Cruising the Malacca Straits -April 15, 2001

Position: Cruising the Malacca Straits -April 15, 2001

We are starting this cruise with a new crew. Our captain, Michael Rother and his wife Jayne, our chef, joined us in Singapore. They were sailing on another boat out of Singapore and were available to come aboard Seaquell. Michael is from South Africa and Jayne is from England. They have sailed the South Asia and Indian Ocean before so we welcome their experience. Julie Miles, stewardess from Dallas, Texas, and Toby Bott, engineer and first mate from Australia, had joined us in Australia and remain on board. We have two additional sailors, Dave Pritchard and Bruce Allport joining us for our crossing of the Indian Ocean.

Our cruising from Singapore to Phuket was through the Malacca Straits. This was a trading route from Europe to China in the old sailing ship days. It has always been a piracy area due to the narrow waters between Indonesia and Malaysia. This made it easy for the pirates to see the ships and overtake them.

Today they have high speed boats and can easily due the same. We have special frequencies and good communications between harbors. While there are good stops at Kula Lumpur and Penang Island, we chose to go directly nonstop and get to Phuket, an island just off the Thailand mainland. The straits have very shallow water with unfavorable winds making the trip a motor sail cruise. No threat of pirates for which we are thankful.

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