Dear friends,

There have been few "Harmonica" news letters this year: Not because there has been little to write about, but rather we have been preoccpuied with boat-buying and you can see from the attached photo that Dave seems to have lost his head over a big catamaran. It is hard to write about what is on your mind until everything is certain.

Dave left his favorite playground in the Canadian Rocky Mountains s in March again this year but then spent nearly a month in Queensland Australia before returning to Harmonica in Thailand. He was renewing friendships made over the last 3 years, but mainly leaning on these friends for help looking at catamarans for sale. The French build many wonderful cruising cats, and several are presently for sale cheaply in the Caribbean, but also many look old & tired and several designs have been oriented too much towards space & production constraints rather than the performance. Meanwhile, the Australians developed many of their own designs and it was fascinating seeing some of the differences. However, after many months of comparisons we have an offer to purchase a 20-year-old UK designed & built 63 foot Shuttleworth. Many sensible people have told us this boat will be too powerful &/or too big to handle, or too difficult to maintain. But surely one of the main purposes of life is to test whether many people can be wrong! So we currently have an accepted offer on Dulcinea, and hope to have her surveyed in about 2 weeks.

Having recommissioned Harmonica in April, Dave sailed back down the Malacca Strait and met Jan in Singapore in May. We had joined the Malaysian "Passage to the East" Rally. This gave access to some wonderful local entertainment and food, and introduced us to some new sailing friends. It has been a lot of fun and taken us to places where we would not have otherwise gone.

After Singapore we sailed up 2 or 300 hundred miles of beaches on the East Coast of Malaysia with some fun stops along the way. The nicest places were the offshore islands such as P Tioman and P Redang, where the water is beautifully clear and the turtles, monkeys, lizards, birds, & butterflies give a great show of wildlife.

We then sailed about 500 miles across the S China Sea to Sarawak in Borneo. The sea-crossing was eventful starting with an offshore swim to clear a through-hull blocked by barnacles, then some weaving through the oil platforms which give Malaysia it's current wealth, a night dodging through the shipping lane from Singapore to E Asia, finished off with a day of spectacular squally thunder storms, and final day motoring in calms. There were surprisingly strong currents setting N at about 1 knot for most of the passage. When the rally re-assembled at Santubong near Kuching, there were 1 or 2 boats with items to fix. Harmonica had washed her gunwall further under water than normal for our sailing but she was fine.

We liked Kuching. It may have helped that we ate the most magnificent meal of The Rally there as guests in the "Borneo Convention Centre". This was one of the two or three architechtural excesses, costing millions and not looking busily used. Otherwise, Kuching still has the sleepy relaxed feel that it probably experienced under the Raja's in the 1800's and in it's short British colonial experience after WW2.

There was a trip to see the Orang Utangs which we enjoyed very much, but it was not up to the environment in which we met them 2 years ago in Tajanputing in Southern Borneo.

We rented a motorbike and rode south close to the Indonesian border. Outside the City one quickly feels in the thickly forested countryside. It also feels like a more diverse culture where the several Animist tribes now profess Christianity, and the strong Chinese and Indian populations mix with the Muslim peoples from the mainland.

It would have been interesting to procede to Sabah, which is supposed to be quite different again. We did take Harmonica E close to Sibu and into the Rajang River Delta, but that was where our emails confirmed that our boat purchase offer had been accepted and we could return west towards Thailand, have the new cat surveyed, and if everything looks OK we must get really serious about selling Harmonica: Our trusted home since 2000.

We seldom have any calamities to report but understand that these add zest to narratives, so we'll tell of the morning we left the Rajang River. There are currents here that run 5 to 8 knots, which is too fast for us to even stem: we could only go backwards if we got the times wrong. However we found no current stations within the delta but inferred from data out to sea that the current turned nearly 3 hrs before the tide. Using this guess, we decided to start out from the creek where we anchored 90 minutes before first light. While Jan plugged in the spotlight, Dave checked the instruments and pulled up the anchor. We then put the engine into gear and headed towards impenetrable blackness just to find that our trusty radar was not working. A minute later, all truths were revealed: the spotlight had tripped an electrical breaker on the distribution panel, which was easily corrected when we knew the problem. By then, we had made it over the bar into the main river, the current was running strongly in the right direction, Harmonica was underway in the right direction & the right place, and it was time for a strong cup of coffee!

By turning back west that day we also had the opportunity to visit the first day of the "International Rain Forest Music Festival". There were workshops and performances from ethnic groups from several parts of the world, and we enjoyed the day. Then we sailed back across the S China Sea. We are currently undergoing pleasant culture-shock by treating ourselves to to an expensive but very civilized 3 days in the One15 Marina in Singapore before heading NW to Phuket. The appartments behind Harmonica are selling for just under ten million each, and the swimming pool has a glass front which gives the lovely refraction effects seen in the attached photo.

At Santubong, hte anchor came up clean, but as soon as the boat went into gear it shuddered & shook. We coasted slowly out under sail until we were outside the river, on the banks of which our friends have seen large crocodiles. Then it was over the side for David into murky water while Janet bravely stood watch on the stern deck for approaching crocs!!! After removing a large clod of weed, all was fine. However, again one day out from Singapore, the prop got fouled and it was back over the side for David in opaque shark-prone waters. Again Janet must have managed to frighten them off from the deck. However, that makes 3 times this year that we have needed to go over the side to clear the propeller, whereas it normally does not happen at all.

We hope that Jan will manage to be around during survey and sea-trial of our new baby out in the Far East, before an even more exciting return to Canada for the arrival of our first grandchild.

Love from Dave & Jan, and from Harmonica too.

email:

web page www.techco.ab.ca/harmonica