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MENZIES 2008 FRENZY
We celebrated Christmas 2007 in Sabana Cove Marina, Malaysia near Singapore. We have been cruising now for 11 ½ years. We had been planning to prepare the boat and sail away to India and up the Red Sea and into the Med in 2008. Wrong!!! Problems with the exhaust manifold, motor wiring, prop pitch, sail repair, reinstalling the forward looking sonar and a rigging problem kept us from being ready in time to sail away. We had a lovely year anyway. We stopped for a couple of weeks in Singapore to have some of the work done at Raffles Marina. We love Singapore They had fantastic fireworks for the New Year and Little India and Chinatown are fun. It is so clean and their Metro transportation is fast and fantastic. We stopped in Port Douglas on our way up the Melaka Straits and swam in the pool and enjoyed Admiral Marina for a few days. Then we headed on to Langkawi, the lovely island off of Northern Malaysia and went to Telaga Marina. Rob found the rigging problem when he went up the mast to replace the masthead light. In checking the rigging, one turnbuckle broke in his hand when he tried to tighten it. He then decided to replace ALL the rigging wires. He did all the re-rigging (with my help, of course!). We went into Boat Lagoon in Phuket, Thailand to do the re-rigging because it has a quiet inner harbor with little or no wind to blow him around while he was working. Rob was up and down the mast daily like a monkey. By the time all of the important work was completed it was too late to make the weather window to cross the Indian Ocean. You must leave the Thailand/Malaysia area by the end of January to avoid nasty weather later.
Phang Nga Bay, Thailand Our sailing adventure this year was to cruise and explore Thailand's famous Phang Nga Bay and 2 rivers, Khlong Phangnga & Khlong Marui. When
you see pictures of Thailand they always show these beautiful "karst"
mountains (limestone pinnacle dome shaped hills) coming out of the
ocean. This bay lies East of Phuket and extends North to the mainland.
We visited many uninhabited islands that were full of caves and “hongs"
which means “room” in Thai. We anchored in some of our most picture perfect anchorages thus far. We were lucky to have few storms because the bay is known for its lightning storms during that time of the year.
Our river adventure was one in the Northeast and one in the Northwest of Phang Nga Bay. We anchored in these rivers in sparsely populated wild areas and took our dingy exploring up the rivers and creeks. Again there were caves that went all the way under mountains and you could drive your dingy through. We also saw prehistoric cave drawings and very large caves with beautiful stalagmites and stalactites. On our way back to Langkawi in May we did some great snorkeling and diving in the islands off of Ao Nang, Phi Phi Don and Rok Nok, all in Thailand. Philippines
Some cruising friends wrote wonderful things about the Philippines but we did not have time to sail there so we decided to fly there on a 10 day excursion. We have now been to China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, Malaysia and Borneo Malaysia (Sarawak & Sabah), Brunei and this year the Philippines. We went to only 2 islands. We chose Cebu rather than Manila because we heard that Manila was chaotic, dirty, overcrowded and had a high crime rate. There was another reason, we were lucky that we chose Cebu---a hurricane hit Manila the week we were there & we experienced some turbulence on the plane on our flight over. The hurricane also caused the water to be somewhat murky on our diving in & around Cebu and caused the waters to be somewhat choppy during our stay.
We had a lovely week in Cebu. Cebu is a city of contrasts. Lots of poor people and men out of work and pregnant women with lots of children in tow but in the new huge Malls there are obviously wealthy well dressed shoppers of means. The men who are not working don't seem angry and they don't hang out on the corners in gangs. They are with their families. The downtown is dirty and very crowded but there is a lot of history there. In the old city, Fort San Pedro is still intact, and there are many old churches, interesting homes, a great museum and 2 cathedrals. When Magellan came here in 1521 and claimed the Philippines for Spain he found 3 ethnic groups---the indigenous Filipinos, the Chinese who were running the local trade and the Moslems who had come to conquer earlier and continued to cause trouble raiding the islands. Ironically, Magellan left Spain shortly after the Moslems were vanquished and expelled. Their name for the Moslems was Moors or Moros. That name was and still is applied to the Moslems of the Southern Philippines. Magellan brought Christianity and planted a cross which is still there. It is enshrined in a small open building near the Cathedral. Cebu, or rather Mactan is also where Magellan met his end after bragging that he knew how to “handle” the locals who had not yet been won over. He was seriously wounded in combat by the local tribal chief Lapu Lapu on Mactan Island and later died on his ship.
We actually stayed on Mactan Island which is connected to Cebu City by many bridges. Mactan has many luxury resorts, beautiful beaches and great diving. We walked a lot and went diving in beautiful turquoise waters and saw a lot of great fish and some good coral (where it wasn’t dynamited). We met many interesting locals and spent a day with 2 young people from our hotel who explained a lot about their life in the Philippines. On our dive trip we were waited on hand and foot and we found out that most of the crew were not on the payroll. They only call them and pay them if they get a trip---otherwise they are at home unemployed. These people live on rice for 2-3 meals a day and the price of rice had just doubled there and they were hurting.
We read about Thresher sharks being around Malapasqua, an island a half hour by boat off the Northern tip of Cebu. Thresher sharks are rare to see as they stay quite deep. We made dive plans online and rode a local non-express, non-air conditioned bus for about 5 hours. We absorbed the countryside and observed the lives of the local people who live along the highway. They seemed poor but happy. We stayed in a great Oceanside cabin right on a beautiful beach next to the dive shop. Rob saw the Thresher sharks from a distance through murky waters on his 2nd dive. To see them, you dive to the top of a sea mount (90ft) where you sit and wait for them to come up out of the deep. You begin this dive just before dawn. By the time you are on the bottom, it is just getting light. We were amused by other sea life while we waited—such as sharks, octopi, squid, & the usual assortment of reef fish, etc. Besides not having much light the water was murky with visibility about 30 + feet. Rob estimated the sharks were 7-10 feet including the tail. Sharon decided not to go ---too dark---too deep. We both did 5 other dives in the area. We saw many new fish (to us) and giant dancing nudibrancs. Malapascua has no cars or roads and it has wonderful turquoise waters and reasonable prices. Don’t book a hotel ahead. We were sorry we didn’t spend a week there and 3 days in Cebu. On our return to Langkawi we put Frenzy II on the hard in Rebak Marina and started sanding and preparing the bottom for painting. Our Time Home We arrived home in Ft. Lauderdale in June, intending to fly to Toronto to Shirley & Richard Kwan’s wedding (friends we taught & traveled with in China) on June 22nd. Jetlagged and worn out from sanding & working on the bottom of the boat in 95 degree weather in Malaysia, we both caught colds and were down for about a week and a half. This is the longest that we've been home since we left on our circumnavigation in 1997. We came home with a mission---to clean out our 2nd bedroom and make it livable!! It has been stacked high with boxes since we bought the condo and moved in, in 2000. We made a road trip to visit family and friends from Florida to Maryland. We stopped first in Tampa to see Eddie (Rob's son) & Rosa and their 3 sons, Carlos (10), David (8) and Daniel (2), then headed for Concord, North Carolina to see Sarita(Rob's daughter) & Rich and Richie(14), Robby(11), Angela(8) & Ashley(2). Then on to Maryland to see Claire & Judy (Rob's cousins) in Port Tobacco. Had some great crabs!!! On our return trip we detoured to Virginia Beach to spend a few days with Sharon's friend Leigh & son John and then headed due west to drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains on our way to Gainesville, Georgia where Sharon's brother John & wife Lanell are building a cabin on their big RV lot in the mountains. Back at home, we emptied some boxes and then filled up a small storage facility with the rest. We bought furniture, blinds, etc for the new 2nd bedroom. Sharon stripped the 2nd bathroom and re-wallpapered. What a job!!! We got it finished in time for our cruising friends Clive & Jean, yacht Hannakin, to come for their first visit to the U.S. They are formerly from England but now they call Langkawi home. They came in October and we had a great time sightseeing & showing them Ft. Lauderdale by water and also went to Disneyworld and the Kennedy Space Center. The finale to their visit was a wild Halloween/Political Party put on by Sharon’s daughter Karen & husband John. Fun was had by all as they came to the party dressed as Joe the Plumber and Hillary and Sharon was dressed as Palin with a pig nose---as you may remember the political turmoil over a statement Obama made during the campaign and was accused of referring to Palin ---something about “A pig with lipstick”. Rob was a Moose that Palin shot & missed!!! Rob & I worked for the Obama campaign and were also Official Poll Workers during the election. We spent many wonderful evenings and Thanksgiving, football games, shopping & Christmas Tree decorating with John & Karen (Sharon’s daughter) and Nora (13) and Mason (12). Chuck, Sharon’s son and his 2 boys Stone (8) and Luke (7) also flew in from Beaumont, Texas to have Thanksgiving. In August we had flown to Texas for a week of fun; canoeing, hiking and partying. Chuck is now engaged to Kelsey, a nurse from Beaumont and they set the wedding date for next May 10th. We are looking forward to our Shanghai China Pinghe teacher friends Gary & Cathy Zhou visiting us for 5 days just before Christmas. They are both graduate students now at Indiana University. Our plans for 2009 are to fulfill our previous plans for 2008 & to sail to the Med. Pray for us---that we don’t have boat trouble or a pirate attack. We leave Ft. Lauderdale, Dec. 26th to go back to the boat. We are sending this to all of our family and friends. We probably gave more details than you wanted to hear!!! Ha!! We apologize for not writing more often. We love you all and hope your 2009 year will be happy and healthy. Please send us emails or letters about your life and plans. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah! HAPPY NEW YEAR
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