Singapore to Sri Lanka

Our stay in Singapore was short – only two days – but was sufficient to make a huge impression on crewman Leo. It was the largest city he has ever seen, and far and away the most sophisticated. We still talk about the billiard table smooth roads, the disciplined traffic, the ultra modern shopping malls with open eating areas on every floor, offering every type of cusine – yet without allowing cooking smells to intrude into the mall itself.

Above all, the absolute cleanliness everywhere. Chewing gum banned by law. Not a scrap of litter anywhere (we thought we had caught them out once. There were black plastic sacks along the side of one road. Wrong! They were ‘grow bags’ with fresh plants to conceal new concrete works).

If the electronic signs ‘traffic now taking 8 mins to Jurong’ or ‘Little Crime is not No Crime’ sometimes give a sense of ‘Big Brother’ (George Orwell not the TV Programme) then so be it. Singapore just shows the effect of social engineering on a proud and industrious multi racial population.

Why this talk of Singapore when we have now arrived in the port of Galle, Sri Lanka? Only that the contrast could not be more extreme. Although the British were the ruling colonial power in both countries and independence was gained at about the same time, little has changed here. Any ex serviceman who was stationed in South East Asia back in the Fifties or Sixties would feel immediately at home, so little has changed.

Granted, Sri Lanka has an ongoing security problem with the Tamil Tigers terrorist movement fighting for an autonomous homeland in the north of the country for the largely immigrant Tamil speaking population. The Tamils came from Southern India and one feels that India – if it chose to – could do much to ease the problems here. But there is something much deeper which is holding this beautiful country back. It is almost as though it wants to live in the past, as evidenced by the paperwork and documentation, which I swear was first formulated by the British and is still in use today, but now triplicated. As the yacht’s Master I am required to employ the services of a shipping agent here. He fills in most of the forms, I sign them and he then takes me from office to office to present them to the appropriate officials. In one case I actually signed eight copies of the same form! Enough said, let’s get on with Sri Lanka itself.

The country is beautiful and the people are lovely. Desperately poor by western standards, but friendly to a fault. This truly is the exotic East. To see a huge elephant lumbering down the main road surrounded by trucks, busses, ‘Tuk Tuks’ and bicycles, carrying it’s own working chain and a bundle of food to keep it going through the day, is to know that this is a magical place. Actually, the elephant holds an important place in Sri Lanka culture. There is even an elephant orphanage here!

Those ‘Tuk Tuks’. For the uninitiated, these are a sort of three wheeled scooter with a roof, which has become the taxi of the third world. The driver sits in the front – of course – and the passengers, of whom there may be one, two, three, or indeed, a complete family including chickens for the market, all sit behind. The wheels are scooter size and send shock waves through the whole structure at every bump, so the driver weaves from one side of the road to the other, doing all he can to avoid the pot holes, of which there are many. Since every other Tuk Tuk driver is doing the same (and so are many of the busses, trucks and bicycles) and since the cow has a sacred right to wander wherever it likes, every ride is an adventure! To add to the apparent chaos – it has to be said that only the visitors seem to find it frightening – everyone drives with one hand on the horn, and with a big, daft smile on their face. The open ocean will seem a much safer place after this...

Actually, the trip here was much easier than I had feared. After leaving Singapore we quietly motored (yes, we were carrying even more diesel fuel this time) up the Straights of Malacca and across the bottom of the Andaman Sea. There was lots of commercial traffic, ships of every size and type including car transporters looking like blocks of flats and monster LNG ships carrying natural gas in triple pressure retorts, almost like some mad scientist’s laboratory experiment.

There was also a vast amount of floating debris. The usual plastic which you always expect to find near heavily populated areas, but also mangrove and bamboo and even on occasion, whole trees. Even in daylight it is not always possible to see floating objects in the water, in time to avoid them. At night it is impossible. On a couple of occasions there was a horrible ‘grouching’ sound as the yacht tried to climb over, or push aside something, but our good luck held and there was no damage done.

We did see one remarkable phenomena as a little black tail hung beneath one dark cloud and seemed almost snake-like as it tried to reach down to the sea. Suddenly, it connected and straightened, and there was the vertical column of a water spout from cloud to sea, a rotating mass of energy like a miniature cyclone. We passed just close enough to see the wind on board rise from eight or ten knots to forty plus, and then we were away from the danger zone and the spout went off on it’s merry way, and so did we.
After the first four days of motoring in very light conditions, a hesitant wind offered an occasional puff, steadily building in strength until it settled at twelve to fifteen knots and we were able to get all our sails up and enjoy the first of the North East Monsoon. Oh, the peace on board as the engine is switched off and the boat settles into her natural movement! From then on, we carried the wind all the way across the Bay of Bengal, making 145 to 150 miles each day.

There was a massive and favorable current as we closed the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The pilot chart indicated a likely, one and a half knots, we actually experienced five to six, which gave us a speed over the ground, in excess of twelve knots! This would normally have been very welcome, but because of security problems, entry into Galle Harbour is only permitted during daylight hours, and then only after an inspection by a naval party. We therefore had to furl most of our sails and stand off the coast for much of the night, before getting our naval clearance, mid morning.

Local knowledge is a wonderful thing. I have been to Galle on a number of occasions so knew exactly what to do. Of course, this time everything has been changed, yachts are no longer allowed in the harbour and have to secure to mooring buoys about half a mile off!

I shall gloss over the formalities. The naval parties (yes, they came twice) are after a free drink and anything else that might be going. The Government officials are like government officials everywhere else in the world. Call them ‘Sir’, keep smiling and eventually you get what they were going to give you anyway!

We still have a gearbox problem, with no astern (reverse) facility. I know we will not be allowed to transit the Suez Canal like this so am determined that it is repaired before we leave here. I felt it too dangerous to remain in the open bay, without any engine facility, so have prevailed upon the naval authorities and the Harbor Master and have now been allowed to move into the inner harbor so that the gearbox can be removed. We are alongside an old working boat with it’s dirty black tire fenders leaving marks all over our beautiful white topsides. A major cleaning-up operation is going to be needed when we eventually leave here!

There is one other small irritation which you don’t expect when cruising on a yacht. Through the nights, a naval patrol boat steams around the harbour and small depth charges are thrown into the water to ‘discourage’ any terrorist scuba divers. Although they are only small depth charges, the shockwave which hits the yacht, makes sure that a full night’s sleep is unlikely.

An engineer came on board, looked at the gearbox and said “No Problem”. This it seems was not exactly what he meant! It now appears that it isn’t a problem to work on the gearbox once it is off the yacht, but it is a major problem to get it off the yacht, plus it may be an even bigger problem to get spare parts. After the weekend, we have a carpenter coming to decide how to remove the structure around the gearbox. Since this will also mean removing the ship’s batteries, battery box and much else, things are looking uncomfortable for us next week, without electricity or water pumps etc.

Once the engineer has access, and can physically remove the gearbox, we will then have to arrange with Customs to import it into Sri Lanka for repair, and then, hopefully, to export it again to the yacht! Yachting is not all about gin and tonics and tropical sunsets!

So, that is our situation at the moment. I will let you know how we get on.

Part 4 SriLanka