Jeffs Log ~ Saturday, April 5th, 2008 & Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Saturday, April 5, 2008 Raffles Marina, Singapore

We got into raffles on Thursday, and were held up by immigration not being available. We got in at about 1:30 or so, and the immigration officer did not get here until about 4. We all went to lunch and hung out waiting. I tried to scope out laundry service and telephone and things like that, because we are pulling out of here early Tuesday morning. Scott’s guests arrive at the boat on Monday. He told us both to take a couple of days off and see a little bit of Singapore.

The marina is very nice, and the hotel is almost ready to reopen after renovation. The staff bends over backwards to help us with whatever we need, except laundry. I figured that in this part of the world laundry would be very easy and inexpensive to get done. Boy! Was I ever wrong. The hotel laundry charges by the piece, and we figured that it would cost about 200 bucks to get it done. There is a token operated washer and dryer, and each one costs five dollars a load. It looks like that will be the method. I checked with another laundry near the train station, and it would take a week and cost 10 dollars per kilo. Last time we had almost 24 kilos. Laundry costs a fortune in Singapore, so don’t get your clothes dirty!

Today Mark and I took off and hit the city. Singapore is a clean city. The mass transit systems are very effective and inexpensive to get around on. We went downtown for lunch and in the process went through some of the shopping areas and a couple of parks. We walked through the monument for all of the civilians that died when Japan invaded in WWII. We went to the Sim Lam Building which is six stories of one electronic and camera shop after another. We need a new microphone for the vhf radio, which is what sent us there. The place was packed with people on every floor. We found 2 dealers that handle Icom radios, but neither one had the mic that we need. Ours is repaired for now, but the transmit button return spring is held together with hope and prayer.

After that adventure we got back on the train and headed to Sentosa Island. We had to change trains and go to the harbor front. Then it was a brisk walk to the cable car station. When we got in the cable car that takes people over the port to the island, it started pouring rain. The cable car stopped when we were about half way across, and stayed stopped for several minutes. That felt kind of eerie. We got to the island with enough time to have one quick cocktail, and then had to hastily get back to the train station that we began our afternoon with to catch the last shuttle bus to the marina.

One interesting thing that happened was after getting our rail passes, The computer must take a couple of minutes before it recognizes the just issued pass. Neither one of us could get through the gate. Well, we didn’t quite know how everything worked, so we went to the automated ticket machine to see what we could sort out. We were getting nowhere fast when a very nice lady at the machine next to us asked if she could help. She checked and saw that there was a positive cash balance on the cards, and then went with us to the gate, and viola! The gates opened. We thanked her for being so nice, and we all went on our way.


Thursday April 3, 2008
Last night was spent anchored just off a cute little island 30 or 40 miles from Singapore. We approached the island well after dark, and picked the spot to anchor using Radar, gps, and the chart. We were in the lee of the iusland, but during the night, the wind shifted, so we did roll a bit. I still slept fairly well. I had gotten a text message off to Clara so that she knew that all was well. At sunrise, it was time to go and complete the journey to Raffle’s Marina in Singapore. We set the sails right after getting the anchor stowed. We enjoyed a brisk sail for the first hour, then the wind shut off and we became a motor boat again.
The coordinates for the anchorage were 1 27.527N 103 15.030E.