Year 2- 4th November 2025 - Penang Island- Langkawi

It was raining when we woke at 5.40am and we prepared to leave. There was no one about and there were no boats moving. It was a damp misty morning which encourages people to stay in bed. We upped the anchor which was covered in plastic bags and mud and headed out of the anchorage into the main channel which we crossed. Although there were boats at anchor we were able to get the other side of the main channel easily and go parallel to its North side. We had tea on the move.

There was a shallow section for about 5 nm until deeper water and there was little on AIS to worry about but a lot of fishing boats are not on AIS.

I expected rain but we then had a tropical rainstorm which made it difficult for me to keep my eyes open and I tried the ski goggles but in the end I had to shield one eye with my hand to see with the other. Visibility was reduced to about 2 boat lengths and I slowed down as we could come across fishing boats very quickly and would have to take avoiding action. This torrential rain lasted a good 30 minutes and thereafter came and went for a good few hours until we handed over to Mark and Ruth. By the end of our shift I was rather wet even though I had my waterproofs on. We had turned on the radar and we were surrounded by rain clouds and the screen looked like a colour pallet.   

Luckily the rain stopped and we did not have it the rest of the day. We had to motor due again to the direction and strength of the wind. We were now beginning to run low on fuel and I had less than a quarter of a tank left – so about 200 lts I thought which was enough for about another 28 hours of motoring. However, I had arranged for us to refuel alongside a barge at Langkawi. The other issue I was finding was that the solenoid which turns off the engine was not working so every time I want to switch the engine off I have to go and manually move a lever on the engine to do so. I hope I can get that fixed soon as it is a bit annoying.

We motored on and there was a bit of a swell but we made good progress and there was little traffic other than fishing boats which seemed to be laying lobster pots and in some areas had large sticks sticking out of the water we assumed to be holding fishing nets. We began to see a series of Islands ahead.

Langkawi, officially known as Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah, is a duty-free island and an archipelago of 99 islands (plus five small islands visible only at low tide in the Strait of Malacca-only 2 of the islands are inhabited) located some 30 kilometres (19 mi) off the coast of northwestern Malaysia and a few kilometres south of Ko Tarutao, adjacent to the Thai border. Politically, it is an administrative district of Kedah, with Kuah as its largest town. Langkawi was developed as a tourist destination in the 1980s, and Pantai Cenang is the island's most popular beach and tourist area. The name Langkawi is thought to have existed by the early 15th century, although in the 16th century the island of Langkawi was also marked on maps variously as Langa, Langka, Lansura, and Langapura. There are many suggestions for the origin of the name of Langkawi. According to one interpretation, Langkawi means island of the reddish-brown eagle, a brahminy kite in colloquial Malay. he Malay word for eagle is helang (colloquially shortened to lang), and kawi is a red stone used as a chalk to mark goods. This interpretation was used to create the landmark sculpture of an eagle as the symbol of Langkawi at Dataran Helang (Eagle Square) in Kuah. Some also thought that Langkawi means "many beautiful islands", langka being a Sanskrit word meaning "beautiful" while wi means "many".

Langkawi was historically home to Austronesian peoples, such as the Orang Laut, originally from the southern part of the Malay Peninsula and Malay people. It had been thought to be cursed for a couple of centuries. According to local legend, in the late 18th century, a woman named Mahsuri was wrongfully accused of adultery and put to death. Before she died, she placed a curse on the island that would last for seven generations. Not long after Mahsuri's death, in 1821, the Siamese army invaded Kedah and attacked Langkawi. In the first attack, the locals burned down the granary at Padang Matsirat to starve the Siamese army. The Siamese nevertheless captured the island in May 1822, killed its leaders, and took many islanders as slaves, while others fled. Before the Siamese invasion, there was an estimated island population of 3,000–5,000, but only a small proportion was left after the invasion.

The island was recaptured from the Siamese in 1837. In 1840–1841, the Sultan of Kedah, who went into exile after the Siamese attacks, was allowed to return by the Siamese. The Langkawi islands' population recovered afterwards. However, the Orang Laut who fled after the Siamese attacks did not return. In 1909, the islands came under British rule following the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909. The middle of the channel between Tarutao National Park and Langkawi became the Siamese border. During World War II, Siam took control briefly as British Malaya fell to the Japanese.

Langkawi was a haven for pirates who attacked junks in the northern part of the Strait of Malacca. In a series of operations, between December 1945 and March 1946, the British cleared the pirates' land bases on Langkawi and Tarutao. The British continued to rule until Malaya gained its independence in 1957.

Langkawi remained a quiet backwater until 1986, when Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad transformed it into a major tourist resort, helping to plan many of the islands' buildings himself. Mahsuri's seven-generation curse was said to have been lifted after a seventh generation descendant of Mahsuri was born in the Thai province of Phuket. The island rapidly grew as a tourist destination, and by 2012, it received over three million tourists a year.

The main island is about 25 kilometres (16 mi) from north to south and slightly more from east to west. The coastal areas consist of flat, alluvial plains punctuated with limestone ridges. Two-thirds of the island is dominated by forest-covered mountains, hills, and natural vegetation.

The island's oldest geological formation, the Machinchang Formation, was the first part of Southeast Asia to rise from the seabed in the Cambrian over half a billion years ago. The oldest part of the formation is observable at Teluk Datai to the northwest of the island, where the exposed outcrop consists of mainly sandstone (quartzite) in the upper parts and shale and mudstone in the lower parts of the sequence. The best exposure of Cambrian rocks (541 to 485 Ma) in Malaysia is the Machinchang Formation, composed of quartzose clastic rock formations, in Langkawi; the other known example, the Jerai Formation, emerges near the west coast of Kedah on the mainland. Geologically, all these rocks are in the Western Belt of Peninsular Malaysia, which is thought to be part of the Shan–Thai terrane.

Langkawi receives more than 2,400 mm (94 in) of rain annually. Langkawi has a short dry season from December until February. March to November is a long rainy season. September is the wettest month, when it can receive more than 500 mm (20 in).

We are going to Langkawi to stock up and to get the new mainsail-yeah. We motored on and we came toward the main island about 2.00pm and I had been in contact with the fuel barge and they said we could come today. So we came in between some small islands and it was very pretty and quite stunning scenery as these islands have steep cliffs which are covered in trees. We then came into the large circular bay in which the main Island is based and it is surrounded by smaller islands. We prepared to go alongside the barge and then moored alongside. We took on 1355 lts of diesel so I must have had about 320 lts left or something like that as my dials may not be entirely accurate. It felt a relief to be full again and to be able to refuel alongside rather than having to fill by jerry cans which is what we have had to do since Australia.  

We motored around anchor in a small bay called Pulau Bambon Besar. It was great to be here and we all jumped in and had a swim. I made water and filled our tanks and we will be ready to go into the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club tomorrow morning. It felt a bit like the closing of a chapter. We had done 67nm for the day. High in the sky were what looked like eagles or could they be the brihmony kites welcoming us to Langkawi.

We had a nice drink on the aft deck and watched a lot of the party boats which had come round to our bay to play and watch the sun go down. They were playing on inflatable bananas and bears being towed and they had speed boats looking like racing cars.  They looked quite good -see picture of the day.

We had a nice fish supper and relaxed. We look forward to doing a few jobs and sorting out the boat as well as relaxing and enjoying Langkawi. This is really the end of Malaysia. We will spend a few days in the marina and then visit some of the other islands before moving on to Thailand.

The picture of the day is a car on water!!

Need/Opportunity Year Three

In year three I will be going from Thailand to Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and then on to Chagos, Mauritius, Reunion, Cape Town, St Helena, Azores and back to the UK.  I am looking for crew from Mauritius/ Reunion Island to Cape Town and from Cape Town to the UK. If of any interest do email me.

The blog will continue as we continue the journey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog then do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com