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Showing posts from January, 2019

Off the Beaten Path - Cruising Sumatra's West Coast!

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After our time in Borneo, we needed to start considering our cruising plans.  Would we follow the standard cruiser track and head up the Malacca Strait to Singapore?  Or would we try another route and blaze our own trail around the southwest coast of Sumatra? The Malacca Strait is a popular topic among cruiser forums, where sailors commiserate about the sheer number of shipping vessels that congest the narrow waterway between Singapore and Indonesia.  Wikipedia defines it as “a narrow, 550 mi stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. As the main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, it is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.”  The site (link to Wiki article on Malacca Strait) goes on to state that in 2008, the annual number of vessels transiting the strait was 94,000!  These stats weren’t the reason we didn’t take the Malacca Strait path that most cruisers take when they travel from Indonesia to Mal