Just one of the things Gudrun and I love about Malaysia…..Our Second Home, is the abundance of opportunities to get out on the beautiful waterways surrounding this tropical paradise. Malaysia is a boating and yachting Mecca and it is easy to find beautiful well-equipped and well-run marinas within one or two days sailing from any port in the land. There are no fewer than fifteen different marinas throughout Malaysia with more on the drawing board. We are also blessed to have very professional and world-class yachting services in all major ports of call. We are both actively earning Royal Yachting Association (RYA) accreditation and whilst at the moment I am a qualified Coastal Skipper and Gudrun is qualified Competent Crew I am very interested to ultimately become RYA Ocean Yachtmaster and RYA Instructor within the next twelve months. Gudrun wants to be qualified and competent enough to sail our boat home should I keel over on one of our adventures! With this ambitious objective in mind we keep an eagle eye-out for opportunities to get new and interesting assignments as crew on boat relocations, participate in local yacht racing at the Royal Selangor Yacht Club whenever we can and pursue other assignments that will count for the crucial mileage required for the RYA accreditation.

Recently we elected to visit the delightful heritage town of Melaka, as we like to spend two or three days each month exploring more of our new home. We had a great time there and soaked up the different cultures and sights on offer. On the way home to Mont Kiara we decided to call in to the beautiful Admiral Marina at Port Dickson. It is very easy to find as you just stay on the freeway, ignoring all the Port Dickson town turn-offs, until you can go no further then take a right hand turn. The Marina is a short distance away on the left! Visitors are welcome here where there is always a brilliant buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner available every day which can also be enjoyed on the terrace overlooking some of the lovely facilities including a sparkling swimming pool.

The beautiful swimming pool at the Admiral Marina in Port Dickson

Our friends Simon and Ruby from SIMPSON Marine are also based here in delightful offices overlooking the Admiral Marina and the ocean, so we called in to say “Hello!” When they heard about us looking for some crew miles for our RYA certificates they offered us both places on a fabulous brand new SeaRay® 370 Sundancer® which had to be taken down to Raffles Marina and then to Marina One15° on Sentosa Island, the home of SIMPSON Marine in Singapore and finally to The Marina at Keppel Bay for the Boat Asia 2011 annual show which was held at Keppel Bay from May 12-15, 2011.

The SeaRay® Sundancer® 370

Of course we jumped at the chance so the following Sunday, May 8 we set off from Admiral Marina at 0800 hours with the very competent and likeable Raden Hasbullah, Simpson Marine Service Manager at Admiral Marina, in charge, most ably assisted by UniYati and of course us!

Here are Raden and Gudrun having FUN!

Wow……What a ride! The Sundancer® 370 is the flagship of the Sport Cruiser line from Sea Ray®. This beautiful boat was equipped with twin diesel shaft-drive motors and a bow-thruster to make berthing and mooring an easy task. Its fully equipped instrument panel incorporated the latest Raymarine® widescreen multi-function display including a fabulous chart-plotter that made setting our course and destination a breeze! The interior sports elegantly refined features with Ultraleather™ upholstery, maple and cherry wood cabinets and gorgeous wooden flooring. The beautifully designed head had teak flooring and a separate vanity and shower stall with hot and cold water on tap. A gourmet galley offers a hidden two burner stove, two refrigerators and abundant storage. Two eating areas are available, one in the cabin and the other in the cockpit where there is a lovely solid teak dining table. The cabin sleeps six in air-conditioned comfort making this very sexy boat the perfect get-away vehicle for idling around the river bend or running far down the coast with the whole family for a week-end’s fun on the water.

The last time I travelled from Port Dickson to Raffles Marina by sea was in March this year aboard the “Kay Sira” sailing yacht owned by Langkawi Sailing School and on which voyage I qualified at the RYA Coastal Skipper level. That voyage took us over thirty non-stop hours working in shifts of two crew members three hours on and three hours off! This time we had spectacular weather, calm seas and a fast boat that averaged better than twenty five knots and saw us tying up in Raffles Marina in an amazing five and three quarter hours! We knew we had enjoyed a really hot trip and this was underlined by the fact that the day we arrived at Raffles Marina was the hottest day in Singapore in SIX years! Such was the sizzling performance of this marvelous toy!

Yours truly at the helm

Every arrow head on the chart-plotter shown above is a huge cargo ship of every description imaginable, a container-ship or an oil- tanker either at anchor or in progress to and from Singapore, one of the world’s busiest maritime ports and this wall-to-wall traffic makes the voyage down the coast very interesting indeed. There are also many examples of “Tugs-in-Tow” hauling huge heavily-laden barges well over two hundred metres in length. Added to this is the constant vigilance required to spot the many very-active fishing boats and crews mostly employing very long nets stretching for hundreds of meters that have to be avoided, on the edge of the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) or shipping channels.

Sunset at Raffles Marina in Singapore

We must thank SIMPSON Marine for this wonderful opportunity to add one hundred and seventy nautical miles in our log books. For Gudrun and I, what makes SIMPSON Marine very special are the extra-ordinary people who could not do enough for us wherever we went. From Mike Simpson, who founded SIMPSON Marine in Hong Kong in 1984 to Paul Whelan, General Manager of SIMPSON Marine SEA based in Singapore, to Sergio Loiacono from the Phuket office, whose wife presented him with a bouncing baby boy (Dino) on the first day of the Boat Asia Show, and a very special mention to Simon Theseira and Ruby Lee from Port Dickson and the rest of the marvellous SIMPSON Marine team…..thank you!

You can get all the details of the products and services offered by this remarkable company at http://www.simpsonmarine.com

The happy crew on safe arrival at Raffles Marina in Singapore