morning after a beautiful overnight sail. I sat forward on the trampoline watching the electrical storms circle around us lighting up fantasy figures in the clouds as the phosphorescence sprayed over me from benath like fairy dust. A fishing boat crossed our bows with no lights displayed which was very freaky. It just loomed up out of nowhere and all we saw was a huge shadow.
Earlier in the day another had headed straight for us in broad daylight like it was trying to ram us. There are international laws about displaying navigation
lights and who has right of way at sea but the fishing boats here don't care. And after all we've got an expensive yacht and they have a big heavy wooden boat with a powerful engine installed!
After something of a lull early in the morning everyone else crashed out and I spent my watch feeling the wind picking up and learning how to sail by feel in the dark without the assistance of a torch to show off the tell tales. A sqall blew in from across the horizon and we flew into Pangkor doing 15 knots, me hanging onto the tiller for for dear life with a crazy laughing smile upon my lips. We went so fast we mistook a freighter for the commitee boat and ended up
screeching past the finish line instead of across it and spent another 15 minutes trying to find it!
At Pangkor a repeat of the wallaby-all blacks game was played as we were all at sea when it was on. with 70% of the crews being aussies it was a lively affair but there weren't enough kiwis around to make it truly interesting. The final a few day later was a much more interesting affair with the brit and aussie camps at different sides of the bar making up songs about each other along with other good humouredly vindictive heckling.
the next leg we were becalmed for 6 hours, going backwards. i'd heard sailors talking about going backward before but thought they were exagerating or joking. but hughie the wind god disappeared and left us to the mercy of the tide going in the opposite direction. a much shorter leg this time, we didn't get in until midday, 4pm by the time we got to the hotel.
but dinner that night was at the E&O hotel in Penang, a beautiful colonial hotel, the most luxurious and stylish on the island. i pulled out my one dress and joked about providing good ballast the next day as i ate far too much food but it was all just so yummy.
stay tuned . . . more to come