So let me tell you where the Raja Muda will take place. The route for the destination races will be starting from Klang, then to Pangkor, then to Penang and finally to Langkawi. A lot can happen in between those few stops let me tell you. Especially as these are overnight races too.
The crew which I sailed with was comprised of my grandfather, the skipper, a man almost seventy yet with more strength and dexterity than myself when least expected. Aka Tony Sobey. Sarah Pugh, a talented photographer who I talked to about myself and my ambitions than I have than to anyone at large. Dzof Azmi another writer who I had some very entertaining discussions and laughs with. Last but not least, June Tan, a woman with a very caring nature, and ended up effectively looking after me throughout the trip. Affectionately dubbed “Mum” This nickname was well earned as from Klang to Langkawi her comments and actions were that of a meticulous mother. “Eat your tofu!” “There’s some kids your age dancing there, you should go join them” “You should get some sleep” and of course; “You’ll understand when you’re older”
These guys I’ll remember for some time to come, I’ve no doubts about that. The journey that took place from Klang to Pangkor, was uneventful in terms of actual things to tell you about. We chatted, a lot, and got to knew each other straight off the bat. At one point I thought it’d be fun to throw a riddle out there, one which took several hours to get close to completing for the crew. Which was impressive. A riddle I’ll ask you.
‘A man receives a package in the mail from a person, he then opens it, and examines a sunburnt human arm. He is then satisfied, then repackages the arm, and mails it on to another person’ What were the events that happened for this situation to occur?
For this riddle they could ask any question, but I could only answer yes or no. What is interesting to see is how people approach it. The questions were as follows; “Was it a real arm?” “Was the man who received it a doctor?” “Was the man who sent it alive?” “Did it take many stamps to mail the package” “Did he seem fairly ‘Armless?” “Is he a sick bastard?” “Do UPS do this often?”
The answer is a fairly drawn out one, but simply:
‘The event that happened before, was that the man who received the package was sailing with some friends on a private yacht, upon a storm they were forced to abandon the yacht and make their way to the nearest cover. Upon doing so they began to starve slowly but surely, so to save themselves they drew a blood pact that they would all sacrifice an arm to survive. All but one friend, the friend who was the doctor, who (Conveniently) had the tools and the knowledge to cut a mans arm off, without killing him. The men all agreed to this, and they all survived off eating the arms of each other, living without shelter in a tropical climate. Which led to sub burn. Luckily they were saved before they starved to death, and when they recovered the doctor honoured the pact, by removing his own arm, and sending it to the others for inspection. When the others were satisfied that he had kept his end of the bargain, the pact was fulfilled’
Or something like that.
This led to the reoccurring jokes of who we would eat come such an event. We decided on Dzof as he was slightly bigger than the rest of us, and in his own words; “Our very own moving ballast” after which he revealed the fetish of cars & dragons…
Or at least seeing such depictions online. That I could believe, I’ve seen some pretty fucked up things on there, courtesy of my friends and some family, cars with dragons that‘s easy to believe seeing in comparison to other things. This subject was a randomly generated topic, which you’ll find when you have a few feet in length to move about on you discover the best time waster is chatting. And very quickly you run out of things to talk about. So yeah, cars & dragons. Oh cars with dragons? Oh. Right. Ok. Cars being fucked by dragons is an odd fetish, but this made its way as another reoccurring joke, not a bad one at the time either. Other than cannibalism and dragons fucking cars, that was the main first stretch.
Pangkor was small, and the water stung. Or rather what was in it stung. I must admit I haven’t got much fondness for the sea, if any. The damn single cell jellyfish in the waters of Pangkor didn’t help. After a quick swim we decided to make our way to shore while our skipper was away on another yacht. We gathered our clothes and belongings and made our way to shore via the free service provided by the locals, a taxi if you will. These are basically a wooden boat with an outboard motor. But they are free it turns out, and provided by the by the Raja Muda event. We looked about the beach, and tread upon the golden sands of Pangkor. Upon inspecting the race notices, we discovered we were 4th out of 11 yachts in our class.
Go team.
After quickly dipping in a nearby pool and robbing use of the showers so we could quickly get rid of the sand and sea water, we sat at an available table and ordered our food.
I’d like to ask now does anyone else have temperamental tastes? Some days you feel like this, some that? The slightest thought on what you want to eat makes your tastes just dive into a complete disarray? Well I’m very much that way. I’m generally a fairly decisive person, but never when it comes to ordering food. June seemed to save me that trouble by ordering for us in traditional Malay fashion. A bit of everything, that we can share. “What’s that?” I ask.
“Just try it, you’ll like it” June replies deftly. Very swiftly she commandeers my plate and fills it with all kinds of suspect lumps of food. Some of it looks quite…interesting.
“What’s this?” I point at a soggy lump which won’t identify itself. “Tofu” she sagely nods to me and adds sharply; “Eat your tofu!” as I poke it with my chopsticks.
“Yes mum” I reply, with my trademark ‘Confused yet amused’ ä grin. I admit it wasn’t that bad. As we finished off the dishes we made our plans. “So let’s try and find a hotel to check into” Sarah said, while rummaging through her bags. “I’d like a nice soft bed” She added. As did we all agree. “Well what about Tony?” June asked as we threw money together for the bill. After failing to get through to him via the magic of the Digi mobile phone network, I offered to go find out his plans. After all, Pangkor was tiny, it wouldn’t be hard to get to find everyone again. Right? After letting them take my bag and after we swap phone numbers, they set off to find some accommodation while I trekked down to the beach to acquire the services of the sea taxis.
After a brief chat with the Skipper, and agreeing on meeting at the first, and I use this term as loosely as I can, party at 6pm. I made my way back to the shore. As I stroll up the beach while trying to phone June I become slightly aware I haven’t topped up my prepaid phone in a few days. This awareness was helped by a sharp Malaysian voice telling me to top up my phone. What then followed for the next hour was the joy that was wandering between ever hotel in the local radius of this small village asking;
“Have you seen two girls? One man? …uhmmm…English girl? Blonde? Have you seen her?” to which the most common reply was; “Uh, ah, uh…no lah” I’m yet to discover what “Uh or ah” means. Lah I’m pretty sure is the secret to Malay though. I thought that a couple of Malaysians and an English woman would be easy to find, obviously not. “Not seen lah” was my favourite reply. They didn’t even wait for me to finish asking. But no, they knew who I was looking for via some hotel clerk telepathy they master prior to working there.
After a solid hour of being oh so lost, I received a phone call from Sarah. “We’re at the Palm resort hotel, rooms 341 and 342” Aha!
After a few attempts I found the place, and knocked on the door adorned 342. I then strode in to find a wet, naked Dzof stood with a towel hastily wrapped round himself. I stepped back out, waited a second or two, then slowly opened the door. “Hi” I said. “Hi” He replied. “Trying to seduce me eh?” I joked as I checked the room out, wiping the last ten seconds from my mind. Two beds, a television, and an en-suite bathroom…with a shower! Brilliant. It not only gave me comfort in knowing why Dzof was naked, but a comfort knowing I could have a nice long hot shower. “Awesome, we have a shower” I inspected the shower with closer scrutiny, then proceeded to lock myself away and enjoy the sweet, sweet hot water.
Now feeling refreshed and ready to hit the ’Party’ I unpacked my few belongings. Which consisted of repacking my clothes after digging out my laptop. Oh Didn’t I mention before? I’m an email addict. I’m aware that we have a self help group as we can’t possible survive with this addiction for too long if left untreated. It just may interfere with my work that’s all.
Once I read my emails, we decided to lure the girls in with promises of hotel tea, coffee and hot n’ steamy Wifi’n. It worked, and within minutes we had Facebooked each other and added our little lines about how we knew each other. This could be the geeky first base for all I know. A few minutes later Sarah had to say “Cars and dragons then?” within moments Dzof brought up some hot car lovin’ and a some instructions on how to make love to a car. We laughed pretty damn hard at that, its odd to find communities like that I must admit, but not completely unexpected. After our fetishes were fed, we ambled down to the Raja Muda official party. “That minivan is giving you the eye man” I added as we stepped onto the street as we walked back towards the beach.
Come the party at Pangkor where we got two, that’s two free beers!, I met James again, said hi, and said goodbye. We had a fairly good meal I must admit though, but the night wasn’t giving me the “Go have some fun” vibe, and I decided to head back with the group. After typing up for a bit of the night and listening to Dzof speak names in his sleep, I laid back and joined Dzof in snoring and mumbling his arse off.
Turns out I missed a pool party started by the now legendary Vorbs. Cool guy, little bit hyper. Sound all the same. June had told me to go “Join the kids my age” instead of turning in for the night with the crew, but after a statement like that I couldn’t just say “Yeah, sure” The only action and adventure I got that night was catching up on my work load, and positioning the pillows so I could slowly suffocate myself to escape the snores of Dzof. I failed. He did say something interesting things in his sleep though, the guys a sleep talker. Names, grunts and random words were blurted into the room via his snores. Mental notes were taken as I drifted off to sleep.
Come the morning we were well on the way to Penang, this one was a touch more eventful to say the least. Later in the evening, the rain started to come out, and we made a grab for our waterproof gear and threw it on. Mine was some kind of oilskin cape, tied with a belt round it. It made a pretty sexy dress I had to say, but a highly ineffective layer of protection from the weather.
Our skipper simply told us we should just head below and get some rest as it looks like it’s going to be raining for quite a time. So we did as told, and ducked out of any responsibility whatsoever. But I felt guilty, as my soon to be seventy year old granddad was out in the rain that was zipping down on us.
So I sighed and headed back up to join him with two Kitkats in hand for us.
The storm built up slowly, with pressure growing as we sailed through the night. I had already ditched my waterproof dress as it got in the way too much for me to operate winches, being soaked through in this climate wasn’t so bad though. We chatted about idle things, future plans for me, family, the odd belief or two. And after awhile we simply watched the storm die out.
Or until we thought it had.
The eye of the storm, heard of that? Well we were sat right in the middle of it, the rain had stopped, the wind had dropped and sea was calm. The problem with a dark and cloudy is that you can’t see a damn thing.
So we didn’t see the storm clouds prepare to give us a “Shades handshake”*
Wham! The rain, wind and sea struck out at us as one, and we knew we were right back into it. The rain was so hard it stung, I couldn’t see anything period. With my hands cupped over my eyes I could see less than a foot, so I stumbled to the shelter that was the cabin and stuck my head in just to give my awareness and instincts time to get back to their stations. June, my mother, stared at me with the ‘What’s going on?’ look people give when they just wake up. Knowing that more people up here would be dangerous at best, I simply yelled “Stay down there! We’ll handle it! We need the room. No worries!” She nodded, and took off the baseball cap I hadn’t up to that point seen her remove, and passed it to me. I donned the sacred baseball cap as the yacht leapt from the waves, and thanks to the peak of the cap I found I could see a bit more clearly. At this point we were pitched right on our keel, with water rushing over the sides.
*A Terry Pratchet joke the Shades is a reference to the stereotypical bad part of town which you never stop in too long. A Shades handshake would involve you shaking their fist with your face.
Hindsight slaps me across the back of the head for not tying a safely line to a runner on the yacht. Some people underestimate the power of the sea. All I can say to those people is simply don’t. Can you imagine how damn powerful the sea is? Simply sitting on deck during dusk gives you a huge sense of the sheer vastness of the ocean. If you fell over in calm wind conditions, you could drown. If you go over in conditions like these which I happened to chance. You will drown. It’s probably not the best way to go I’d hazard.
Let’s step back into my current situation…where were we? Ah yes, the crashing waves that shook the boat. The rain so thick and heavy that it felt like it was trying to bite you. The wind so damn strong it seemed to be an almighty presence which had the power to do anything.
As the yacht rocked violently I yelled back to our captain; “What are we going to do?” But he didn’t hear me, as I didn’t when I saw his mouth open to throw empty noise. I moved up to him as the yacht seemed to leap from the waves harshly, and yelled again; “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?” to his reply, which was barely audible in the wind; “WHAT?” I repeated. A fraction louder. And he seemed to understand to a degree this time as he scrambled past and pointed at the Genoa. The Genoa we got rid of easily enough, to a point. The line that drew it in I pulled on with all my might and got it almost all the way till it stuck hard. “IT’S STUCK!” I cried into his ear. “GIVE ME IT!”*he snatched the line and pulled it the rest of the way. I had pulled that with all my strength, to have him easily finish it off as if it was nothing. . “WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO REEF!”**
*She said
**This is a sailing term for reducing the size of a sail, usually the mainsail, to reduce the amount of keeling that occurs. He did not mean that we whack up a joint in the comfort offered by the cabin.
He started to clamber up to the sail while leaving me at the helm of a yacht which didn’t have her rudder in the damn sea. I could tell that we were turning due to the lights in the distance that and from ones that were pretty close…But that was a problem to be addressed after I realised that my grandfather had just leapt up on to a very treacherous deck to reef a sail filled with high-speed winds.
If anyone went over in this storm, they were dead. Easily. I climbed up with him, ignoring his yells at me to get back down.
“HAH! NO BLOODY CHANCE I’M LEAVING YOU UP HERE ON YOUR OWN!” I screamed at him, slipping slightly on the deck as I made my way to the mast. We began to set the reef for the sail when I heard it. Or rather my imagination must have added the effect to the action, as I couldn’t have possibly heard what I had just seen over the wind. Looking up into the mainsail I saw the stars across a nice new tear in the middle
“LOOK!” I pointed at the sail so he could see the huge gaping gash in our sail. “WE NEED TO GET IT DOWN!” he pointed at the halyard that held the main sail up. Nodding I fled back down to the deck and flipped the release and slowly eased it out, my legs firmly against the panel as the weight of the sails with the wind on it was intense even when torn. As we got it down bit by bit he trapped it and wrapped it upon itself, to the point where I could let the halyard off, and I could join him with the ties to keep it bound. The yacht threw us back and forth as we tied these straps around the boom. The lights that had been growing closer earlier came back to mind, and I alerted my grandfather. “THOSE LIGHTS ARE CLOSE, VERY CLOSE” I yelled. “NO, THEY’RE FINE” it was in a few moments time when I was proven right when the bow of another yacht came into plain sight. Bursting through the mist that the rain provided. Shit. “WE’RE GOING TO COLLIDE!” I screamed, slight panic making its way through my system as I took the helm.
“NO PROBLEM!” he threw on the engine, and hit the revs up so that we lurched slightly to our port side. Even with the engine on full we made very little progress, but enough for us to watch this other yacht cut though close enough to pass a beer between us on our starboard side. It was the Coup de Solei* I didn’t know that at the time, but it wasn’t slowing down for anything I could see that. I couldn’t see anyone on deck, but then I couldn’t see clearly anything past the brim of my cap. After our close call, I simply sat on the bench by the helm, as my grandfather had took the helm away from me.
*Turns out the name means Sunstroke. Pretty suitable for this yacht once you have talked to the crew for any amount of time.
Without a sail, we were out of the race. So we were to motor the rest of the way. With that knowledge I knew that there wasn’t anything to do. I remained awake with the skipper for a few more hours (Ok it felt like a few hours but I‘ll admit that it must have been just about 20 minutes), and then decided to take refuge inside for a short nap. As the port and starboard bunks were taken, I decided to hide away with the luggage in the bow. Shortly after I had drifted off, I heard a loud thumping noise on the side of the hull. Deciding to ignore it, despite it continuing, I tried to sleep. Alas, no luck as someone came along and woke me up. It was my grandfather. “What the hell is that noise?” he asked. “No idea, I was just trying to sleep, maybe it’s the anchor or some waves?” I replied, in the Zen like state just-waking-up provides for a few moments. “Well I need to find out quick otherwise it may put a hole in us!” he disappeared up on deck, and I slumped back to my attempted sleep. After awhile the noise stopped and I slept. But not for long, or as long as I would have liked. Unable to sleep in the hot confines of the bow I made it back up deck, into the fresh dawn of a new clear day. “So what was it?” I asked meekly. “It was the spinnaker boom” he grunted. What had happened was the pole had slipped into the water, but was still latched to the yacht. So it had dragged along side us, walloping the hull. Still tired I gazed idly out, with the thought; ‘When someone wakes up, I’ll take their place’
The first up was June, followed closely by Sarah. I passed on the news. “Had a little storm, wasn’t too bad, it was lucky that June gave me her hat as I couldn’t see a damn thing, oh and we almost collided with another yacht. Oh and we lost our main sail, split through the middle” The trademark grin once again came through, it‘s an automatic response when giving bad news.
They clambered up and saw the damage that had been done, and offered unneeded apology for not being there. In all truth, being on deck was very dangerous, and the space to move was well needed, it was better that there was just us up deck. Even though I’m not that experienced, especially not as up to date as the other crew members, it probably was best that I was up deck as I’m slightly more agile and better suited to leaping about like an idiot. Sarah’s apology was rather heartfelt, if not rather cliqued; “I thought that you and your grandfather should have some time alone together, you know son and grandson working together against the storm kind of thing” where as June’s was simply; “You said not to come up, so I went back to sleep” at which point I thanked her for the hat, it had been of great help after all. They needn’t apologize, all in all, it had been pretty fucking challenging, and I had enjoyed it. Dzof had slept through the entire thing, I have no idea how, but my God is that impressive. At some point, he must have been thrown to the floor as there’s no way he could have slept so peacefully, drowning the rest of us in his snores. Still, the snores didn’t keep me awake this time, the second I got down there I took June’s spot, and slept soundly.
“…Floatation situation?…” I remain stalwart that is what was said, or something like it. Those words caught my ear, and powered my imagination. ‘Were we sinking?’ ‘Are we in trouble?‘ I was awake, to a point, and asked loudly; “What’s the flotation situations?” to be laughed at madly. What had they said? I’ll never know as the laughter continued sometime. I wasn’t wide awake now, but I had the need to be up and about. Cereal was distributed, and good old cuppas* were issued as we made our way to Penang. It was a rather nice morning, spoiled only by the fact we were motoring on a ruined yacht.
*When I say cuppas I obviously mean a cup of tea, with milk and two sugars.
