A trip to Kelah sanctuary in Kenyir Lake

There are three Kelah sanctuaries in the country . The most successful one is located in Sg Petang which is a river within Lake Kenyir. For those of you who are unaware, Lake Kenyir is a huge lake with an area of 225 sq miles. Kelah(or Mahseer ) is a breed of fish which require clean streams which are highly oxygenated to survive. If the rivers are polluted they simply disappear. The government has been wise to set up a sanctuary in Sg Petang to allow this species of fish to breed in it's natural environment. The sanctuary in Sg Petang is only open to public from March to OctoberWhen my partner in crime Cheong decided to come over to pay a visit to our parent in laws last week I snatched him away for a trip to visit the sanctuary. If anyone wants information on the sanctuary by googling he will be quite disappointed as there are not much informations of the place. I took along my inflatable hoping to get the coordinates of the place so that we can get there in our own boat. I know , sometimes the boat operators might want to make a quick buck out of us and i am not going to allow this to happen to me.The entry point for the sanctuary is at Sg Gawi. The entrance permit costing RM10 per person had to be purchased at the Tourist Information Centre Tel 09 622 1276/ 019 943 9168). No one here can give me the coordinates for the place. I am now at the mercy of the boat operators! Luckily there is a boat going in the next morning to pick up some tourist. The clerk here (picture above) arranged for us to hitch a ride on the boat at a reduced rate. Each of us had to pay RM 100. Not too bad but it would have cost me RM 10 for fuel to my Yamaha 2 hp!The state government has decided to allow the locals to operate the boat service in the lake. This gentlemen, En Hassan is one of the contractors and he will ferry us to the sanctuary early next morning. Just for your info, no one is allowed to stay overnight in the sanctuary. Only day trips are allowed . This En Hassan is a good guy and he can be contacted by HP no 019 984 3291/019 966 3075/ 019 943 8303By evening we decided to camp outside Lawit Resort . They have a shelter ready and it comes together with a table as well. Of course we had to cook our own yummy meals.Our excellent campsite has a beautiful lake view and it gets very cold in the early hours. We cannot ask for more ...fresh air, birds singing, nice view and all for free!By 0815 hrs next morning we were at the jetty. We waited a few minutes and were off by 0830 hrs.We had the whole boat for ourselves.The boat was doing about 20 knots on a 75 hp engine. These people obviously do not know much about fuel consumption verses speed. If only they throttle back to 15 or 16 knots they could save 50 % fuel! All along the way I was getting GPS fix for the turning points so that the next trip I can come by kayak or my sailboat (no fuel required!)We arrived at Petang Island Resort in bout 40 minutes (10 nm miles from Sg Sawi jetty) to pick up 5 more passengers. Petang Island Resort to me is almost haven on earth..pristine, well kept, little outside influence, surrounded by forest and it is an island on fresh water. Next trip I will camp here. I think the adjective to describe this area is PRISTINE.From Petang Island Resort to the Kelah sanctuary headquarters is another 4 nautical miles. This is a floating office where we have to give our licence to enter the sanctuary. Informations about the Kelah fish could be found here. From here the park rangers will escort the visitors to the streams and luboks where the kelahs are abundant. No fish could be taken out dead or alive. The penalty is RM 10000 fine. Cheong cheekily asked if we could take just one small fry home as a souvenir.. Answer was a firm NO.From the park HQ it was another 2 miles of boat travel. The river was shallow and there were a lot of logs. Being a boatman myself I had to jump down a few times to assist and tow the boat away from the rocks. Each time I jumped off the water I told the boat operator he owes me RM 50. for the effort! At the designated parking place for the boat we had to start trekking.Clear water, shaded jungles and no noise pollution..hmm this is going to be a nice trek.The place is clean too. From the park HQ onwards visitors are not allowed to bring in food and there is even a No Smoking restriction. Good work Ketengah, the body entrusted to the project.The trails are well maintained and marked. I think anyone below the age of 75 has no problem on this trail.All the park restrictions are up on a board. Make sure you obey the rules otherwise you will be fined and maybe banned for life to visit the place.Soon we spotted some schools of kelahs in the clear river. Actually Sg Petang is only about 21 km long and has 91 streams feeding into this river.Then when the fish hear that there are visitors around they come by the hundreds to welcome us! What a lovely sight.We were allowed to swim with the fish. The only discomfort is the fish keep nibbling us. I had camped in this part of the river about 25 years ago. Of course we did managed to catch a wild kelah and had a good meal (it was not protected then) . Now 25 years later with "self enforced discipline" we can actually swim with the kelahs. This I give thumbs up to the authorities.Soon it was time to say good bye. As General Macarthur once said and I will say the same.. " I shall return......(pretty soon)!"

USEFUL GPS WAYPOINTS



Sg Gawi Jetty N05 08.193 E 102 48.270

Route Check 1 N05 03.632 E 102 48.840

Route Check 2 N 05 02.768 E 105 47.132

Route Check 3 N 05 00.560 E 102 47.126

Route Check 5 N 04 59.056 E 102 46.831

Petang Island resort Jetty N 04 58.802 E 102 47.021

Route Check 6 N 04 58.277 E 102 46.665

Route Check 7 N 04 57.380 E 102 47.164

Route Check 8 N 04 55.466 E 102 47.867




Now, any takers for a canoeing trip to the sanctuary?

Turning the First Hull Over

For the catamaran homebuilder turning over the hull is a historic moment. It marks the completion of the hull exterior. The only work that needs to be done is the interior furniture which is normally wood works.
I had given my hull a two pot mixture International Polyurethane paint. The purpose of the paint is to hide off quite a bit of imperfections. Of course from a distance of 50 ft the hull looks reasonably fine but if you were to go near you can see all the scars!
But unfortunately there had been quite a lot of rain this year. Only the last two weeks that we see some drier weather.
The position of the low aspect ratio keels had to be marked on the bottom of the hull so that I don't have to struggle under the boat to mark it later on.

First of all the cabin had to be relocated to another part of the garden so that the hull can be inside the shed.

There were some workers in a nearby constructions and I also rope in my neighbours that runs a fish farm behind my house to help.

A total of 8 persons were required to carry the hull. As you can see from this photo, the hull looks big.

Now got to start working on the construction of the second hull. I hope to complete it in 6 week's time.

Our Son Alwin scores 10 straight As.......

Well the SPM results are finally out and Alwin scored As for all the subject that he took.He had always been in a take it easy mode so I don't know if it was luck or effort or just pure intelligence!

But one thing is for sure..he spends a lot of his time playing Warcraft online. I bet he must be a General by now with all the hours in front of the screen.

See he is so happy that he thinks he can fly.

However it will take him many more years to be in the left seat of a flying machine. Right now he is in taylor's College doing his South Australian Matriculations after which he wants to do Chemcal engineering as his first degree. Hopefully he can get a scholarship to do his course overseas

As you can see from this video, his mother laughed the loudest!

I gave RM 50,000 ......

Yes..I gave RM 50,000 to my son and his cousin last year. They were 16 and 17 years old . No it was not real money but was VIRTUAL money. They can do anything they like with the money and whatever profit they make will be rewarded to them as REAL MONEY. Some suggestions were they can invest in shares..let me know when and what price they buy and why, they can do trading (maybe online through Mudah.com), even buy real estate. It has to be a legal transaction (no Ah Long activities). All they have to do is advice me when they make any business transaction. The idea here is to cultivate their thinking habits sort of like a "Tactical exercise Without Troops" something which I did a lot in the military college years ago. It was also make them make money work for them instead of working for money which most people do. It has been a year already and the results are most disappointing! they had not made a single cent. the least they could have done is to park the money in the bank as fixed deposit and they could have earned at least RM 1500 at a 3% interest. Well it looks like if they do not want to be rich in life. Maybe it is too easy to join the rat race by working hard and run the threadmill.

Shaping the nose of my catamaran hull

The bow of the hull up to this stage is only a flat piece of wood. The design calls for putting foam and make a shape that looks nice and functional.To construct this i used some scrap / left over foam from my hull construction. These are "pasted" and secured to the front of the hull. Altogether I used 4 layers of foam. The foam is then shaped with a grinder and then I applied 2 layers of 600/225 biaxial and one layer of 300 gm CSM.
After the nose is glassed, it is sanded down again ..to that stage where it will look nice from 50 ft!

Meanwhile I have started filling up the holes in the hull. these holes were drilled into the hull to provide support of the hull panels to the bulkheads during the construction process.

Touring Bicycle Haven with my Dahon Mu 8

At the end of my simulator training sessions in France I treated myself to a tour of Holland by bicycle for a few days. As usual my trusty Dahon Mu 8 was with me. My big bags were left in my friend's apartment. In fact I used his place in Hoofddrop as a base for my tours. Hoofddrop is like PJ and is quite close to Schipol airport. The first day of my tour was a ride from Hoofddrop to Edam. The planned cycling distance was only 50 km but with all the twisting and turning around I did another 10 km extra. I started at about 0930 hrs from Hoofddrop heading towards Schipol airport. I had to go to the airport to reconfirm my flight back home. From Schipol I wandered off to Amstervee and then to Amsterdam. No problem at all..this is not a navigational error but rather a diversion and some extra sight seeing. With the air temperature around 6 degrees it was fun to ride. In Holland, bicycles are the king of the road. Cars were stopping for me everywhere! And Holland has bicycle lanes all over the country. These bicycle lanes are very well marked and has excellent signageThe roads are very well marked so there is no problem going from one point to the next. the Dutch are also very friendly people and they speak English pretty well too so it is difficult to get lost enroute.This picture was taken near the Schipol Airport. I was really suprised that cars and bicycles go under the taxiway. The bridge at the background is where the huge 747s taxi on top.Wild life, esp birds and ducks are everywhere. The Dutch have done well to conserve their wild lifes. These geese just walk up to admire my trusty Dahon. I was having wild thoughts about cooking roast duck or geese for dinner! But not for this trip as I will not be camping. Next trip if I come in summer I will camp and maybe I will have roasted wild duck for dinner!It is lunch time when I arrived Amsterdam central area. To satisfy my hunger I had a hot dog. Expensive.. 5 Euro for a small hot dog.It was very difficult to navigate away from Amsterdam to Edam. My GPS keeps pointing towards a direction that says NO CYCLING / WALKING. Eventually I found out that I have to take a ferry to the other side of the town to head towards Edam. The ferry ride was free and once on the other side of town the ride to Edam was straight forward. Edam is famous for its Edam Cheese buy unfortunately I could not take one of these back on my bike. This village is very scenic and the pace here is typical village standard although Edam is only 30 km from Amsterdam.I had booked myself a room in a B and B in a village called Volendam which is about 2 km from Edam. This B and B is run and owned by John and Henny Kruize. John had been a bus driver but he has done very well with managing his wealth and life and I am totally impressed by his knowledge of things and machines.This is the good breakfast that Henny served me. I had enjoyed it very much. We had meat, cheese, coffee and eggs. A real value for money. I would recommend their place to anyone visiting this part of Holland.After breakfast it was a short ride to visit Monikerdam. This is a small historical village and there are a lot of boats . I spent about and hour admiring the boats.There were some catamarans around too.I past by a floating village. people here stay in houses that were built on top of the water and for them to visit the neighbours means a few strokes of rowing their boat.Of course no report on Holland wold be complete without photos of windmills. These are operational wind mills. Notice the bicycle path by the side.Having a sandwich lunch by a very scenic canal. The food actually taste better here!This is how their fish mongers sell fish. Much better organised than our pasar malams!. Again getting out of Amsterdam for the ride back to Hoofddrop was a pain. I arrived back in Hoofddrop by 1500 hrs after cycling 50 pus kilometers.Here I stayed with an old friend Keith Yim in his apartment.Day 3 was a trip to the North sea resort town called Zandvoort. It is only about 20 km from Hoofddrop so I started a bit later at about 1000hrs. I passed by Hamstede which is a beautiful village. Zandvoort is a touristy place. There are beautiful stores and restaurants here. I was told this place is packed with German tourist during summer. Of course there are abundance of wild ducks here too. Just amazingFor lunch I want to taste the fresh North Sea fish. These fish stores are set on the beach and they serve very fresh sea food at a reasonable price.For 6 Euro I had a piece of cod and some potatoes. The fish was very fresh and tasty.I took the route via Harleam to go back . This route is more "hilly" because the riding is done on top of the sand dunes.

There is a national park but maybe it is winter now as there was nothing much to see. Again I reached Hoofddrop by 1500 hrs.

For the 3 days of touring I did only 160 km which is not really a lot. Holland is such a bicycle friendly country that I would recommend anyone who wants to come to Europe for a bicycle to start in Holland. i hope to get back for some longer distance cycling in the near future.