Newsletter no.3.April 2005

Our search and rescue project after the Tsunami was a resounding success. It was so good to be able to do something for people who needed the help. It was therapeutic for us to be doing something and giving a little back of all that we had been blessed with and the generosity of our friends and family has been overwhelming. We can never thank you enough and our greatest wish was that you all could have been witness to the joy that you brought.

We will be back to visit the island and it will have a special place in our hearts forever.

Its already the end of March and with Easter upon us, the first quarter of 2005 is under our belts. We don’t usually count our lives in measurements of time, but its infinitely better than counting it in disasters as we have so far this year with all the bad luck that has plagued us of late …

One of our friends remarked that we could look on the bright side as being given lots of material for stories, but I don’t think people will believe us after this lot.

At the end of our tsunami project with the Sea Gypsies on Yao Yai, we were in Chalong Bay to check out of Thailand. Sitting in the cockpit one evening having watched a magnificent sunset behind the hills of the Promtep Cape, Don remarked on an orange glow that seemed to remain long after the sun had disappeared. He stuck his head over the coach roof to investigate and calmly declared that the boat in front of us was on fire.

I thought he was joking at first, but heard the crackle and smelt the wood smoke.

We both shot into action as it dawned on us simultaneously that it was a dive boat that had caught fire and was anchored on rope and not chain. Besides drifting back onto us there was a real danger of exploding gas bottles. Don started the engines, I slapped on the windlass which drew us ever closer to the inferno and with a palpitating heart I wondered if the anchor was underneath the now furiously burning boat.

But we got away without any further mishap and in the dark edged our way as far away as we could to re-anchor while the flames were being doused by all and sundry.

The following evening I had just settled down to read Don the emails I had down loaded from the net when the phone rang. It was our friend Kim and as Don chatted away to him, I went on deck to get a breath of fresh air. To my amazement I looked up into the jowls of a great big 50ft monohull bearing down on us in the strong wind. She had dragged her mooring and there was no one on board. I yelled at Don and together we fended her off, leaning over the stanchions and heaving her hull away with hands and feet before she could do any damage. Then it was a scramble to drop the dinghy off the davits and grab a torch. She was heading for a monohull anchored behind us, also with no one on board, but we got there in the nick of time to wedge the dinghy between her and the adrift boat and push her away with our dinghy engine full taps. I held her there while Don boarded and dropped the anchor.

Saved the day but was the second boat we had seen dragging off that same buoy. Its hard to credit that experienced sailors would take a chance on dodgy looking mooring buoys.

We thought that was the third and final close shave, but worse was to come. However, not before a return trip home to Telaga Marina in Malaysia.

We took our time sailing back to Malaysia having collected friend Dave who had a few days to spare to join us for the trip. Each island we stopped at had its share of stories and a quiet sorrow etched into my being. But it was with deep sadness that we arrived back to the awful carnage of so many of our friend’s boats in the marina.

Amongst the yachting fraternity, Telaga Harbour had been hit the worst. Confined and constricted, the wave built into a monster and picked up yachts and Marina equipment like toys and enmeshed and entwined, sinking, holing, smashing and destroying the lives and homes of so many.

Many were the unsung heroes and pages could be written on daring acts of bravery, of yachties that quietly went about saving boats adrift, and of marina staff that stood by in stunned disarray and did very little. In hind sight there was much said about who could have, who did and who did not, who should have and didn’t and who did and shouldn’t have, but that was in the aftershock of an enormous catastrophe and no blame can be placed on anyone. The disaster happened and now it is time to salvage the pieces, learn from mistakes made and be prepared in the event of anything similar happening.

It was sad to see lifeless yachts broken and dead on the verges of the marina. Bits and pieces of boats washed up on the beach behind where Katrine is moored and parts of the marina walk-on strewn in many of the surrounding bays in Langkawi.

Despite this, we had been overawed that not one yachtie had lost his life in the disaster. For a seafaring community at the height of the season when there were over a thousand boats in South East Asian waters this was phenomenal. One can only put that down to the Grace of God because the damage to many yachts was enormous.

Most cruising yachties don’t have insurance – it is prohibitively expensive for us – so the damaged boats that weren’t carted off to boatyards as insurance claims had their owners hard at work, sanding and filling removing buckled stainless steel,  replacing and remaking bits and pieces to get their homes livable once more.

It was Chinese New Year when we got back; all business comes to a standstill in Langkawi for 10 days over this period being the main annual holiday for the many Chinese who run the majority of businesses on the island. We decided it was a good time for Don to return home to see his Mom and a time for us both to catch our breath. He left and I stayed as bungalow guard on Katrine lending a hand and keeping company with those of us left in the anchorage that used to be Telaga Harbour Marina.

Our friends Laurie and Sue had built their catamaran in Australia and launched her the same time that we had launched Katrine on the other side of the world. Our lives crossed soon after we had both arrived in Thailand and has continued to touch over the past three years at different places on our journey. Their boat “Coal Miners Dream” had some of the worst damage. These two stoic and brave souls had just returned from Australia where they had had to return due to Laurie’s’ serious ill health. After his chemotherapy they had come back to get their dream back on track only to be caught in the marina during the tsunami. The damage to their catamaran was enormous and they had no insurance but they set about restoring their boat with amazing cheerfulness and it was whilst chatting to them that we learnt about an unsung hero.

Mr. Lee is a silent little man who looks to be in his early 70’s. He and his wife have a monohull which they sailed from Korea, and in the cool of the afternoon, Mr. Lee would toddle over to Coal Miners Dream, pick up a sander and in his quiet way, set to work in earnest for a few hours each day. We learnt that Mr. Lee was a man of very few words – probably because his English was limited, but we also learnt that he had left Korea under a cloud. It turns out that the cloud was Mr. Lee’s mother. In the Korean household the oldest surviving parent is the head of the family and has the most sway over the family and Mrs. Lee senior was not in favour of her 70 year old son sailing off into the blue. He had waited long enough, it seems, for the senior Mrs. Lee’s demise to no avail, so in desperation, he and Mrs.Lee junior snuck away to follow their dream before it was too late. But the consequences were great and the reason for Mr.Lee’s afternoon sanding visits were two-fold. Not only did he want to lend a helping hand, but he told us in his faltering English, he needed to escape from his wife’s weeping at not being with the family on Chinese New Year. Shame. But as Mr. Lee told us, if he went home on a visit, he would never be able to run away again. He only had one chance!

And then, on one of these sanding visits we learnt of another involvement of his.

Laurie had a photograph that he had downloaded from the internet site on the Tsunami damage in Telaga Harbour. Word had got around that there were no human casualties amongst the yachting fraternity and yet one of the photos showed a man clinging to a pylon in the marina with the swirling waters around. No one knew who this person was and we wondered if perhaps the statistics were wrong.

Laurie showed me the photo as Sue and I stood by his boat one afternoon. It was a mystery but obvious that whoever the person was in all probability he had been lost.

“Me see?” said Mr. Lee curiously. Laurie showed him the photo.

“That man, me.” He said and went back to sanding. Laurie looked at me. “What did he say?” The old man was sanding away nonchalantly.

“Mr.Lee, what did you say?” asked Laurie.

“That man me.” It was a statement. No frills.

“What happened?” we asked incredulously.

“One small boy, he fall into water between boat and walk-on. Me push boat while dad get boy. But walk-on, he break. Me hold pylon. Water come up to here.”

He indicated his chest. “Me no scare. Then water come up to here” His horizontal hand touched under his nose. “Me scare” he went on, “me let go and go lound and lound under neat” he circled his arm round and round, to demonstrate how he was sucked into the swirling water.  “And then psht” he showed how he was spat out onto the side of the marina. Mystery solved. We never found out who the child was but he has Mr.Lee to thank for saving his life.

Don arrived back from SA refreshed and we were ready to continue our last three charters of the season. The first was a few days spent in the Butangs with two South African couples and what fun we had. It was relaxing and although the weather could have been kinder the company was good. The second charter was with a Dutch chap and his South African wife and they were in for quite some excitement. We were to sail from Langkawi up to Phuket over 11 days and we set off for our first stop in the Butangs. The wind was gusting as it does at this time of the year but we hooked in off a sand spit that gives good shelter and stayed there for two nights. The wind was funneling down the channel the following morning when we planned to leave, but the sky was clear so we put in a reef to be sure, up anchored and headed for the channel. Out came the genoa and we settled in for a brisk sail to Rok Nok 40 miles away.

Suddenly dead ahead we saw the water at the sea surface begin to pick up in sheets. It was the beginning of a waterspout and we couldn’t avoid it. As fast as I could I winched in  the genoa flat to offer the least resistance, but the strength of the wind was phenomenal and the sheet (rope)in front of the jammer snapped like it was a piece of cotton and the genoa shredded like a worn out rag. The reefed-in main had no chance either and popped like an over-blown balloon. In the space of a few minutes the fury of the elements had once again reined its terror down on us, left us gob smacked and our two sails in tatters. The worst was trying to down play it when all one wanted to do was say bum, titty, poep and cry. We gathered our bits and pieces together in a rolled-up heap, stowed it away and prepared to become a motor boat for the next week.

Our guests were wide-eyed but unperturbed, and in hindsight elated to be part of the adventure. And as always it is totally amazing how there is something special to compensate for our trials and tribulations! It wasn’t necessary to follow wind direction now that we couldn’t sail, so we motored to an island that we hadn’t been to before. Which turned into a really great anchorage. We awoke in the early morning to the sound of fishing boats coming into the small bay. A fisherman waved to Don in the cockpit and beckoned him over, presenting him with some fresh calamari – a generous part of his catch of the whole night. In return we asked him on to Katrine, made him wash his feet! And invited him in for coffee. He was delighted and delightful and we had a reciprocal invitation to his home later in the morning. We walked through the little Thai fishing village if Talibong, taking photos of the children and at our friends home we were treated like kings, fed watermelon and in back-slapping humour he relayed stories as we passed the time of day with Mars and his lovely wife Kalica with promises to return on our way back to Langkawi.

Cleaning the calamari off the back of Katrine’s steps later I caught a flash of an orange and brown something lurking under the boat and on closer inspection there in the clear water I spied a loggerhead turtle. I enticed him closer and closer with tit-bits of calamari entrails, and coaxing him ever nearer my patience was rewarded when he eventually began taking the calamari rings right out of my hand. So engrossed were we that I almost had him eat the entire catch. He was just So amazing and we laughed and laughed as he poked his head out of the water every now and then to gulp at the fresh air with half closed eyes. And to complete the spectacle a barnacle grew on the top of his head out of which a feathered arm swept around to collect passing food. The scene was like an animation from Walt Disney.

It was so extraordinary, all in one day, to be part of either ends of the environmental scale – both the fury of the elements and at the other end, the gentility of nature.

And so despite the occasional oopsies I am still able to say to you……

How very blessed we are.

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P.S: we owe the pictures on this page to the website http://www.langkawitsunami.net/home.htm