Linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Malacca Straits are one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. To escape the monsoon and reach the east coast of Malaysia, we must become one of the over fifty thousand vessels that transit it annually. 

Not quite a red sky in the morning.

Dawn found us a few miles south of Langkawi. Darkness fled into the west as the sun crept into the sky, all except for a lingering patch to the north which thickened and then with surprising speed began to swallow the islands one by one. First Langkawi was gone and then Pulau Singa Besar and Pulau Dayang and the others disappeared into an advancing wall of dark dirty weather that was now strobed with the purple bruises of lightning flashes. The wind had died but ugly waves came close together, giving Labyrinth an awkward hobby horse motion.

“Jolene!” I called down the companionway. “We’re going to have some weather shortly. You want anything?” Jolene always suffers the first couple of days at sea and a non committal grunt from her bunk was my reply. I ran through my pre-storm checklist. Since we were motoring under bare poles there was not much to be done, which was good as the storm fast approaching.

A white wall of falling water swept in and then with an almighty burst of thunder, a simultaneous crashing from a multitude of directions that only barely followed a brilliant series of lightning flashes, the storm was upon us.  The wind lifted horses manes of spray from the tips of the utterly confused waves and warm rain roared in sideways in violent bursts which stung my skin. A violent flurry of lightning strikes, bolts white and purple energy arcing from the heavens and discharging in great columns that persisted for a handful of moments and left a searing afterglow in your eyes, all with a mile or two of Labyrinth, sent me below to ensure that anything electronic that could be disconnected was.

The waves settled as the front moved past and changed direction into a long series of rollers travelling with the storm. I gave up on our southerly course, coming south-east and running with the waves and the wind for a much smoother ride. The rain reached a drumming crescendo and stabilised into a heavy downfall that dimpled the smooth rolling waves like the surface of a golf ball.

We surfed the waves for an hour or longer, time that flew as I held close attention to our course, the waves and the storm. I didn’t realise how much I was enjoying myself until Jolene’s concerned face, damp with sweat, appeared in the companionway to ask why I was laughing; laughing at the pure elemental joy of being out in a storm at full flight, a storm at sea with the air thick with white water and reeking of ozone.

And then as quickly as it came, it was gone, racing ahead of us and leaving a placid, settled sea in its wake with the wind falling away to nothing. It was almost with reluctance that I resumed our southerly course. The storm had blown us to the west and as the clouds lifted and the horizon returned, I saw we were only a few miles off Pulau Segantang, an island that is part of the marine park where we scuba dived earlier in the year. These islands gradually slid by  as did the rest of the day with a long, uneventful motorsail.

Labyrinth is a 40′ Searunner trimaran, wood overlaid with fibreglass, built in 1982. We are the third owners.

This was our first major voyage together aboard Labyrinth. I had owned the boat for two months during which we kept her in Rebak marina in Langkawi while we conducted maintenance and shakedown cruises. A boat in a marina is small, cramped, awkward apartment. It is only at sea that you can really get to know her, and in knowing her, grow to love her. This is where you learn her moods and discover the weathers and waters she favours and those which make her skittish and shy.

Langkawi was great but it was time for us to move on. The south western monsoon was getting stronger each day and we needed to get around to the east coast before it became too difficult. It was around six hundred nautical miles down through the Strait of Malacca, around Singapore and then north up the east coast of Malaysia, where we would spend several months diving off legendary islands like Tioman, Rendang and the Perhentians.

Other yachties who had done the trip had plenty of horror stories about getting tangled in fishermen’s nets and terrifying midnight encounters with cargo ships so I decided we do it in a series of nine daytime sails, anchoring each night and only continuing when visibility was good. I wanted to visit the great historical ports of Penang and Malacca as well as visit Kuala Lumpur (where I had a supplier of scuba tanks lined up) and Singapore to get radios and flares.

And so it was planned – from Langkawi to Penang, from Penang to Pangkor and then onto Port Dickson, where we would drive to Kuala Lumpur to pick up equipment. I didn’t want to enter Singapore’s waters as the clearance process and marinas were expensive so instead we would detour up the Johor Strait and stay at Johor Bahru, daytripping into Singapore. Then it was only a few days around the south of the peninsula and we would be on the east coast.

I considered the storm a good omen and, indeed it was the only dirty weather we saw on the trip. In fact, there was very little wind to be had at all and we motored virtually the entire way to Johor. The first night found us off Penang. There was no available berthing so we anchored off a small x-shaped island named Pulau Rimau which marked the southerly approaches to the port with a lighthouse, a useful feature as we did not get there until well after dark. When I used the torch to inspect the bridle on the anchor chain I saw that the water was alive, absolutely alive, with hundreds of soup bowl sized jellyfish, each trailing a metre of tendrils.

We were underway again by 0600 as we had a long leg to Pangkor ahead of us. We weren’t the only ones stealing a march on the day. All along the coast, the small red and white lights of fishing boats were heading out on courses roughly parallel to ours. There were many buildings and streetlights along the shore and it was at times difficult to tell what was moving and what was not, what was on shore and what was at sea.

The sun found us some three miles south of Penang. There was some high cloud but no wind and only a very moderate swell which Labyrinth glided through with barely any motion of her deck. I increased revolutions to cruising speed and settled in for a long boring day. My plan was to stay outside the ten metre contour line, which kept us about three miles off the coast. I hoped this meant we would avoid any inshore fishing stakes or nets. I was only going off what others had told me and did not know the habits of the fishermen so we would have to see how successful this tactic would be.

Fishermen adapt their tactics to their prey. Here two boats trawl a net between them, hoping to scoop a baitball they have spotted. The nets are weighted to dip ten metres beneath the surface; for a yacht the best option may be to run directly between them.

We found a fishing fleet of dozens of boats, narrow with an outboard engine and a crew of two or three.  They fished by putting out long driftnets about one or two hundred metres long, marked at either end by large floats flying flags if you are lucky or a couple of empty plastic water bottles if you are not. We soon learnt that when we saw a flag, we had to look for a matching flag and assume that the net was in between the two. These were sometimes quite astonishing distances apart and it was no surprise that so many yachties complain bitterly about having their props fouled.

The fishermen waved at me and then pointed to the fishing fleet, wagging their index fingers at me and then twirling them, indicating that I would get caught up in the nets. I nodded and waved back, then pointed to the left of the fleet, hopefully communicating that this was the direction I wanted to go. The fishermen nodded, flashed thumbs up and then went back to their work.

There were boats to the front, behind and off starboard now and I realised that they were laying their nets from the west to the east – working from off shore to in. In other words, they were laying their nets all around me in long established pattern and very shortly Labyrinth was to be caught in a maze.

I was looking around for a way out when the fishing boat that warned me the first time was back. This time they were more emphatic with their hand signals. The way I was going was no good! Caught in nets! Cannot go! I signed back ‘yes but which way to go?’ Pointing at the nets all around. The skipper pointed to the north west and then weaved his hand back and forth as if he was describing a snake’s motion. I would have to head through the fleet, dodging nets as I could, he seemed to be saying. I spread my arms in an ‘are you serious!?’ gesture. He laughed and repeated the serpentine motion to the north west. I saw that he was right, as all the nets seemed to be set up north west to south east. Finally sure they I had got the idea, they gave the thumbs up and, laughing, returned to their work.

Once I had worked out what he had meant, I saw the order in their system. The nets were set up parallel to each other, running across the current. What looked like chaos a couple of minutes ago was suddenly clear.  I ran along the net until I reached its end, then turned back to my original course until I reached another. By repeating this zigzag over and over I passed successfully through the fleet without becoming fouled and earning the ire of a fisherman who has just seen his main source of income cut up by another stupid westerner.

The sun was a handbreadth above the horizon as we approached Pulau Pangkor. It is similar to Penang, a large island separated from the mainland by a strait a mile or two wide. The main town of Pangkor is on the island and is serviced by a continual stream of ferries from the mainland.  There is a Malay navy base on the mainland and numerous recent waterfront developments including Marina Island, which was our destination. The offshore fishing fleet was returning and we kept to the middle of the channel as they, familiar with these waters, ran past us inshore.

The Pangkor fishing fleet races the setting sun. The unusual light is caused by ‘The Haze,’ the annual cloud of pollution caused by slash and burn farmers in Sumatra. This year it got so bad that schools were closed in Singapore and visibility could be reduced to a boatlength.

Some marinas have detailed approach packs showing landmarks and detailed waypoints. All I had from Marina Island, the result of a recent land reclamation project, were entrance coordinates – which the computer and the charts agreed were in the middle of a large mudflat. Eventually I picked it out amid a blazing galaxy of lights of a dozen large apartment blocks. It was barely noticeable in the evening gloom and only the slim masts of half a dozen yachts, poking out from behind a tree lined breakwater a mile away, betrayed its presence.

The apartments were lit up like a sports ground with floodlights that dazzled us and made it extremely difficult to see the marina, which seemed to be hidden in its own pool of shadow. As we crept closer, Jolene down from her lookout perch on the roof. “There’s a flashing light!”

Someone was flashing a torch at us. We approached and gradually we could make out three long pontoon wharfs. I headed towards the flashing torch, feeling all the while as if we were a spy approaching  a secret rendezvous (perhaps it was the Le Carre novel I had been reading that afternoon.)

Jolene was calling to the man with the torch now and she relayed to me his instruction to me. “Bow in, fenders port side!” I held our position while Jolene set up and then we were alongside, lines were passed and our first leg had ended.

Shae, a polite and personable man, immediately endeared himself to me by coiling our lines neatly on the wharf as well as producing a screwdriver from his pocket and deftly wiring the correct plug onto our shore powercord. He knew what yachties wanted to know when they arrive in a strange port: where are the showers? Where is a restaurant?  When does the office open tomorrow? He had answers ready for all these questions and more. It makes such a difference when you are welcomed in such a manner and I began to feel good about our stop in Pangkor.

We stayed for a couple of days, hiring a car and running back to Penang for a short visit. Historically one of the great free ports of the British empire, Penang is now a vibrant, thriving industrial and tourist destination, with a highly diverse cultural and ethnic mix, crammed into a maze of narrow streets where Chinese grandmothers will sell traditional dim sum at the foot of multinational skyscrapers. It is a wonderful place in which to get lost, where every street is a delightful chaotic assault on the senses.

A tiny temple entrance, nestled between apartment blocks and car parks in the backstreets of Georgetown, Penang.

We wandered Chinatown after dark when the streets are clogged with noodle stalls serving to plastic tables and chairs that filled alleys wall to wall. Between our broken Malay and the vendor’s broken English and a great amount of laughter at each other’s misunderstandings, we ordered fantastic fried noodles and soups, full of delicately spiced wontons and fried vegetables. The next day we had to tear ourselves away as we knew it was somewhere that would steal weeks if not months from us, as we hunted out new treasures and we had to console ourselves that we would return to give Penang the visit it deserved.

We were underway again before dawn on the 24th of June – a Monday. We were into the burning season now, an annual haze of smoke caused by slash and burn farmers in Sumatra clearing forest for their crops that chokes the air with pollution from Penang to Singapore and reduced visibility to less than a quarter of a mile at times.

 A Malaysian coastguard vessel crossed our path, looming out of the smog and raising us on the radio. After the usual name-destination-number of people on board type questions he helpfully told us that the haze was bad and we should be careful and to give them a call if we needed any rescuing. His voice sounded hopeful and I couldn’t help but laugh as I knew exactly how they felt – desperate for something to relieve the monotony of a long boring patrol.

That day our horizon was rarely seen and our world was an interminable  limbo of grey, with a grey sea and a grey sky meeting at a border that could not be defined. Ships sounded their foghorns in the open sea and I kept the radar on as we rarely could see more than a half mile. I laughed at the irony – the haze had rendered my decision to conduct only day sails irrelevant as the visibility at night was often better than this. There was no wind and the water’s surface was glassy and smooth. We felt like ghosts, alone in a strange alien world.

The Haze would somehow mute sound as well, so ships would appear silently and drift by like clouds.

A counter current was slowed us through the day and I realised that we would not make our anchorage at Pulau Angsa until late that night. It was a lighthouse that marked the northern approaches to Port Klang – other yachties had been unanimous in encouraging us to avoid the port and to make our way through a maze of islands and banks off shore. I had planned to do this but I decided now that, conditions being what they were, it was better to continue on through the night, bypass the islands and the port entirely and avoid the whole shooting match by staying out to sea. This also meant we would get to our destination, Port Dickson, the following morning rather than the following night.

The other consideration was that, although we had been in the Strait of Malacca since we had left Langkawi, it was around Klang that things got interesting. Here the navigable water narrowed to around ten miles, necessitating the use of traffic separation schemes, or lanes, to keep northbound and southbound vessels apart.

The Strait is one of the most important and busy shipping lanes in the world, with over fifty thousand large vessels passing through each year. In the early 2000s piracy once again became a problem but a prompt and effective response from the region’s navies nipped that in the bud. No, what I was worried about was being run down by a container ship. The tactic used by many yachties is to use the area that is far enough off the Malay coast that fishermen don’t lay their nets yet inshore enough to stay out of the shipping lanes. We had plenty of space to play with north of Klang but now we were squeezed down to a lane of our own around three miles wide – still more than enough but just another thing to keep you on your toes.

Still the night passed without seeing any lights or sign of another vessel, just the ghostly otherworld of haze, silent apart from the engine chugging continently away. It was not until 0500 that I finally saw something. We had struggled against the tidal current until about three when we had rounded the southern extremity of the banks and come a south east course. This, combined with the turning tide, gave us a boost of speed and we were soon singing along, the water hissing down her sides as Labyrinth’s three hulls cut her way like a trident.

I was approaching the southern approach channel to Port Klang. My chart had a pilot boarding point marked about a mile north of our course so I was on the lookout for any large vessels approaching from the south. It was around then I saw a single red light off the port bow, followed by a couple of white lights. I thought we were seeing the first fishing boats coming out so altered course slightly to give them a wide berth.  Although the red light was moving as I expected it to, the white lights seemed to keeping exactly in line with each other and I began to wonder if it was a line of vessels trawling a net between them.

Just at that moment the breeze rose and, like a curtain lifting, the haze rose with it and I saw with a shock that the white lights were the sidelights of a massive bulk carrier, waiting just south of the pilot buoy. The wind increased in strength, stripping away the haze and I could see more lights ahead. Many more lights.

“Wake up Jolene,” I called down. “I need some extra eyes up here!”

The shipping lane was several miles away to starboard and there were no anchorages marked on my charts. A ship at anchor must show a single white light – two if you are over a hundred metres in length. Underway, it also shows its port and starboard lights (red and green respectively). Suddenly it seemed like there were many pairs of white lights out there, with a few red and greens thrown in for good measure. I wasn’t sure exactly how, but it seemed that we had found ourselves in the middle of a massive anchorage of over thirty large cargo ships waiting their turn to enter Port Klang. They seemed to be spread from the Pilot Buoy to the shipping lane and, unless I wanted to enter the lanes, the only way was to go through.

Our radar is straight out of the Hunt for Red October but it is an invaluable aid when vision is limited. With over twenty contacts within three miles, this is perhaps the busiest time we’ve had.

The tide had increased in speed giving us a corresponding boost. We raced through as quickly as possible in what was definitely the most intense hour of our trip. Jolene was constantly staring out to sea, having received a very brief, very practical lesson on what the various lights meant and whether a vessel was anchored, underway, bearing down on us or heading away, while I jumped between the radar station and the wheel, finding the fastest way through. The only chatter on the radio was a South African arguing with the pilot vessel and an Eastern European making an unintelligible requests that no one answered.

Ships at night may seem lonely against the dark sea but each is a village, a community of crewmen, with their own habits and ways.

The haze was almost completely gone but clouds obscured the moon and the stars and all around us the great container ships floating on an oil dark sea. The only light was what they cast and they lit up the night like galaxies, each a tight cluster of stars, spray and smoke.

And then suddenly we were through and clear.  We left the confusion of lights behind and the green blips on the radar slid away and soon the only light was the gentle rising dawn.

A few days later we were in the Scuba Dynamics dive shop in Kuala Lumpur.  The proprietors Henry and Gary had come to my rescue when my original scuba tank supplier had fallen through. Like many suppliers, the original guys had told me they had what I wanted only to admit it was still on order when I turned up. Suddenly the whole reason we had stopped at Port Dickson was gone. However, after some frantic phone calls and emails, I found Henry and Gary who were able to get me the tanks I wanted, at a better price, within twenty four hours. So we hired a car and made our way through the mindboggling complex freeway system of KL to their shop, tucked away on the second story of a arcade in an outlying suburb.

Malaysia has some world famous dive sites such as Tioman and the Perhentian off the east coast and Sipidan off Borneo and it has bred a passionate, dedicated community of local divers, united by their love of the sport and the undersea world. Gary and Henry were the sort of dive professional you want to meet – less interested in selling you equipment than ensuring you got the right sort of equipment. I had only meant to pick up our tanks but after talking to them for an hour we decided that they were the right guys and we splashed out on full sets of kit. Gary put together a special pack for Jolene, lacking only the gauges. But no problem, he said, he’d just courier them free of charge to our next destination once they arrived.

Jonker Street, Malacca. The historic merchant street has become an avenue of souvenir shops and bistros.

Malacca had been a disappointment. Like Penang, it was once one of the great trading ports of the world, but it had been subject to a major government ‘rejuvenation’ project where old forts were rebuilt and replica galleons constructed in squares. It was not a living, breathing city of history like Penang, but an open air museum. Don’t get me wrong, there were a great many sandals and socks wearing tourists wandering around who seemed right into it, but it was just not our thing.

That moment at the end of a long night when the coming day holds nothing but promise.

The port looked much better at dawn the next day, when we were six miles off shore. It was a beautiful shadow show of a city in silhouette, of towers and cranes, black against a red sky. In some ways I preferred it like this, a suggestion of what it once was rather than the concrete reality of what it now is. Emboldened by our night legs and with the haze continuing to come in and shut down visibility, we decided to throw away the day sails and make best speed, letting the midnight tide take us out of Port Dickson and down the coast.

And make good speed we did; by 0900 we were passing the Water Islands, where we had planned to spend the night and by that evening we had done two days sail in one, spending the night anchored off the last island before Singapore, Pulau Pisang, so we could transit the Singapore Straits in daylight.

We woke the next morning to a thunderstorm passing to the south, which brought in its wake a fine north westerly that had us singing happily along at nine knots. I was still a long way from understanding all of Labyrinth’s tricks and habits but I felt a thrill of triumph when we passed a monohull sailing on the same course, leaving it hull down by midmorning.

Now we on the final approaches, and had turned the corner into the Straits of Singapore. The volume of shipping was enormous – more ships than I had ever seen before in one place. We had seen plenty of bulk carriers and containerships on our way down now the waters from a mile away until the horizon were full of ships, most happily following each other in the shipping lanes like elephants on parade, linked trunk to tail. Sometimes some, painted in the livery of the same shipping line, would hold formation with each other and travel together like a herd of rhino, as if they needed safety in numbers to shoulder charge their way through the traffic. Other times, vessels each over a third of a kilometre long would pass with only a hands breath of metres between them, a gap which looked, in perspective, as thin as a credit card.

Men have always fished these waters. It is the giant cargo vessels who are the interlopers.

And around this all, fishermen fished from their tiny boats and laid out their nets, most times oblivious to the leviathans which surrounded them, only occasionally casting a quick glance up from their work to ensure they had not drifted into harm’s way. It was no wonder that passage of the Singapore Straits inspired dread in some people. There was a phenomenal amount of things happening at once but it was as regimented and ordered as a column of army ants. After the mad confusion of the night off Klang, the approaches to Singapore seemed positively gentile.

We left the docks and the ships behind and I turned into the Johor Strait, the mile wide channel which separates the island of Singapore from mainland Asia. It was a study of contrasts; on the mainland bank were mangrove swamps and fishing villages built on stilts, whereas the Singaporean bank was concrete walls and fences and glass towers. Singaporean police boats hovered just their side of the strait, daring you to violate their territorial waters.

As we neared Raffles Marina, Singapore’s premium mooring,  a pair of ten metre yachts came out, set their sails sharply and raced each other towards us. They were fine, gleaming racing boats, premium thoroughbreds no doubt. Their eight man crews, all in matching team polo tops, sat along their windward rails to help the boats sail more stiffly. I was standing on the roof of Labyrinth when they passed, sunburnt and wearing a pair of ratty shorts while I tried to work out which of the upcoming bridge spans was the best to pass under.  They tacked around a buoy a mile down and then headed back to the clubhouse, their day’s work done.

We too were almost done; our mooring in Johor Bahru was only a few miles away. Our first passage was almost at an end and, in some ways, I couldn’t quite believe it. Owning and travelling on a boat the way we were had been my dream since I was a boy, and here it was, the fantastic dream turned into actual, real, mundane day-to-day reality. I had read books of sea adventures all my life and now I was living my own.

I thought back to Rebak, when I had heard a German tourist ask the previous owner of Labyrinth why they chose to live the life they did – in cramped boats, at the mercy of a capricious sea. “Because it is an adventure,” he had answered. “Possibly the last great adventure available in the world today.”

There may be no more blank spaces on maps but there is still was plenty to discover, about myself, about each other and about the world around us. Our voyage was not ending. It had only just begun.

Just the Facts

Contact details and co-ordinates of people and places referred to in this article.

Anchorages

• P. Singa Besar, sth of Langkawi  — 06 12.26 N 099 44.72 E – 5m, mud.
• P. Rimau, sth of Penang — 05 14.91 N 100 16.65 E — 4m, mud. Note: P. Kendi 5m to west offers another anchorage; it was full of fishing boats when we checked it out.
• P. Pisang — 01 28.430 N 103 15.120 E  — 6m, mud. North or south sides of island are both good, depending on prevailing conditions.

Marinas

• Pangkor: Marina Island — james@marinaisland.com — N 04′ 12.699 E 100′ 36.030. Note: charts are incorrect for this new development. Depth is good all the way in. The marina has three jetties which they call Marina 1,2 & 3. On approach, 1 is to the port, 3 is to starboard.
• Port Dickson: Admiral Marina — http://www.admiralmarina.com.my — 02 28.689 N 101 50.709 E
• Johor Bahru: Danga Bay Marina — marina@dangabay.com, dangamarina@gmail.com — 01 28.500 N 103 43.500 E

Other

• Scubadynamics: http://www.scubadynamics.com.my/  — +603 2300 1489
  
• Car Hire, Port Dickson: Razak from Zalhayat Enterprise — +6019 250 2519
• Car Hire, Johor Bahru: Green Matrix Car Hire —   www.carrentaljohor.com —  +6013 888 2531 (Janifal)