Deep Water Soloing (DWS): The art of climbing without the protection of a rope over water deep enough to (hopefully) safely facilitate your falling/jumping into it at any point of the climb.
Julian finally showed his jetlagged face, and we could move on from Langkawi towards Thailand. ..but first: some climbing. ...And even before that: getting out to the boat. This proved interesting as the onshore wind was quite strong. So strong that we had no chance of launching the dinghy, especially without getting all of Julians luggage wet. To complicate matters a wee bit the boat were not exactly in a protected anchorage. She was pitching violently in the swell and since our anchorchain is a bit worn (to the point of leaving about 100 grams of flaking rust on deck pr. 30 metres chain/pr. anchoring) we decided we needed to move the boat anyway. And with no chance of launching the dinghy it was decided that I should swim the 4-500 metres out through the waves. Luckily Julian had brought a diving mask as well as a pair of fins with him. That eased the trip, but it was still a bit on the interesting side.
Well off from Langkawi a few hours later than planned we went straight for this spot we'd found on our way to Langkawi. It is a sort of lagoon made up of limestone island with an endless number of possible bouldering routes. We stayed a few days climbing until the whining about sore hands (and in my and Egils case: sore muscles) became unbearable. A lot of the rock is pretty sharp, forcing the climber to sacrifice a fair amount of skin to do the route. Seven months on a sailboat have left Egil and me with nothing but a faint memory of any kind of physical qualities we were once in posession of, such as stamina or strength, so we headed on, gently massaging sore muscles.
We headed for the Langkawi capital of Kuah in a nice 14-16 knot blow, and reached it the same evening, right after nightfall. Mission: buy booze and cigarettes, take on diesel and water, drop off Øyvind, clear out of Malaysia. This was acomplished in full the day after arriving. I hopped off the sailboat to hop on to the ferry over to Thailand. The plan to go to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to revisit the Thaiboxing (muay thai) gym I spent six weeks training with two years ago, to train a bit for a change and get my ass kicked around by small thais.
Julian finally showed his jetlagged face, and we could move on from Langkawi towards Thailand. ..but first: some climbing. ...And even before that: getting out to the boat. This proved interesting as the onshore wind was quite strong. So strong that we had no chance of launching the dinghy, especially without getting all of Julians luggage wet. To complicate matters a wee bit the boat were not exactly in a protected anchorage. She was pitching violently in the swell and since our anchorchain is a bit worn (to the point of leaving about 100 grams of flaking rust on deck pr. 30 metres chain/pr. anchoring) we decided we needed to move the boat anyway. And with no chance of launching the dinghy it was decided that I should swim the 4-500 metres out through the waves. Luckily Julian had brought a diving mask as well as a pair of fins with him. That eased the trip, but it was still a bit on the interesting side.
Well off from Langkawi a few hours later than planned we went straight for this spot we'd found on our way to Langkawi. It is a sort of lagoon made up of limestone island with an endless number of possible bouldering routes. We stayed a few days climbing until the whining about sore hands (and in my and Egils case: sore muscles) became unbearable. A lot of the rock is pretty sharp, forcing the climber to sacrifice a fair amount of skin to do the route. Seven months on a sailboat have left Egil and me with nothing but a faint memory of any kind of physical qualities we were once in posession of, such as stamina or strength, so we headed on, gently massaging sore muscles. We headed for the Langkawi capital of Kuah in a nice 14-16 knot blow, and reached it the same evening, right after nightfall. Mission: buy booze and cigarettes, take on diesel and water, drop off Øyvind, clear out of Malaysia. This was acomplished in full the day after arriving. I hopped off the sailboat to hop on to the ferry over to Thailand. The plan to go to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to revisit the Thaiboxing (muay thai) gym I spent six weeks training with two years ago, to train a bit for a change and get my ass kicked around by small thais.Egil and Julians plan was to sail on to Thailand, stop on some of the islands along the way, do some more climbing and generally pass the time as comfortably and good as they see fit. How that is going I have no idea at the time of writing, but I doubt they're having any trouble fulfilling any of those objectives.
We've reached the ancient and super-historic trading city of Malacca. Awesome little place. Plenty of Malaysian, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, English, Arabian and Chinese history here. 
Most other people sailing up the Malacca strait do it in dayhops and anchor at night because of all the traffic and fishing boats. However we didn't think it looked much worse than what we've already seen in Indonesia, so we pushed on through the night and thereby cut the passage by 24 hours or so. The only problem was a lack of wind most of the way, but hey: diesel is cheap as chips here and we have expanded our fuel-capacity by 80 liters, adding 2x40l jerrycans. Now we can motor for about ten days straight. We might need it up the red sea!
