September 9, 2005
Passage to Singapore
by Lois Joy
Part 1: Birthdays at Sea
Part 4: The Singapore Strait
September 15, 2005
00º58.21’N, 105º01.72’E
At 0015, fifteen minutes after midnight, I spot the lighthouse of Mapor Island, seven miles to port. Pacific Bliss is at her waypoint and I make the turn toward the famed Singapore Strait. I call Simpatica to alert her crew that I am making the turn. The Singapore Strait. The busiest strait in the world! Today, we will cross it, on the way to Singapore, the second busiest port in the world. The busiest is Amsterdam. The third busiest is New York. It is said that Singapore Harbour makes Los Angeles Harbour look like a kids’ play pool. Statements like that turn a sailor’s mouth into cotton. Soon we will be in the thick of it. “Are we ready?” I say to myself, alone at the helm.
“As ready as we can be.” We had put a good plan together. Instead of transiting the Strait early on, and encountering Singaporean authorities, we would hug the Indonesian coasts of Bintan and Batam, the northernmost islands in the Riau Island Group. That way, if we did need to stop for any reason, we would be close to anchorages. And we would be skirting the shipping lane. Once we passed Nongsa Point to port, at the northernmost tip of Batam, we would proceed to the ferry crossing and then cross the strait at right angles, heading toward St. Johns Islands, to the east of Sentosa Island, at the bottom of the Singapore. The goal was to spend as little time as possible in the busiest part of the strait. The weather looks good. We’d only had that one squall in the past seven days. We are motorsailing, with a light southeast wind at 7 knots. We have enough fuel to make it all the way. Gunter had seen to that. After asking Simpatica if he could keep their 25-liter can of diesel that the fishermen had returned, we had added a few more jerry cans from Simpatica. It had been a delicate fuel transfer operation, sailing along, dropping jerry cans with dock lines into the water between the two yachts and picking them up with our fish hook. But it had turned out fine. Noen and Gunter had carefully emptied the cans into the fuel tanks up on deck. We wouldn’t need to stop for fuel after all. And we had timed it to go right through the Strait and up into Raffles. It seems to be a good plan. 0100, I am off watch. It is time to sleep.
“Gunter!” Noen calls at 0515. We both wake up. Gunter heads to the cockpit and I follow. It is pitch dark, and Noen is asking for another pair or two of eyes. There are numerous lights on shore, more to port, and more yet straight ahead. We are northeast of Bintan, approaching the southern part of the Strait. We were supposed to be there at daylight. “Reduce speed as low as you can, I said. There’s no rush. We have all day to get through the Strait and make it to Raffles.” I go to the radar while the guys take turns using the binoculars. It turns out that most of the lights are freighters at anchor. We crawl along until the first red streaks of dawn begin to lighten the sky. It is 0610. We rev the engines to 6.2 knots. By 0645, we have passed the bay we had identified as our first anchoring and refueling waypoint. We wouldn’t need it now. All morning, we hug the coast of Bintan, motoring along on flat seas, amazed at the amount of traffic. Neither Gunter nor I even think about going back down to sleep. Our adrenalin pumps to the max throughout the long day.
We pass Nongsa Point and continue motoring on in the brutal heat of the day, all the traffic orderly in the TSS (traffic separation scheme) to our starboard. Finally, we reach the ferry crossing, approaching the waypoints I had identified. “We want to follow that ferry, let’s turn now, before that freighter comes,” says Wences on a VHF call from Simpatica. “OK, we’re turning too,” I reply. Mistake. I should have slowed and waited. Instead of crossing the TSS at right angles, we are now dodging the freighters, headed diagonally. It seems to take forever, Simpatica always close behind our stern. We end up on the other side before St. Johns, which means that we have to meet some cargo ships entering and leaving the Port. One ship appears to be at anchor—in fact, it is at anchor when Pacific Bliss goes by, but then it begins to move out as Simpatica passes her—a sleeping giant awakening. “Awesome, but scary,” they report.
I am relieved to pass the Raffles Lighthouse, a key waypoint. But after that, we seem to motor on forever, past cargo anchorages, alongside miles of reclaimed land, one buoy after another marking its boundaries. It seems a long way up from the lighthouse to the marina. The sunny day had turned to haze and now the skies are darkening. We fear there will be a shower soon, hopefully not a squall. Finally, we turn north, away from the last freighter anchorage area. We motor along the western side of Singapore Island towards the marina. It seems to take forever. We are dead tired. Finally, at 1615, (4:15 PM), we see the checkpoint bridge to Malaysia in the distance. We know from our chart that our turn into the marina is right before that bridge, 2.6 miles away. We pass by a group of fishing houses on stilts, and our worries turn from freighters to nets fouling our props. At last, 5:00 PM, we enter the breakwater.
We exchange hi-fives. More ships than in Gibraltar. More complicated than the Panama Canal. We can now add crossing the Singapore Strait to our list of major achievements. Been there; done that. We have arrived in the city/state of Singapore!
Go to Part 5: Welcome to Singapore!
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