It’s a wrap!
That’s it! It’s a wrap! That’s another sailing season in SE Asia done and dusted.
After sharing my earlier blog about our “spectacularly unambitious” cruising plans for this season, I happened to see a tourist jet ski tour advertised, that circumnavigated Langkawi in just six hours!
So yes, it’s quite a small cruising ground, and I already know that next year we’ll venture a bit further afield to enjoy greater variety, as well as a sense of achievement. I’m looking forward to dipping back into the southern bit of Thailand again – it really is an agreeable cruising ground.
In my defence, we did manage not one, but two, circumnavigations of Langkawi – the first anti-clockwise, the second clockwise!
It’s been a short season this year; as will the next two. This is because of time limits imposed by a long-term project I’m working on. I’ll share more info on that in a future blog – it’s taken me this long to realise that long term planning isn’t exactly one of my strong points, so it’s taking me a little while to get used to thinking several years in advance as opposed to just bumping along month to month. The sacrifice is spending less time on Aroha than I’d like, so I have to keep reminding me that in the long term it’ll be worth it.
Our pre-Covid plan had us living on board full time for a few years. Covid made us crave a ‘base’, and hence the FIFO; “Fly In Fly Out” cruising from our Devon base. I actually thought that we’d be looked down at by “real cruisers”, but I’ve been surprised at just how many people cruise this way. Funnily enough, I met a couple and also a solo sailor who have second boats in other places, so they just alternate between cruising grounds with the seasons. Don’t worry, one boat is enough for me!
This season was just ten weeks long; shorter for Helen who joined me after wrapping up some consulting work. By comparison, the past three seasons have been five or six months. This season we covered about 200 nautical miles, compared to about 800 nautical miles for each of the previous two seasons cruising up and down the Thai coast. The season before that we covered about 1,800 nautical miles sailing from India to Sri Lanka to Thailand.
We’ve got pretty efficient at getting through the long list of seasonal jobs, both at the beginning and end of the season. Doing the jobs at the end are a bit more melancholy though. I mean, you’re not rewarded with a season of cruising. Well, not instantly – your reward comes from a smoother start to the following season. Because next season will be short, I’ve planned a few of the jobs so that we should spend less time working and more time cruising.
We’ve used our leisurely cruising pace and ample time ashore to continue our roti canai (or roti chenai, roti paratha) search. Along with Nasi Lemak (coconut rice, served with shrimp sambal, little dried fish and eggs – not too vegan friendly!) it’s one of the local breakfast staples. Every outlet makes it a little differently and so it seems like a good project to…. try to try them all!
I thought I’d found the Langkawi winner in a cute streetside café, until I discovered a chicken foot in the accompanying curry sauce! On ordering, I’d asked if a type of roti I hadn’t seen before (roti bom – the Cinnabon of roti) was vegetarian. It is, and to be fair, I didn’t ask about the sauce. I’m a fairly new vegetarian and have eaten animals for most of my life, so I often surprise myself at how disgusted I feel seeing bits of animals on my plate.
I’ve mentioned before the excitement in the significance of raising a new country flag on Aroha. There’s something special about arriving in a country under the power of your own boat, clearing in, and raising that country’s flag. Likewise, lowering the courtesy flag at the end of the season feels like an event that formally closes the season.
Fun fact about the Malaysian flag. It has stars and stripes like the american flag – no accident as at the time of Malaysian independence in 1963, america was still an aspirational country. The thirteen stars represent the thirteen Malaysian states at the time of independence. When Singapore left the union two years later, they didn’t remove their star, but instead assigned it to ‘Federal Territories’.
And with those two flag facts for the price of one, we lowered the Malaysian courtesy flag, folded it and stored it in our flag cupboard until next season.
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