Lunch at Zurna

Today we set out in search of a boat store. We had found the store listed in the directory from the marina, and had absolutely no clue where it was. We gave the taxi driver the address and he took us to the southeast part of the island, an area much farther out than we have already been. As we got further from downtown, the skyscrapers thinned out. This area has a lot of turn of the century row homes, but most of the buildings are newer townhouse style residential buildings or low rise condos. There were even a few Continue reading

Sentosa Attractions

Even though we have been staying on Sentosa Island, we hadn’t explored it as of yet. Sentosa was uninhabited before the British arrived. The British used Sentosa as a fort island to protect Singapore Island and until a few years ago, it contained nothing but the old forts. Then the island was designated a recreational area and master planned. There is tons of building going on all over Sentosa. The section of the island called Sentosa Cove, where we are staying, has tons of homes being built. We have been told some are selling as high as Continue reading

Checking into One Degree 15 Marina and Singapore

It was made clear to us last night that we needed to be at the marina office promptly at 0900 to check in. Getting up wasn’t too hard since there is an enormous construction side on the other side of the cove that was making lots of noise. We were given a brief tour of the facilities. The marina is part of a private club that opened in April 2007. It costs S$50,000 (USD$38,000) to join. It is swanky, featuring two restaurants, a deli, bar, pool, gym, game room, guest rooms, and on and on. The shower/bathroom area off the pool is amazing. The facilities for the people in the marina are not anywhere close to as nice as the facilities for the club members, but it doesn’t really matter. You get a temporary membership card and can use all the club’s facilities. Most of the boats in the marina are power boats, with only a few sailboats. They also have free unlimited wireless internet to the boats, which is like heaven for us. The connection is so-so by our old San Diego standards, wonderful by our new cruising standards.

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Once we were checked in to the marina, we headed to town to Continue reading

Scary Singapore Shipping

For the timing of our entry to Singapore to work out ideally, we needed to cross the main shipping lane at sunrise. It was going to take all day to get to Singapore Harbor, and we wanted to enter the harbor in the day.

Sea conditions had improved slightly by dawn, but conditions were still really miserable. Thanks to slow speeds from adverse wind and currents, we were still miles and miles from the shipping lane. Singapore is a small island just south of the coast of Malaysia. The continental land mass blocks a lot of the wind, so as we got closer and closer to our destination, the waves gradually got smaller, which we were grateful for.

The shipping lane keep traffic separated as it funnels into the port. We could see ships in the lanes ahead hours before we actually reached them. From the distance, it looked like a road on the water, with a consistent flow of huge ships going back and forth in an orderly fashion. The ships were Continue reading