Malaysia, October 2010, Danga Bay Marina.

The working Channel is VHF74. Captain Ron will welcome you. At the time we arrived they where working hard to extend the berth capacity (+100 berths) for the Sail Malaysia event 2010.

Ron told us that we can stay as long he doesn’t need our place for a yacht coming from Sail Indonesia expected to arrive October 25.

That was fine for us.

There is a hip of place to anchor in a good holing mud/clay in front of the marina.

The berth had no facilities at the time we arrived. As it was cost free nothing to complain. We used the dingy to go to the “main berth” to get ashore and pick up water.

Danga Bay is well located close to ATM’s, market, super market and all what you need.

As we didn’t clear in and out in Indonesia, we were a little bit worried about to clear in Malaysia. I went to the marina office, explained my situation.

Captain Sabi drove us to the immigration at the Zone place, made us wait at the entrance of the office and came out 5 minutes later with our passports stamped.

What a relieve!

In fact they where happy with our exit stamp from New Caledonia, and didn’t worry too much about the time we spent to arrive in Johor Baru.

October 3rd we went to Singapore at the Swiss Embassy to take my portrait and finger prints.

We met Marianne who helped me efficiently to apply for the new passport.

Together we had lunch at the Swiss Club, stoning place in Singapore.

Marianne wrote a letter allowing the Malaysian and Singapore Immigration officers to use the page number 40 of my passport as it contains only general information.


That would have been useful in New Caledonia to stitch the Indonesian cultural visa. Gasp!




Next day we went to the Malaysian Embassy to organize a 3 month visa for Pui. We filled the form, as usual, went to counter number one, as usual, now! This time they ask for a sponsor’s letter showing me a sample issued from Danga Bay Marina.

I told the man that I’m not in the marina, took a crew list that I filled and on the back I wrote a text me as Captain in charge of my yacht sponsor my crew and wife.

The officer looked at the letter and exclaimed “but its hand written!” and me to answer smoothly “what’s wrong with hand writing?”

He went to see his supervisor and came back smiling “everything is ok!”


Unfortunately Pui got a single entry visa only, so to pick up my passport I had to go by my self.

One week later the new passport arrived and we had to wait another week for the ID card. October 19 I went to Singapore to pick up my new identities.

No one wanted to use page 40 to put the stamps.

They looked for gaps in the pages to put their stamps with reference of the page where the other one is.

I shit myself laughing.


We met  Dingo shortly arriving from Indonesia and left Danga Bay October 21 as Sail Indonesia was arriving and Ron getting nervous.