[WHISTLER LOGS]
March - July 2010
A Journey through Borneo
First of all I want to apologize for my long silence. To tell you the truth, after 5 years of writing logs and posting pictures on the whistler adventures website kindly provided by my adopted brother Jeff Farlow, and updated by lovely Lisa, I had thought of stopping. I had not counted on a few of you putting pressure on me to keep writing and even lying by saying that they really enjoyed it. And what got me really convinced is when my Mother complained that she learned more of what I was doing by reading my logs than by talking to me on the phone. What dutiful son can refuse his mother. So here we are again. In this log, I will rapidly glance over Whistler travel through Malaysian Borneo so that I can quickly come to write about the near past and the present! I must apologize for the lack of pictures for this log. I can not find the pictures for that time period on my hard drive. So my words will have to suffice for this log. If they surfaced later, I will make sure to send them to Lisa so she can put them on the website.
I got back to the boat in Kudat Borneo in March, two weeks before my girlfriend Christine, a sailing aficionado; I had met in Quebec City in the fall of 2009. Whistler was on the hard, so I got her ready to float again by performing a few tasks and painting the bottom with a Jotun Anti-fouling. When, Christine arrived, Whistler was ready to go and in the water she went.
After a few days in Kudat, we decided to leave for Kota Kinabalu, also known as KK, the capital of the Malaysian province of Sabah. We stopped at a few island on the way and even took a few walks in the jungle. We arrived in KK and spent a few uneventful there in a very luxurious and affordable marina. The place had a full size Olympic pool and even a gym!!
Next stop, the duty free island of Labuan where we loaded up on a few cases of adult beverages. We did not stay long since, the small country of Brunei, beckoned to us, a mere 20 miles away. Brunei Darussalam is a very small country indeed but it was not always so. A few centuries ago, it included all of Borneo and the southwest Philippines. In 1929, just as it was about to be swallowed up entirely, oil was discovered, turning the tiny state into an economic power overnight. The present sultan’s father, Sultan Oman Saifuddien, kept Brunei out of the Malayan confederacy, preferring that the country remain a British protectorate and the oil money remain on home soil. A very wise decision indeed. In 1984 it became completely independent and now enjoys one of the higher standards of living in Asia. After independence, Brunei veered towards Islamic Fundamentalism but it still a very soft Islamic state when compared to Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia. Malaysia by the way is even softer and my 6 months spent in that country, never once did I feel threatened or pressure into a more Islamic code of conduct. Once in Kudat, the owner of a Muslim restaurant told me the lunch was on him. A man I had never met before and that I barely exchanged two words with.
So we spent a week in Brunei, visited the capital, the beautiful Mosque, a museum and even took a water taxi to visit one of the largest water villages I had ever seen.
Back to Borneo Malaysia, we entered the second Borneo Malaysian province of Sarawak. On our way to the provincial capital of Kuching, we stopped at a few coastal towns, the highlight being Miri where we decided to explore beautiful Gunung Mulu National Park. 
Located 80 km southwest of Miri, Mulu is home to some spectacular caves, the largest I have seen in all my travels. The star of the lot is Deer cave, which contains the world largest cave passage, over 2 km in length and 174 meters in height. You could fit a few cathedrals in there. It is truly a humbling experience to walk through there and gaze up at the ceiling and the immensity of this cave. 
After visiting the cave, our guide took us at a viewing area where you can observe the giant mouth of the cave. A little before sunset, millions of bats issue forth into the open to feed on jungle insects. No wonder we rarely got bitten by mosquitoes in that part of the jungle!! After the cave, we decided to trek to a remote campsite in the middle of a beautiful valley with a cold river running right through it. After the 2 hours boat ride and the 4 hours jungle trek, battering mosquitoes away and pulling a few leeches off our white legs, the swim in that cold river was to say the least refreshing and cleansing!!
The next day, we undertook the near vertical 2.4 km climb to the Pinnacles, an incredible formation of 45 meters razor-sharp stone towers protruding from the forest on the flank of the Gunung Api Mountain. We did this in company of 20 or so other young tourists and I was really impressed with Christine climbing and stamina. Half-way through the climb, given the slowness of our group and Christine ability, we left our group behind and reached the summit well ahead of everybody, which gave us time to enjoy the magnificent scenery in a peaceful and magical light. Good thing we did raced ahead, for as soon as the rest of our group showed up, the clouds moved in and the grandiosity of the landscape was diminished.
Back to the boat, we motored most of the way to the next few stops to finally end up in Kuching. Borneo, straddling the Equator is very very hot and almost windless. Furthermore, the north coast is shallow and dotted with Oil drilling platform. It is not bad but it is not the best scenery I have seen either. Most of the anchorages are up muddy brown rivers where a crocodile or two can lurk behind the mangroves. A far cry from the clear blue waters of the Pacific and not conductive to a lot of aquatic activities besides our usual inflatable Kayak exploring ventures.
Kuching was probably the most interesting town that we visited in Borneo for 3 reasons. The hip, stylish and colonial architecture, the Orangutan and the funny looking Proboscis monkey. We even had a chance to spot the latter in the wild at one of our anchorages. The Orangutans we saw in a semi-wild environment at the Semenggoh Wildlife Rehab center. This was my first encounter with these very intelligent mammals in a surrounding other than a Zoo. The experience was totally different than any other animal viewing encounter I had experienced. You could feel the intelligence emanating from these very hairy creatures as they came climbing down from their trees got within a few meters of us to grab our guide’s fresh bananas. They would look at us as if we were the animals in a zoo. The rehab center is located in a natural forest and the Orangutan get more than 70% of their food from the forest, while the rest is provided by the center caretakers. As they get rehabilitated, the Orangutans get more and more of their food from the forest. Quite an impressive place.
After Kuching, it was time to head to Peninsular Malaysia and we undertook the 3 day crossing of the South China Sea towards the island of Tioman. Again, there was very little wind and the crossing pretty uneventful except my 3 hours of dodge ball with some very very big cargo ships. I knew we would be crossing the shipping channel at some point in time in our journey. What I had not anticipated but that I should have is that we crossed it at night and that is was a lot heavier than I thought. You see, most of the shipping passing through Asia is bound for the Malacca straight, one of the busiest channel in the world. Our route from Kuching to Tioman meant that we would cross the shipping channel heading to the eastern entrance of the Straight where Singapore is located. 
I started seeing a line of ships around midnight on the third day. As we got closer, Wow, there were many!! At first I had 3 ships coming from Singapore on my port side and 3 going to Singapore from my starboard side. The trick was not to get in the middle of the six. Never having much of a use for radar, I had never dug in all the complicated features of mine. A few hours before that fateful night, I got proficient in one feature called ship tracking. Good thing I did, because at night, it was sometimes hard to gauge a ship’s course. This was not a problem when only one ship was concerned, but when 6 were converging on your position, it was pretty useful to have a clear idea of their course. The radar tracking feature made it easier as it left a trail on the screen of the ship movement in relation to Whistler. From the screen, I could tell that we were on a collision course with two of them. So I waited and let them pass before at sped across that part of the channel at a 90 degree angle. 20 minutes later, another set of six. This time I could not turn back to wait but had to hold position. I really did not want to get in the middle. They were all oblivious to my insect like presence. No matter what I did to get their attention, trying to call them on the radio, turning my mast head strobe light on (a real attention-getter usually), illuminating Whistler with my powerful foredeck light, shining a 10 million candle spot light at them, nothing would do. They did not care about something as small as Whistler. We made it safe and sound through that second set! What a relief - a relief which was short lived as another set of 6 appeared on the horizon and on my radar. This time, I came close to getting caught in the middle and for a while I was really sweating. Thank God it was my watch and Christine was sound asleep during the whole ordeal. We made it though and when Christine came on watch at 3am, I related the whole episode to her and told her what to be alert for in case there were anymore of these mastodons playing cat and mouse with us. Most important advice before I fell hard on my bunk was: “If you are in doubt about anything, Wake me up!!!” I knew she would and so I slept soundly.
We arrived at beautiful Tioman the next day. Now that is what I called an island. High, rugged, surrounded by beautiful beaches and a small friendly population. 
We spent two idyllic weeks cruising the area, snorkeling, hiking and eating. Unfortunately, Christine’s vacation was coming to an end and she had to get back to her photography studio in Quebec City. She flew home at the end of May. Once she left, I realized how I missed her outstanding cooking, her sailing skills, her sense of humor and especially her sense of adventures. As we say in French: “Elle n’a pas froid au yeux celle la” (literally: “her eyes don’t get cold” which means she is not scared of anything).
I stayed on for another two weeks, getting Whistler ready for a few months absence before flying to Singapore, then India before finally flying to North America just in time for a northern summer. I stayed 5 days in India (Mumbai and the surroundings) and was very impressed by the history, the food, the culture, the entrepreneurship but unfortunately this was all overshadowed by the extreme dirtiness of the area. And I have seen many a dirty country, but India topped it all. Sorry to be so blunt, especially if you are one my Indian friends reading this.
So that is it for this log. The next few logs are already written, so you will not have to wait as long for the next adventures of Whistler and its crew. What’s more - I have pictures for these next logs!
See you soon!