Borneo 2008 Sarawak P. Bintulu and Miri

End of August we made our way to Bintulu, coming out on the Birutu River. Luckily we could follow Helena zwo. They were of big help. We had no depth sounder working and it was almost impossible to work with a manual one. We steered by hand, it was no fun. It’s amazing the comfort an auto pilot brings. We anchored in Mukah (pos: 5°56.20 N; 112°06.34 E). It’s not protected but the conditions were calm to make an over night stop.



In Bintulu you have two options, anchor in the river in town or go to the industrial harbor.

In town, the river is very busy and a friend of mine got his dingy stolen after sundown as he was on board. The dingy was in the water, he was planning later to go back to town. Usually he always has the dingy on the davits.

In the harbor, the security will ask you to anchor in a basin outside the main basin. The place is safe but there is a long way with the dingy to get to the police dock where the exit of the harbor is. In earlier times you were anchoring at the top end of the main basin close to the police and tug dock.

Then you have to organize a car to get to town. Security can arrange a taxi to come (probably a fellow on leave will come with his private car), negotiate the price before. The town was not of special interest. It’s a good over night stop if you are doing day trips.


Next stop was in Miri.
There is a marina; you can not miss the entrance by day (pos: 4°22.93 N; 113°58.16 E), leave on port side a big seahorse. There are no facilities, water and electricity is provided.

In Miri, the city of the seahorse, we organized to have our electronic repaired. Unfortunately the references given by SY Crystal Blues were not good. The Takzim Company was useless and came only with problems instate of solutions. He was only interested to sell new stuff to prohibitive prices. We wasted two weeks waiting for a quotation that never came. When I got the equipment back, they put the wrong HF radio in the box. I only realized that in Brunei, and had to organize the exchange in Labuan. Finally I ordered new equipments from West Marine and Singapore to be delivered in Brunei.

From Canada Hill you have a nice overview of the city. It is also the place where oil was found. A museum tells about the grand old lady.

One day, Pui and I went to the Chinese temple in Miri. As we were getting in the place one of the red light globe fall just in front of Pui. We were lucky this day.