Strait of Singapore

From the north side of Batam, Indonesia it is only 5 miles across the Singapore Strait to Singapore which is surrounded by Malaysia. It is a very unique place in the world where first, second and third world countries come together. The contrast is dramatic. After spending two months in Indonesia, it was the strangest sight to come upon the skyline of Singapore packed with high rise buildings. We decided to give Singapore a pass since we had visited there 10 years ago on our whirlwind Asia tour.
Crossing the Singapore Strait was nerve wracking. There were hundreds of ships in our path between Batam, Indonesia and Johor, Malaysia. Many ships were at anchor awaiting their turn to go into the harbour of Singapore and many more were in motion going east or west through the straight which is one of the few routes between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. The radar was useless at this point because it was plastered with green dots moving every which way. I stood on the bow while Steve manned the helm. We tried our best to estimate the speed and trajectory of huge ships and small tug boats and sailing boats and fishing boats and police boats and military ships while taking into account the 5 knot current pushing us sideways. It took us an hour to travel the 5 miles across and took refuge in Sebana Cove, Malaysia.
After completing the customs and immigration paperwork, we continued up the west coast of Malaysia. Since October/November is the transitional period between the South West Monsoon and the North East Monsoon, there is very little wind so we motored for 3 days. We often troll a fishing line while we are under way but sometimes weeks go by before we catch anything. This didn’t surprise us in Indonesia because we believed the waters were fished out. At night, we could see 40 to 50 fishing boats in an 8 mile radius all trying to make a living from the sea. But in Malaysia, we see very few fishing boats and we have already caught two nice fish. One was a Mahi Mahi and the one pictured here.
During the transitional months between the monsoons, the weather is very unsettled. There is lightening a couple times a day and every other day, we have had torrential rain with explosive thunder and lightening. We installed proper lightening grounding before we left Canada but as an added protection, we keep our spare electronics in the oven. Apparently, the oven acts as a Faraday Cage and will insulate them from EM radiation.
There are very few islands off the south west coast of Malaysia and none that provide any sort of shelter at anchor so we stopped for a couple days in a marina to visit the historic town of Melaka where Malaysia was first settled in the 1400s and became a centre for trading in the East.