Sailing Adventures of Mai Tai

OCTOBER 2020 So much has happened since our last blog and yet we are still here waiting for borders to open around us.  We are comfortable and safe here, so will only move on when everything is in place ahead of us. I jokingly mentioned about choosing which tree to decorate for Christmas, and now this is beginning to look

August 29th, the Prime Minister of Malaysia announced that Malaysian borders would not be opening until the 31st December.!!!!!  Previously the opening date for borders was set at 31 August. Thailand is also closed to cruising yachts until sometime next year. So, what now???? It has been over 4 months since we arrived in the remote uninhabited island of Barogang,

Life continues on Barogang, Indonesia If anyone had even suggested we would be here on this remote island for more than 4 to 5 weeks, we would have questioned their sanity. But we have formed a close-knit group here, helping each other in various ways and managing to stay sane and mostly having fun. We mentioned in our last blog

Nine weeks since isolation, 6 of those weeks here on our tropical island of Barogang in the middle of nowhere. And who’s counting? There may be times when it may not be safe to leave our secure anchorage if the weather turns nasty, and we might have to wait a week longer for news of the outside world, and connect

We have now been in isolation for 3 weeks, had our temperatures taken and have been declared fit and well by the Indonesian Navy. With our orders of food and fuel, delivered and stowed away on board, we were ready to set sail on an overnight passage to our new promised island hideaway, 70 nms away.  We can stay there

We are cruising in a different world. After nearly 3 wonderful months away travelling, visiting family and friends, we got back to Mai Tai which we had left hauled out in Pangkor boat yard for all those necessary jobs, ready for the next couple of years of cruising. We had some of the work done by the boat yard crew

From Cambodia, the next leg of our journey was to visit family and friends in California and then on to New Zealand for Christmas. By booking a series of flights on cheap airlines, we end up taking a very long and circuitous route to reach our final destination.  However, Lane and I just switch into travel mode, armed with a

Over the last 10 weeks of 2019, with Mai Tai high and dry in Pangkor Boat Yard, Malaysia, Lane and I have been enjoying some land adventures. This is indeed the season when many cruisers leave their boats to head home for family visits, do some land adventures or prepare their boats for the next cruising season. We needed to

Borneo is divided three regions, one belonging to Malaysia, one Indonesia and one, the tiny nation of Brunei. These past 3 months cruising around Western and Northern Borneo, we crossed between the different regions several times, each time requiring us to go through the lengthy process of checking into and out of each country. Screeds of paper work, official stamps