After 10 days of getting Enso ready to head South to Singapore we are finally ready to leave. We were checked out by immigration Sunday afternoon by a friendly immigration agent, accompanied by 3 people from the agent service we hired.
Agents are often hired when going from country to country. Without an agent you will have to visit 3 to 4 or more locations to check in or out. The agents know the process and language and make it much easier. They are also a resource of local knowledge, where to get fuel, closest grocery or marine store.
We left early Monday morning to a calm sea and light breeze on the nose. We did some dodging around container traffic and fishing boats. We are continually watching for ship traffic and FAD’s (fish attractive devices). These are generally a 1 meter stick with a small flag attached to it. Seeing them and avoiding them is a constant issue until you get far enough offshore. The commercial vessels are on a track (that isn’t always obvious) and it is our responsibility to move out of the way. Aside from staying on watch we have an AIS (automatic identification system) and radar to locate traffic. The radar also tracks clouds and rain squalls for us.
This is our first trip with night passages. Because we are just north of the equator we have about 12 hours of daylight, 6:00 am to 6:00 pm with about 30 minutes of twilight on each side. Here are some pictures of our navigation station at night and lights from the squid boats. We spent 3 nights and 4 days on passage to Palau Perhentian, an island north of Terengganu (our Malaysian check-in port).
Normally you shouldn’t stop before checking in to a new country but we were told a quick overnight stop late in the afternoon would probably be ok. Two hours later we had the Malaysian navy show up and hang around a few hundred meters away. We were expecting a visit or radio call but after a few hours they decided to leave. Early the next morning we motor sailed to Terengganu to check into Malaysia.
Jon
Enso sail 
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