Friday 28 February 2014

Nongsa Point

Hi everyone,
We are now in a pen at Nongsa Point Marina. 01 11.81N 104 05.84E. We had a great passage from Tanjung Piai - made great by the last three hours (of eight) being a wonderful sail.

Zen Again Track
Note the nice tacking angles!
We departed the anchorage at Tanjung Piai at 0745 this morning. The anchor and chain was very muddy indeed. No time to worry about that because two large cargo vessels were transiting the nearby channel which we had to cross. With that done we motor-sailed through a vast array of anchored vessels before again having to deal with several ships entering and leaving another adjacent port. To this point we had the tide against us and a NE breeze of 10-15 knots.

Dodging Traffic

Only a few AIS targets with CPA<1nm - no pressure!
All sorts of ships
As we approached the southern tip of Singapore a F15 Eagle was doing "circuits" above us at high speed, then a Singapore Navy patrol boat overtook us about 50m to port. They do like showing off their military hardware.

Singaporean Patrol Ship

Singaporean F15 pulling Gees

Once around the southern tip of Singapore we had to motor directly into a building breeze. After about 4 miles we took the opportunity of a gap in ship traffic to bear away and cross the shipping lanes - under sail and motor off! Superb. On the other side we had to set a course ENE which was directly into a veered breeze. We motored for about an hour, passing through a fairly narrow gap where there were impressive overfalls from the 3 knots of tide we had with us there. Once through the gap we decided to sail to Nongsa since motoring was now into a 20 knot and increasing wind.

We had a great sail to Nongsa under single reefed main and part-furled No 2 headsail. The wind built to above 25 knots but the boat was very manageable with this rig. The 1 knot of tide with us certainly heaped up the seas though! Our track looks great - nice 90 degree tacks (which are due entirely to the tide assistance). We tacked in and out between the Indonesian shore and the edge of the shipping lane. On arrival we followed our previous tracks into the marina. There's a nasty reef close to the entry which we managed to avoid.

Once in the marina we spotted uniformed staff waving us to our pen. As we've seen before Nongsa staff think everyone wants to moor stern-to, so if not one has to do a quick fender side swap. We avoided that since the next pen was free and suited our preferred orientation and our fenders. Once tied up alongside one of the staff identified himself as the clearing-in man. Marvellous! He stepped aboard and within 10 minutes we were cleared-in to Indonesia. He was happy with the copy of our CAIT (didn't want to see an original) and stated that extra crew listed on the CAIT don't matter (but undocumented ones do). Too easy.

Now to find a shower to wash off the salt and a bar to tone-down the "I've been sailing" grin.

Trust all's well where you are!

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