Sebana Cove

Hi Everyone,

   I haven’t written in a while. We are still just relaxing here at Sebana, though Randal and I have been riding our bikes.  And that has been good for both of us.  There is a wonderful 16 mile back road ride back to Sungai Rengit.  We have ridden it several times.  Sixteen miles, lunch in town, and then 16 miles back.  And when Randal doesn’t feel like riding I just go alone along the back road as far as the one street town of  Penerang and then I ride back;  a nice 14 mile ride.  I often see blue heron, egrets and a monkey or two and sometimes a monitor lizard. This past Monday on our ride, my rear tire blew.  Just gave out and that was that.  We were about 5 miles from the boat on our way back from Sungai Rengit along the main road.  We had ridden the less trafficked back way to town but wanted to check on our cushions (see below) so took the main road back to Sebana Cove.  Randal tried to fix the tire but it was too far gone.  I just had to ride on the ruined tire, slowly bumping along.  There was a strong head wind and I felt unsteady with the traffic, which thank goodness wasn’t so heavy.  When we arrived at the Sebana entrance a mini-truck was just coming in with some Sebana staff and they gave me and my bike a ride the last 3 miles.  Tuesday we took the wheel to the Sungai Rengit bike shop that had fixed my bike cable.  A tire the correct size had to be ordered so I’ll be without my bike for about a week.  I will definitely miss it.  Sebana has rental bikes and I might test one out.  I’ll see.  I was just glad that it happened when Randal was with me. 

   Our interior cushions were all falling apart so we had them all recovered.  The original green ones just hadn’t stood up well.  New cruising friends Lang and Douglas told us about a guy just outside Sungai Rengit who could provide the material and make them for us at a more reasonable cost than if we had it done in Singapore.  Lang is a Singaporean so she knows.  Lang, who still works in the computer chip industry and Douglas live in Singapore during the week and spend weekends working on Doug’s big sail boat and sailing around in Lang’s small sail boat.  During the Christmas holiday week Lang and Douglas drove us to the cushion man’s shop and Lang interpreted for us.  We selected the material from a sample book and it was ordered for us.  In less than a week the cushion man came to get all of our cushions and the helm chair too.  We were glad to see things progress so quickly though living without cushions for as long as it would take was not so fun.  We invited Lang and Douglas to dinner and they had to bring their own pillows to sit on.  Well, the cushions are back and here they are.

The cushion shop. 

Randal and I had ridden our bikes to see how progress was coming.  You can see our old black cloth helm chair in the front and the old green cushion material near it.  The tan cushions at the far left are ours.  The cushion man uses the small sewing machine to do all of the work.

  The cushion man hard at work.  Randal would walk around and look and the cushion man would just keep working.  He didn’t speak English so there was no point in trying to chit chat.  And he was working too hard to interrupt him.

  It took less than a week from the time cushion man took our green cushions and returned with these tan ones.  Now we need to get some bright colored pillows. The material is kind of a fake stretchy leather/pvc stuff. 

The pilot house cushions. 

I just love our new helm chair. 

I hated the scratchy black cloth that used to cover it.  Night passages will be much more comfortable with a more comfortable helm chair. 

  Lang in the striped shirt and Douglas in the blue shirt.  Claude is to Lang’s left and Ruth in the black dress.  This is a photo from our Christmas lunch.  Canadian Ruth, Frenchman Claude , Singaporean Lang and American Douglas.  The cruising world is truly international.