SY Sophia: January 2015

Wow, time flies, it's now been over half a year since my last blog post. I did mean to keep it up a little bit to chronicle our life in Langkawi, so here we go, one big photo post of half a year in Langkawi.

After the last post I flew to Denmark for one month in July/August and left Phil on Sophia. He went up and raced in Phuket Race Week with some friends.

September and October passed along pretty uneventful, we did a few hash runs, I did a cancer fundraising walk with Glenn and Erja, there was an iron man event taking place in Langkawi. Phil the sail maker goes to Singapore for racing and takes measurements for new sail about once a month, but since my friend Theresa moved to London, I don't come along very often, I really miss her.

In November we did the Raja Muda regatta, three overnight races from Port Klang (near Kuala Lumpur) to Langkawi as well as some harbour races. It was a lot of fun and even more fun to win every single race, most of them also on line, this is of course in the cruising class!

Right after Raja Muda I flew to Raja Ampat, a province in Eastern Indonesia (raja means king). In June I went to visit Nalukai, the Aussie catamaran with the cutest three girls onboard, and their equally super nice parents, and before they sail too far away (back to OZ), I had to see them again, and it just happend to be at this most amazing place. Raja Ampat is a well know diving hot spot with fantastic underwater life. We didn't dive, but we spent hours in the water every day snorkelling. I did post an album on facebook with lots and lots of photos.

Just before Christmas Langkawi again hosted a big fun event, this time an extreme festival: bmx, skateboarding and in-line skating competition. It was right next to the anchorage and actually a lot of fun to watch, especially the bmxes, some of the best pros in the world came along and did super cool tricks. Christmas in Islamic Langkawi is obviously not a very big thing (at all), but we did go to two lovely xmas parties with cruisers and expats.

Before New Year we went to Kuala Lumpur and bought a car. That's a sure sign of us settling into Langkawi! New cars are tax free in Langkawi, but older used (and cheap) cars are snatched up by all the rental companies, so it was much cheaper to buy a car on the mainland and just take it back on the car ferry. It's great having out own wheels, but also quite necessary in order to transport old and new sails around the island.

In January 2015 it was time for the Langkawi International Regatta, and how could we not do a regatta right in our home waters. Again lots of fun and lots more winds than the Raja Muda, we never had less than 10 knots of wind and most of the time much more. Again Sophia won, but we did wish for more competition and Phil would like to get an IRC certificate made, so we can be in a class with raceboats only (mind you we still live full time on Sophia on anchor!).