Sailing With Senta: Borneo Here We Come

By Faith Van Rooyen

Six months in a remote coral atoll sounds peaceful. And it was most of the time.
Except for a fire on board, a visit from a North Sea rescue ship, a Hermit Crab Race Meeting, a dinghy sailing and rowing Regatta, a yacht wreck and other exciting moments.
Then a two thousand mile voyage to Langkawi Island off the Malaysian north west coast was followed by seven months preparation for an expedition to Borneo.
Between March and November 2004 Senta explored the Malacca Straits, Singapore, Tioman Island, Kuching, Labuan Island and Brunei, before arriving at Kota Kinabalu in the Sabah State in Northern Borneo.

Colour photographs and charts help tell the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Faith Van Rooyen
• Release date: Apr 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310629891

Faith Van Rooyen

Born 1938. Educated at Yeoville Convent, Johannesburg High School for Girls and Witwatersrand University, all in South Africa. Worked for more rhan 35 years in the computer software industry, designing and writing and implementing systems for business on mainframes and personal computers. Retired in 1995 to fulfil a life-time dream of cruising with her husband Pierrre on their forty foot Armel sailing boat, Senta.

Book preview

Sailing with Senta - Borneo Here We Come

By Faith Van Rooyen

Copyright 2013 Faith Van Rooyen

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Cover Picture

Other Books in This Series

Acknowledgements

Chapter One Six Months in Paradise

Chapter Two Salamon Atoll to Langkawi

Chapter Three Preparing to Sail to Borneo

Chapter Four Langkawi to Singapore

Chapter Five Singapore to Tioman Island

Chapter Six Tioman to Kuching

Chapter Seven Kuching to Kota Kinabalu

Appendices

Glossary

Cover Picture

Rafflesia Arnoldi, a rare flower seen on the lower slopes of Mount Kinabalu in the Sabah state of Malaysian Borneo. Can reach one metre in diameter and weigh up to ten kilograms.

Other Books in the Series

Sailing With Senta - Eastward Ho!

Sailing With Senta - Across Coral Seas

Sailing With Senta - Africa Calls

Sailing With Senta - Tropical Dream

Sailing With Senta - Borneo Here We Come

Sailing With Senta - Playtime in the Philippines

Sailing With Senta - Small Boat Voyaging

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to

Judith Ryder, long time friend in Wakkerstroom, South Africa, who has spent a decade managing our affairs while we sailed among Indian Ocean islands.

All the new friends we made along the way who helped us find out how wonderful the cruising life style can be.

For Pierre, Brett and Ingrid.

-------------------- ooo --------------------

Chapter One Six months in Paradise

In early February 2003 Senta arrived at Salamon atoll, in the Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Our voyage of just over two thousand miles from Langkawi in Malaysia had taken nineteen days at an average day’s run of a hundred and ten miles. Not a blistering pace, but at least we arrived safely and had enjoyed ourselves. We could now look forward to five or six months of tropical island living, the kind we all dream about.

Salamon Atoll - Chagos Archipelago

Islands are heavily wooded with coconut palms 70ft high. Lagoon measures 5 miles by 3 miles and is strewn with coral heads.

The day to day life in this un-inhabited atoll, consisting of loafing, swimming, fishing, reading, chatting with friends and doing odd bits of boat maintenance, was interrupted by several notable events.

Fire on Senta

After the first afternoon volley-ball session on the beach at Boddam Island we returned to Senta in the dinghy. As we approached we noticed that she was anchored uncomfortably close to a large bommie. Next day, once the sun had risen high enough to see the underwater obstacles, we decided to move to a safer position. We started the engine and Pierre went forward to retrieve the ground tackle, using the hand operated anchor windlass. I slowly motored Senta forward to ease the tension on the chain. Just as Pierre indicated that the anchor was up and we could move away, I glanced towards the main hatch and, to my horror saw a cloud of black smoke emerging.

‘FIRE!’ I shouted. ‘What?’ queried Pierre. Almost before I could shout my second alarm call Pierre saw the smoke and darted back across the deck. He could not see what was happening inside Senta because of the dense smoke. After filling his lungs with fresh air he leapt down the companion-way steps. The smoke was coming from the engine compartment. Pierre ripped off the bottom companion-way step , which doubles as a cover to the battery compartment. There lay the cause of the problem.

Some weeks before, while still on passage to Chagos we found that the pump taking the seawater to the heat exchanger for the fridge was overheating. It blew several fifteen-amp fuses. Consultation with the West Marine catalogue showed that we should have been using twenty-five-amp fuses but we didn’t have any. We thus did the dangerous thing of ‘hot wiring’ the pump directly to the batteries. It worked, but created a disaster waiting to happen.

The disaster had arrived. Pierre saw that the wires from the battery bank to the water pump had become so hot that the insulation had completely burned away and the wires started to burn into the battery casing. With eyes smarting and no more oxygen in his lungs Pierre came back into the cockpit for a few gulps of fresh air. Then down again in the cabin he opened the port flap exposing the engine compartment and checked for flames. There were none. The smoke, still thick was beginning to dissipate. The water pump had burned out and ceased to operate.

Senta was now drifting in the bommie-strewn waters. We did not want to use the engine long enough to take us to our planned new anchorage. But we used it for just a few moments to position Senta approximately where she had been before and re-laid the anchor.

We cleared up the mess of burned wires and disconnected the fridge compressor from the engine before picking up the anchor and motoring to our new spot. By evening Senta was settled in. We had been extremely lucky that we hadn’t lost Senta and vowed never to be so stupid ever again as to omit a fuse or circuit breaker from our wiring.

Arrival of Lamu

On 4 March a five hundred ton converted North Sea oil-rig rescue ship re-named Lamu entered the atoll. Her skipper Leslie, an Australian, and three New Zealander crew members, Chris, Wayne and Lucy were delivering her to Australia and en route were completing her refit to a luxury motor cruiser.

They were doing an excellent job, but hadn't yet decided what to do with the large morgue in the hold. This was connected to the deck by a chute down which filled body bags were dropped, to be stored in the specially designed racks that lined the morgue. This was a useful facility for a rescue ship, but a bit bizarre on a luxury cruiser.

Lamu held a party on board for the crews of the eight boats in the anchorage. At 1700,as invited,we all arrived at Lamu in our dinghies, only to find that they were not ready for us. We were operating on Chagos time and Lamu had not yet switched from Seychelles time, so they thought it was only 1600. We used the extra time to explore the ship, gasping at the walk-in freezers, double beds and lounge suites and especially her sailing ‘dinghy’, a genuine Arab dhow from the port of Lamu in northern Kenya.

The Lamu crew provided fillet steak, calamari, a green salad, cool drinks and wine. Each yacht brought an accompanying dish of salad or a dessert. Charlie, the Maltese poodle we were dog sitting, found a large flying fish on deck for his supper and topped this off with bits of steak and morsels of puddings. A great time was had by all.

Paul of Quarterdeck did some magic tricks and seventy-year old Keith from Lady Guinevere, sang a sea shanty and recited a poem. Several people got pretty drunk on Lamu's excellent wine, and one lady got absolutely motherless.

But some quick sobering up happened as the weather deteriorated, blowing fresh from the west, exactly on the nose for our dinghy return to our boats. It was quite a mission getting everyone safely back against the choppy sea that had built up. There were some sore heads the next morning. It is at times like this that I am really glad we gave up alcohol decades ago, in fact as soon as we realized that we could not afford to drink and sail.

Cupid Pierre

Pierre tried his hand at matchmaking. On 7 May, Chris, a seventy year old friend, who looks and acts at least fifteen years younger, arrived in his motor yacht Harmony, and came aboard Senta for a chat. Louise, Chris' wife of 44 years had died two years previously and he was finding the life of a single hander lonely. Pierre told Chris about Pauline, an attractive late-middle-aged lady,