A New Addition to the Family

Current Date: 14th April 2026

Current Location: Rebak Marina, Langkawi, Malaysia

We're back in Malaysia! And boy is it hot here. 44°C in the cockpit when we arrived a couple of weeks ago.

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The protected Marina on Rebak Island.

But what's that hanging from our boom rope? Ah yes, it is of course the nest of an Olive Backed Sunbird. Mum sat for 10 days before we heard cheeping from the depths of the pendulous nest. So now we can't leave the marina until the chick, just one we think, fledges and flies off.

Our new addition hidden in the somewhat tatty nest. A baby Olive Backed Sunbird.

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But a lot happened back in the UK in the four months we were there too.

We caught up with friends and family.

We also sourced most of the 82 items on our 'must purchase' list and packed them into our trusty expanding bags.

Just another box for the bag.

Sadly we also attended Chris Brown's funeral. Chris was Petronella's chief engineer's back in the 2010s. He taught me how to fix stuff when you don't have the right parts. Although it was a sad occasion he was well remembered by family and friends. RIP Chris.

Into 2026 and we were in Spain to celebrate daughter Jenny's 40th birthday with her, Emma and Marcus. Where did those 40 years go?

Vigo in Galicia, NW Spain. Jenny's new home.

Birthday meal.

And my brother Philip produced his second full length play to rave reviews.

Infertility, abortion and IVF. What's not to like?

Shortly before returning to Malaysia I had a very unsettling month when I started having scary thoughts at night, forgetting things and generally feeling most unwell. Thankfully it all disappeared as quickly as it developed although after many dream free years I've had a couple of crackers recently. One night I dramatically failed my engineering degree at Imperial College and last night Mehalah was involved in an England Rugby match where I grounded her in the mangroves just before kick off.

Of course we also got back into restoration of our  local canal. Mostly in atrocious weather conditions.

One day closer to canal opening day.

The hard work pays off with otters spotted in the new section.

Another brick in the wall. Restoring an old lock.

Gill, Rachel and Peggy.

Thank you of course to Harry and Rachel for looking after our shoreside life and allowing us to continue our peripatetic lifestyle [that's a word I've always wanted to use].

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So now we are back on the boat. Within a day of our arrival Hugh and Linda flew in from Thailand where they were visiting a friend. It was great to see them again. They were booked into the resort here for a week. The plan was to crack on with boat jobs and indeed amongst other things Hugh and I sorted the dinghy davits strings and made a bung for the anchor chain locker whilst Gill and Linda reclassified our medical kit and cleaned the dinghy. But what their visit best did was to force us off the boat to explore some of Langkawi's local attractions.

First off was The Skycab to the top of the island's second highest peak. It includes apparently one of the steepest cable car runs in the world! Gilly was not really prepared for the ride and closed her eyes for much of it. It was pretty busy but as Linda finds it hard to stand still we were ushered through the express lane in next to no time. A good day out.

The halfway station.

Up above the white bellied sea eagles.

The summit.

View from the top. Telaga Marina to the left, our island, Rebak Island upper middle.

For my birthday Jenny and Emma had bought me a half day with an expert ornithologist for two people. Hugh was a lot keener than Gill so after a 6am wake up call we caught the early ferry across to Langkawi main island. Off we went. And a great morning it was too. Three environments revealing a total of 42 species. My favourites? The pratincoles, the hornbills and the dusky leaf monkeys (yes, I do know monkeys are not birds). Thanks girls. We had a blast.

Stop 1. River. Kingfishers, eagles and swallows.

Stop 2. The Forest. Hornbills, bulbuls, dollar birds and dusky leaf monkeys.

Stop 3. The Wetlands. Egrets, pratincoles, bee eaters and stilts.

By now we were running short of supplies. We hired one of the marina cars, caught the little ferry across to Langkawi and went to Billion, the Malaysian equivalent of Waitrose in the UK or Sainsburys in Australia. Except it's not. Check out the rice. Big bags, 5kg each. Two whole aisles of them. Tiny dried fish that you buy by the kilo which smell, well they smell actually like tiny dried fish might smell. And then there's the chicken aisle. Just grab a couple and pop them in your basket. Great stuff!

A small selection of available bags of rice.

Small fish. We are yet to try these.

Looking more like an intensive care baby ward here you get to choose tonight's tea.

We tried to do an 'outing' of some sort every other day. Next up was a trip through the mangroves with another guide, Selva. He's a Tamil from Sri Lanka but he's lived most of his life in Malaysia. An avid environmentalist and self taught his knowledge of nature and British colonial history put us to shame. A very interesting guy he took us deep into Mangroves far from the teeming tourist boats.

Mangrove trees. No flowers. Propagate by dropping these 'arrows' into the mud below.

The best mangrove environment we've seen.

Seeking the elusive Brown Winged Kingfisher. Heard but not seen.

Selva, our knowledgeable guide.

Another rare plant I can't remember the name of.

We also maxed out on the resort facilities. Mai Tai cocktails (sometimes two) became Linda's favourite evening beverage, the pool became our daily rendezvous and the girls both enjoyed a massage while Hugh and I were on the bird watching trip. With marina residents enjoying a 25% discount over resort guests H&L quickly became Mehalah's 'crew'.

Hugh and Linda eventually stayed with us for two weeks before returning to the UK where Linda's twin Graham was critically ill with lung cancer. Regrettably he died a couple of days later but not before Linda joined him at his bedside. A complex man, Graham was artist, boogy dancer, lover of the hills and eccentric. My best memory? 60th birthday elegant picnicking in Kew Gardens being photographed by Japanese tourists. Oh yes and going to avery cold Belgium to watch his image of a flushing toilet projected on the front of a classical building! Not only were Graham and Linda twins but Gill was also born on the exact same day. Goodbye Graham.

I was going to go on to talk about our daily routine now H&L have departed but I'll save that for a later blog and talk more generally instead.

We have booked into the marina here for a year which is strange as we are used to always pushing on to the next place. Once we have completed the outstanding boat tasks we will slowly explore Langkawi Island - maybe doing an island circumnavigation. Our Malaysian visas expire on 22nd June so we'll probably take Mehalah up to Thailand which is only a dozen miles up the coast, for a few weeks too. And then we want to travel by public transport to some of the other SE Asian countries - Laos, South Korea, back to Indonesia and Vietnam. We've never been to these countries which we think of more as gap year backpacking destinations rather than anything else so its going to be interesting. Especially as we are not very good 'tourists'. I'm more at home always with the next destination in mind. Another issue is that we don't really understand the weather here. Rainy season is just kicking in. Big thunder and lightning storms, winds if any are now from the south west. And it will only get wetter. Most cruisers are preparing to leave Rebak and fly home for the wet season. Somehow we've chosen to just arrive! So we'll have to see how this all pans out.

Of course we can't avoid the current geopolitical situation here either and we do feel closer to the action here than we would back in Western Europe. A lot of boats have left SE Asia in the past few months to head back to the Mediterranean, in many cases completing their circumnavigations there. But that means crossing the Indian Ocean, passing south of the Straits of Hormuz and then entering the southern Red Sea pinch point of Bab-el- Mandeb. Most of them have reported some GPS spoofing (position and speed way out of their true position) but all 50 or so have successfully navigated the passage North past the Houthis of Yemen, the tricky reef strewn navigation and the rip-off Egyptians. Several of them reported seeing French and US vessels steaming southwards past them. No riding lights, no AIS. Troubling times.

OK. That'll do for now. It's nice to be back on Mehalah meeting up with old friends and making new.