Our passage to Melaka was pretty straight forward….it was about 120 miles but we broke it up into 3 day sails: 33 miles to P. Pisang, 60 miles from P. Pisang to Muak, then 20 miles to Muak to Melaka. The only tricky parts are the currents, the cargo traffic, fishing nets/lines, and the lack of wind. Currents…. is pretty much a guarantee you’ll get half of your passage with the current with you, and the other half against you…still we will average out to about 5 miles an hour. Let’s just say we motored sailed LOTS! And we stayed just outside the shipping lanes to avoid cargo ships however, tugs and barges also navigate just outside the shipping lanes and there are areas where cargo ships just anchor.
P. Pisang…. a bit rolly but whatever. 
P. Pisang we had Steve, Donna, and Carlos over for dinner…”Vegetarian BBQ chicken” and gin and tonics! 
SV Kenobi rounding a fleet of anchored cargo ships 
New power lines from an island to the mainland…thankfully we were warned by Patrick and Elizabeth. Max height unknown?! 
Hard to explain but there are “reclamation projects” happening all over Malaysia. This means sand is being placed to basically “produce land”. I believe it’s for the Chinese investors to buy “land”. Unfortunately these projects are not on charts yet and influences water flow therefore creating major differences in water depths. 
Floating mosque….the national religion is Muslim. The moon and star on the Malaysian flag represents that.
This place is full of history…and Hello Kitty?!
Melaka is a very touristy place. These “bikes” would take tourists around, blaring pop music of all types. Adults and children enjoyed these all the same.
Melaka…or Malacca…and it’s historical value was almost interiely influenced by trade since it’s location was strategically located at the narrowest point of the Malacca Strait and being sheltered most of the year from weather. This meant occupation of this place meant control over the trading between the west and the east. Violence and slavery is an understatement as countries battled to dominate and keep control of Melaka. Just recently (1956) Malaysia declared independence….since this historical city centre has been listed as a UNESCO world heritage site since 2008. See link below for a short history lesson.
http://www.geographia.com/malaysia/malhistory.html
Christ Church
It is the oldest functioning Protestant church in Malaysia built by the Dutch
Church of St. Francis
was built on the site of an old Portuguese church by a French priest, Father Farvé, in 1856. It still functions as a Catholic church.
A Formosa, built by the Portuguese, the oldest surviving European structures remaining in SE ASia. 
The maritime museum…. totally worth it. Learned lots about the trade here and how many countries invaded! 
Enrique of Malacca…possibly the first person to circumnavigate. According to wiki….”Enrique accompanied Magellan on all his voyages, including the voyage that circumnavigated the world between 1519 and 1521.
Enrique is only documented to have travelled with Magellan from Malacca to Cebu, 2500 km and 20 degrees of longitude short of completing the circumnavigation. It is not known if he ever had a chance to complete it. “
Jonker Street was the absolute highlight…here is just a glimpse of this rich, diverse, of culture and history!
Jonker street is basically Melaka’s Chinatown…
However, the architecture dates back to the Dutch era in the 1700’s. The servants and subordinates of Dutch masters used to live nearby. However, as soon as Dutch left, it became noblemen’s street! The rich started to live and trade here giving the street a deep-rooted ethnic and cultural flavour.
The Peranakans or Straits Born Chinese is a generation of its own in Melaka. See this link to read about how the first Chinese princess influenced this area.
http://thingsasian.com/story/straits-born-chinese-peranakan-story
We were told this street used to be called the “Gentleman’s street”…. no explanation necessary
We actually saw this “one window, one door” house featured in a local guide book in Malaysia stating they were not sure if anyone lived there or not. Drinking beer at Sid’s pub I looked across the street and saw this place. We often visited Sid’s Pub and never saw anyone come in or out…until one day…sure enough….2 adults left through the door! Maybe you had to of been there…but it was exciting to see someone living there.
The best part for me…was of course FOOD!
Hawker stalls everywhere!!!! We choose a Dimsum or Yumcha place 
Baos – My favorite meat filled buns 
So many little steamer baskets full of yummy goodness 
We had so many steamer baskets on our table we could hardly put our beers down! 
We stayed here for hours! When we finally left, we thanked and said how much we enjoyed the food to the servers. The owners happened to be sitting at a table near us, we didn’t know it at the time. We chatted it up with the owners and then they wanted to take a photo with us…Donna…where are you?
Pak Putara Tandoori – Seriously….the best tandoori chicken EVER!!! If you don’t believe me… just ask the over 3,000 reviews it has on Google! One of our bartenders walked me there to make sure we knew where it was! 
Looks messy..that’s because it is…don’t bother with the fork
Weekend nights the main streets are closed to motor vehicles and are lined with vendors of all sorts so you can walk, eat, shop your way down the 500 meter main road.
Watermelon Juice is my new favorite drink! 
Got Oysters?! 
Karaoke 
More street food 
So this is a Sugar Glider…not a squirrel : )
I guess a common pet here. Donna, bless her heart, fell in love and SV Kenobi has 1 extra crew member.
The crew at Sid’s Pub…..basically Sid’s has Jim Beam….Donna’s only true drink. We tried other places but they never seemed to have Jim Beam…so we always went to Sid’s. Let’s just say we made friends!
Happy Birthday Donna!!!!! November 17th…it’s her day to choose what she wanted to do..unfortunately…renting a scooter is almost impossible in Melaka (hence the Hello Kitty bikes) and we just couldn’t get our hands on any. So taxi it was to hot springs…then of course…Sid’s Pub ; )
Donna and Steve use to be “coppers” so we thought this was appropriate 
Soaking in the tubs…in a very muslim place…maybe I should of invested in a burkini…seriously that is a thing..Nike even makes them?!
Our Sail Malaysia Rally took us on a river cruise and dinner. We did not participate in the day tour activity but it’s always great to see the rest of the fleet…
Sazli at the bow of our boat. Behind is the street graffiti which was well placed and well done. 
The Melaka river from the bridge 
So our tour guide told us these are where the poor live…basically projects. He was so open and honest about it..it was surprising to me being from the US….we would of been trying to hide these facts and places.
Accounting firms represent…..but wait….Where is Deloitte?!
Now to the scary part….and sorry no photos, though I wish I had some footage!
We have never heard of a “Sumantra” before and that is our fault. We know that each area we have sailed to has its own unique weather conditions and challenges. We did know and research about each monsoon season here in Malaysia but somehow missed this important weather phenomena/event. Here is a Wikipedia blurb about what a Sumatra is:
Sumatras or Sumatra Squall Lines (SSL) is a term used in Singapore and Malaysia to describe squall lines that develop over Sumatra at night usually between April and November and then steered towards the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore by the southwesterly winds of the southwest monsoon. The squall usually arrives during the pre dawn and early morning with strong wind gusts and thundery showers. During the southwest monsoon, southwesterly winds pass over the mountains of Sumatra and creates mountain waves on the leeward side of the mountain thus creating an unstable atmosphere. As the atmosphere becomes highly unstable, the thunderstorms begin to merge into each other forming a squall line. This squall line is then steered by the southwesterly winds causing the storm to move northeastwards and moving into the Straits of Malacca. When this squall line moves offshore to the Straits of Malacca, it is usually night and thus, warmer air rising over the Straits of Malacca would cause the squall line to intensify. As the abundance of moisture over the Straits of Malacca condenses, it releases huge amounts of latent heat of condensation and this helps the squall line maintain its strength and intensify even more. This squall line then moves towards the coast of Peninsular Malaysia or Singapore. As this squall line moves inland, it is deprived of latent heat of condensation and hence, dissipates rapidly.
I am no meteorologist…(wishing Clay from SV Me Too was here to explain this to us) but this is how it happened for us!
Basically, a Sumantra hit the entire fleet while we were all anchored in Melaka about 2 am. Thankfully most of us were prepared and planned to leave the next morning to the next rally stop and had our dinghy’s lifted and stowed. Some unfortunately did not and had to either drag them or try to lift them, engine on and all…..we also were unfortunate that we had our “flopper stopper” deployed on a pole that night.
I woke up in the middle of the night to something banging around…dishes from last nights dinner maybe…we were rolling a lot and that was strange since we did have the “flopper stopper” out…so I went out into the cockpit…..almost naked….to this…..
This is about what it felt like….Waves were hitting Slow Flight (and others too I am sure) on the beam which would rock our boat 30+ degrees from side to side. We took on multiple waves inside the cockpit as our boat toe rails dipped into the trough of each wave! We were soaked head to toe! SV Kenobi said they could see our keel…that is how hard we were rolling side to side.
This heights of the waves generated by the Sumantra allowed anchor chains to lift (also because we all had about a 4:1 scope out which was appropriate for our 20 feet depth…not enough for a Sumatra) and set free anchors…basically almost everyone was “dragging” anchor… ! Boats on the left, right, in front and behind us….. we had to pull anchor up. I was down below getting some actual clothes on when I hear the engine start and Trevor yelling at me to come up to the cockpit. I take the wheel, try my hardest to hand steer the boat away from flashing lights form other boats trying to let people know where they are at (the autopilot just wasn’t going to work as our bow and aft lifted so far out of the water…hand steering was the only way to move). At one point we were not but 5 feet away from other boats. Now, Trevor at the bow of the boat trying to get our anchor and chain up, we are pitch-poling and motoring straight into the waves. These waves are in such short periods that it is like riding a bull in a rodeo. We suspect that the shallow anchorage actually created more wave height as the wave’s energy reached the shelf just made the wave/water taller . Our fear was with the wave height and short periods, and with only 20 feet under the keel in CALM WEATHER…we would hit bottom and damage our keel/boat. No life jackets, no harness, no lifelines to clip into…there was no time to even set anything up…we just had to get out into open water.
Trevor thankfully did not go overboard and was able to successfully get our anchor and chain up…though we didn’t have time to secure the anchor properly…more on that later.
This is what is was like while Trevor was lifting anchor….we were motoring into 3 meter waves in the shallow anchorage. Full throttle, we were moving at about 2 knots speed over ground….the waves kept pushing back towards LAND!!!! I kept seeing the shore crep closer…so I thought…but somehow we were able to make it out into deeper water.
Finally out of the shallow anchorage, we still needed to stabilize the rocking and rolling of the boat and we needed to put up our sails…but we had our pole out which had the “flopper stopper” attached to it and we can’t pull out our headsail with how the pole was rigged…so we continue to head directly into the waves, towards the shipping lanes until Trevor rested and waves subsided a little bit, so that he could get a grip on the pole and put it away.
Nobody was ready for this…but it is a miracle that nobody was hurt and minimal damage happened to any of our boats. We all headed to our next rally stop, Port Dickson, in the middle of the night!
Next up…Port Dickson…aka “PD”…a time to recoup and rest and THANKSGIVING?!
Again, here is a link to SV Sloepmouche’s YouTube video on this rally stop….thanks for doing all the work for me : )
Wow what an adventure you two are having. Thanks for sharing!
Sunday (2/24/19) the family are meeting in Vancouver for a memorial for Carol.
😘