Singapore

In Singapore! It was just so amazing to be in Asia at all and we were delighted - I had never imagined that I might come to this part of the world so it was very exciting.

Upon arrival in Singapore, we had to cross these enormous, unbelievably busy shipping lanes full of fast moving gigantic ships, with our hearts in our mouths and one hand hovering over the ignition switch. Having successfully manoeuvred our way across, we then got snarled up in a strong tidal current against us. We put the engine on and motored forward manfully at full steam making only about half a knot for four or five hours, praying the tide would turn as dusk was falling and we were still many miles away from any sort of anchorage. Now desperately low on diesel, I called up the port authority on the VHF to ask about the nearest available access to fuel, and a research vessel that had passed us about an hour ago broke into the call and offered to bring us diesel. This dear man back-tracked for half an hour and we pulled up alongside. His vessel was huge, the sea was a bit rough and we suffered a little damage to the archway at the back of the boat, but he gave us three large jerry cans of diesel – and wouldn’t take payment! Bless his heart.

Singapore

So, finally we made it to Changi Sailing Club on the east coast of Singapore where we picked up a mooring buoy.

This cost S$15 (about £5) per day to hang on a buoy and use all their facilities which were extremely nice – about the best ablution block I’d ever come across, free internet, a good restaurant, bar and swimming pool. They provided taxi boats that fetched and carried us back and forth.

There was a small village nearby which was convenient for small shopping and a cheap bus ride took one into a big centre where they were two large supermarkets, plus every other kind of shop you can think of. Millions of food shops - just everywhere they were selling food, delicious and dead cheap. It was a greedy pig's paradise.

Singapore is very orderly, very sophisticated and very cultivated. It was green and lush and pretty in a park-like fashion. From a distance, from where we were moored, the city looked like a horrific warren of uniform high rise blocks, but when you get there, although it does consist of thousands of uniform looking blocks, it is spacious and well laid out with parks, flowers, fountains, etc. It isn’t desperately charming or quaint, but very clean, neat and tidy. Singaporeans are law abiding citizens; they’d have to be as I think the authorities are quite fierce. There are hefty fines for littering, and we heard that one wit had opened a bar where you not only can but are encouraged to litter as much as you like!

It was also extremely crowded. The people, who all spoke good English, are mostly Chinese and we found them very helpful and friendly, falling over themselves to help out in the street or in shops – all except the Customs agents, all of whom seemed to be bad tempered slobs. We heard that the economy was booming and the government was stable. I never managed to get into central Singapore and am sad to say I never managed a Singapore Sling in Raffles Club. Mike and Lois went to the city and said it wasn’t that fab anyway - hmmmm. We were able to buy very cheap phone cards here and I phoned my sisters a couple of times.

Also on a mooring here were our old friends on Taraipo, the only other boat we knew in Changi. Lois and John were good buddies from the Tauranga days so we all had a good social time. The heavy rains seemed to have set in and we got a bit stuck there for a while, but pleasantly so. Though the club was relatively cheap, it was not cheap by our standards, and money was getting very tight again. Our windfall in Australia had been mostly used by that new prop shaft and was not lasting as well as hoped, even though Lois was always so generous. He had more than paid his fair share of expenses, and was always buying us dinner or lunch. However, at this point he decided that Singapore was probably a better spot to fly back to Spain from rather than Thailand and so we sadly said goodbye to him. He had been a great crew member and good friend. I, in particular, would really miss his presence for the night watches. For our farewell dinner we enjoyed the Confit de Canard given to us by Jean Pierre and Nelly.

Loyola Gonzalez Careaga - he would NOT smile for the camera

Taraipo left a day before us, also heading north.  Lois left by plane the next day, off loading all sort of useful things like his oilskin jacket, some clothes and a nice red suitcase. The following day we checked out and headed for the even more exotic countries of Malaysia and Thailand.

Raffles Lighthouse, on the way out

Here’s the map of our journey from Dili in East Timor to Singapore.  We can add East Timor, Indonesia and Singapore to our list of countries bringing the total to 31, and another 2096 nautical miles, bringing that total to 25590nm.