The next adventure

The next adventure came sooner than we would have liked – sailing from Kudat towards Kota Kinabalu around the northernmost tip of Borneo in the South China Sea.

A small problem of the engine completely stopping, whilst in rough waters…also with a squall, giving us 45knots of wind to go against. And to make things even more interesting, we were drifting uncontrollably whilst perilously close to a pinnacle that jutted out of the water, some 50metres away. 

Honestly, I don’t make this stuff up. 

An image of the squall on the radar which we were right in the middle of. Everything yellow is lots of wind, rain and big waves. Plus the rocks to the left, of course.

Luckily for us, Furthur is installed with a ‘Get Home’ system – or APU which allows the propeller to be run by power from the generator, rather than the engine in situations like ours. In flat, calm waters it should manage around 4knots – or about half of what we’d normally cruise at.

In this mess, we found the system worked, although a bit slower than promised given the conditions. We quickly devised a system – as soon as the engine ignition switch light went off, the engine would stall, (despite our threats and pleas) which meant Brian would run down to the engine room to turn on the get-home while I waited to steer the boat as soon as we had power. Emily watched the small engine ignition switch light like a hawk, and would shout out the second the light came back on - the engine would run again. This happened somewhere between 15 and 20 times throughout the rest of our 70 mile journey to Kota Kinabalu. Every time the light came back on, we’d be back to battle stations – Brian in the engine room, turning off the get home (you can't run both systems simultaneously), and me at the helm, trying to avoid the worst of the 3-4m swells and re-starting the engine.

Emily decided that bed was the safest place to be in the rough stuff!

Some 14 hours later, we limped into the most beautiful marina I’ve ever seen – Sutera Harbour Resort, which is just what we need for a month of well-earned R&R. 

A spectacular sunset from the marina

If you need me, I’ll be at the pool.

Life at sea is always adventurous!

Life at sea is an adventurous thing at the best of times - but especially at 2am when a huge squall hits the boat out of nowhere.

The last two nights have been pretty eventful here on Furthur. I wish I meant that we'd been busy partying into the small hours, but unfortunately everyone is sleep deprived for all the wrong reasons. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong recently, has.

The first night we were anchored way off the coast of Borneo, in about 70ft of water. As we were starting to think of going to bed the wind really picked up, basically from nothing. All of a sudden there were 20mph winds - and waves to match.

We were unfortunate that the hatches were still open - Siem was woken by a face full of cold sea water. I tried not to laugh. We staggered around the boat in the swell - picking up the objects that were flying around the boat, and wondering how Captain Brian was still managing to sleep - or if he'd hit his head on something and had been knocked unconscious. Eventually he showed up, and we decided the best thing to do was to leave earlier than planned, as no one was able to sleep anyway.

As I was at the bow of the boat, pulling the anchor up, the chain suddenly popped out of the windlass (the mechanism that slowly pulls up/releases the anchor chain) which meant the chain was in an unstoppable free fall from the boat. I immediately moved away and called Brian - we spent a frustrating couple of minutes trying to slow the chain by jamming a pole into it, so that the safety hook could be flicked on but were not successful. The chain stopped - eventually - as all 600ft of it was already out.

The next several hours were spent in a state of exhausted tension as we watched (through our fingers) as Brian and Lo braved the elements outside and tried to hand pull enough of the chain up to get the hook on. With a few scary moments - the chain ripping loose from their hands and narrowly avoiding pulling Brian into the water with it, we had the chain secure. The force and speed of the chain coming out had knocked the stripper (pulls the chain off the windlass and guides it back into it's locker) which meant I was up at first light, helping Brian to hand pull up all 200m of the heavy chain and feed it into the locker below. Enough exercise for the day!

The following night, already exhausted, we were unfortunate enough to be hit by a second squall - this time whilst we were anchored out of Tawau (the first Malaysian town where we'd just checked into the country). The storm came around 11pm - again from almost no wind to gusts of 35knots+ with big waves. Brian came up relatively quickly to check the boat was secure - and promptly went back to bed despite having a wet bunk (courtesy of another open hatch!).

Lo and Emily in a much less stressful situation

Luckily for everyone, Siem and Emily were not completely distracted by the wifi we were in range of - they noticed that we were a lot closer to a docked cargo ship than we had been - and that all the other cruiser boats had apparantly moved around. Fortunately we'd managed to avoid hitting any of the boats as we'd dragged anchor, and moved at least 150metres. Apologies to Jellyfish and Mind The Gap for the scare! We got the boat moving in double quick time, although still plagued by anchor troubles (electric shocks coming from the chain/hand rail when pulling the anchor up).

It's rare on the boat to see so much exciting action - especially so close together. With a determined captain and competent crew we were able to deal with both situations with as little danger as possible to ourselves or the boat.

Here's to the next adventure!