Heading for the Tioman Group

After transiting the Straits, I hadn't really considered where we would  anchor for the night as that was dependent on how long the transit actually took.
Having cleared the no anchoring section by 1542, I started to look for somewhere for the night. There are some small islands just off the SE tip of Malaysia, about which I could find very little information. Understandably I would suggest, as once we got there, there appeared nowhere to feasibly anchor. There was a good knot and a half of current gurgling south and the islands were uninviting lumps of rock above the water , so I had no idea what would be below, and the water was murky, so they were discounted as a place to spend the night.
We dropped anchor on mud  about 1830, having done 79miles for the day, at the southern end of  Teluk Punggai (Punggai Bay).

Next day we sailed to Pulau Sibu a nice 54nm run, eventually with  a breeze which allowed the MPS to set. We had done a practise set earlier in the morning but the wind then, had not been quite enough, so we stowed it away until the wind became more obliging.
 Arrived off the position I was making for, once again in no visibility, as it was the afternoon /evening  deluge. Looking at the guide book afterwards we obviously passed a very photogenic ( on a nice day) potential anchorage , which just hadn't looked quite so inviting on the radar!

Sultan of Johor's kelong

Next day made our way out to and past Pulau Tinggi, maybe a potential stop on the way back south.
The most notable thing we saw here is the Kiwi equivalent of a “fishing batch”. Here they are called
Kelongs. The one we passed off Tinggi just happens to be the most upmarket one in the region , being well over a thousand square meters and on concrete poles instead of the usual 'thin trunk tree pilings bound together with polypropylene lines'. Belonging the the Sultan of Johor , explains the magnificence of the one we passed.


Crossed over to Pulau Aur, passing through the channel between it and Pulau Dayang , just as a another squall came through. We had in fact just dropped the sails in anticipation of anchoring here, when the wind blew in with such ferocity, that we decided to pass through and found a bay just around the corner on the east side.

Sat here for the next  day. The snorkelling was good, water clear, but a noticeable dearth of fish life.
A small beach at the head of the bay was completely littered with every piece of plastic detritus mankind manages to manufacture. The beach and bay would be totally exposed to the NE monsoon, hence the accumulation of garbage. Sad to see, and hard to comprehend until you have actually seen it.
All the islands around the Tioman group are national parks. Apparently this means its open slather for the locals to fish. In the afternoon just as we were about to go ashore to check out the beach, a small local dinghy appeared ,with three on board. They went to the head of the beach and one of the guys hopped over the side. The boat then moved across the head of the bay and stopped. As we tried to approach the beach ourselves , we realised what they were doing. They had completely strung a net across the entire beach. A couple of hours later they hauled it in and disappeared with the collection of, I imagine, minnows.

Next morning we went for a snorkel and in the afternoon I used the opportunity to clean off the last of the fuzz from the 4 months in Port Dickson Marina in the beautifully clear water. Everything looking pretty good underneath. The anodes look fine and I knocked off the few barnacles that I had missed in the gloom of the water in Port Dickson.

Next day we awoke to find an oil slick heading our way on the current. It looked suspiciously like a tank cleaning exercise had taken place some where offshore.
K'Gari now has a particularly unattractive slick mark on the hulls. So we upped and offed , headed to  Pulau Tioman