Underway : Singapore to Port Klang (posted Nov 10, 2009)

We left Singapore on 7 Nov 2009 and arrived at Port Klang on 9 Nov 2009 at about 11am.

We got to Pulau Pisang at about 6pm of 7 Nov and decided to anchor for the night.  It was pretty and uneventful except for the fact the rudder angle indicator kept jumping all around and to rest it required lifting up the bed in the main cabin.

On Sunday, 8 Nov we were underway again.  We had the autopilot on and sailed on towards the Water Islands with the intention of anchoring for the night.  All of a sudden we noticed that we lost steering.  We opened up the engine compartment and noticed oil all over the engine.  What had happened is that the valve on the hydraulic oil reservoir for the autopilot was opened and the oil had squirted out.  So we refilled it.  At that time we were approaching the Water Islands and had planned to put in for the night.  However, we decided to just plough on towards Port Klang.  While we were repairing the steering and had it working one way a squall blew up to 35 knots of wind and Mark up to his elbows in oil and Pauline trying to handle all of that sail area and all of that wind.  Mark eventually appeared and we reduced sail and got the steering sorted.

It was pretty uneventful after that except the lack of sleep before the trip made the overnighter a bit tiring.   We arrived at Royal Selangor Yacht Club, Port Klang on 9 Nov at about 11 am after a 4-hour trip up the river and landed on the pontoon without any incident, meeting Simon from the sailing yacht Sirius 1935 as we were getting ready to throw lines ashore.  He helped us stay awake all day and brought us around for lunch, immigration, customs etc as well as helped us buy a new outboard.  A full day to keep us going until the proper sleep time to get back on the right time zone.  That first night we slept like babies.