sv evi

We had fun with Sanne & the girls in Penang while Koen was working in Bangkok. One highlight was the Wonder Food Museum — a fun, creative, informative, and interactive museum about Malaysian food. The museum had giant bowls of different traditional Malaysian dishes (fake food, not real), and lots of great photo opportunities.

I read this on an informational sign at the museum: “Malaysians just love to eat! In fact, the average Malaysian can eat up to six meals a day. A typical day can start with breakfast, then a light snack before lunch, followed by the actual lunch. A light bowl of noodles can fill any gaps between 4 pm and 5 pm followed by dinner as the main meal of the day and later — supper starting at about 10 pm to as late as 3 am. In most of the cities in Malaysia, it’s no trouble to find street food at any hour of the day.” Impressive! My kind of people. 🙂

We also visited Entopia and saw heaps of gorgeous butterflies.

And we took the funicular up to Penang Hill, then hiked down and had delicious ramen for lunch. And we did zumba!

We left Penang together with SV Nebo on the 25th of May. We were just outside the marina when the engine alarm sounded loudly. We quickly shut it off and drifted while Riki investigated. He discovered that the heat exchanger was falling off! And all the coolant had leaked out. We anchored while he re-attached it and added coolant. Whew! I guess the bolts had worked loose since Riki and Jeff worked on the engine in Phuket.

We had several looong day sails, waking up at 5:30 am and starting motoring by 6 am in order to make 75 nautical miles to our next destination. Overall, we were lucky with the weather. We had one scary scary lightning storm at 2 am with huge lightning bolts hitting pretty close to our boats.

We enjoyed some yummy meals out — in Port Dickson all 9 of our combined crews had dinner for $25 USD!

Also in Port Dickson, Riki and Koen stayed out until 4 am watching PSG defeat Arsenal in the Champions League Final.

While we were rounding Singapore in the shipping lanes, our engine started overheating. Luckily there was wind, and we tacked through the shipping lanes until we reached the corner, turned eastward, and had a nice beam reach. It was a stressful day (for me) — we had to be on a constant watch for huge tankers, and decide how we were going to avoid them! In contrast, Riki thought it was really fun. We finally anchored at 7 pm, having started at 6 am that morning. Whew!

The next morning Riki figured out that it was just the temperature gauge that had a loose wire, which he fixed. And we motored to Senibong Cove Marina — so happy to arrive safely.

And now it’s time for some deep cleaning on evi — going through all the food stores, rotating stock of canned food, wiping all cupboards and surfaces with a vinegar/water mix … preparing to leave her here for 2.5 months while we fly home to visit our loved ones. The kids and I fly from Singapore to Seattle on June 11th, and Riki follows on June 23rd. We said goodbye to the Nebo crew yesterday morning, and we will reunite with them in September to head to Tioman, the Anambas Islands, the Philippines, and Japan!