Monday 19 July Return to Peninsular Malaysia

The passage from Borneo to Pengelih on the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia was a journey of two halves; the first half motoring in no wind, the second half a spankingly good sail with wind on our port beam. We crossed the traffic separation channel which is a marine motorway for super tankers and cargo ships doing 15 knots. They can't stop. We have to carefully time it to cross at right angles astern of the east bound ships and then astern of the west bound ships.

We were feeling good when the gremlins struck one more time. Within two miles of the anchorage, luckily in a quiet channel, the engine overheat alarm began screaming at us. The raw water impeller had shredded and with no cooling water to circulate we overheated (I know that feeling). Used to these things we calmly turned off the engine, pulled out the headsail and turned to sail to the edge of the channel where we could anchor and David change the impeller.

He found foreign debris in the housing. I thought it looked like calcium chips. How can you pick up calcium chips from seawater? Seawater which taken up through a sieve? Which was when we found it was the sieve itself. Somewhere, somehow a colony of oysters had grown on the inside and outside of the plastic basket and bits of shell broken off to pass down the line to shred the impeller. The weirdest thing and why should it happen now – far better than when we were crossing the shipping lanes. We think they might have started growing when we were in Labuan marina for five weeks in May. Why wait almost 700 miles to detach?

We cleaned the sieve, fitted a new impeller and continued to the super calm anchorage in Pengelih for a well deserved sleep after three nights at sea.

Over sundowners we chuckled about our latest character building adventure......After all, it is a boat.