Author: paulcollister

We arrived in Yuge for the Setouchi the day before the rally began and had a warm welcome from the organiser, “KC” and some other rally participants who were already there. Above you can see the bridge we passed under as seen from our berth on a small pontoon in the town centre. Yuge Town, is a small affair, you can walk all around it in about 20 minutes, it’s very sleepy and although it has a population of 6000, I only ever saw about five people out at any one point.  Below you can see the other rally boats on the pontoon.We have an Australian couple, Ken and Belinda, on the big cat who are just wrapping up and heading home after spending 5 years touring the Pacific islands. We have Rob, a Canadian who has left the rally early to get up to Kushiro ready to sail over to his home town of Vancouver. We have scrapped plans to leave from there and instead will leave from a lower latitude of 35deg North where we hope to ride the bottom of the depressions heading east. It will be interesting to see who gets there first, however Rob plans to visit Alaska on the way and may well stop off at the Aleutians if he is close and fancies a rest. The other boats are all Japanese crewed, and mostly a lively bunch who enjoy their sake. The big motor boat is owned by a successful businessman who is also a sponsor of the rally. He has invited 6 Australians onboard as well, so they are enjoying a level of luxury we can’t quite match on Sister Midnight, I’m not sure our deck wash spraying into the cockpit well would be as good as their Jacuzzi on the top deck. However at least we don’t have to worry about staff here.

Across the island is a lovely bay with a small harbour at the end, mostly used by fishing boats, but there are a few sailboats there too.

The highlight of our stay here was the collaboration between the local technical college, which is a residential school specialising in Marine tech and the rally folk. We all met at a reception and each of us had to introduce ourselves and explain a bit about our past, our boat and our plans. We were supposed to do the is Japanese as well as English, Kathy had prepared a crib sheet for us both and we did a reasonable job of introducing ourselves in Japanese, but I did the bulk of our story in English.
Later we were paired off with students from the college who would look after us during our stay, We had Mai, Yuri and Suzuki. These were all lovely 19 year old ladies from the college who took a great interest in us and our boat. The next day we all headed off for a sail around the bay, I showed them the workings of the boat and each of them had a go at helming for 15 minutes of so. One of their teachers took pictures from the bridge above.

Later that day the students put on a wonderful barbecue for us near the beach and plied us with alcohol and food for several hours.

The next day rained so the bike ride around the island which the students had planned was cancelled and instead everyone went off for an Onsen, which is like a Turkish bath affair, however the Japanese have taken this to a high art form, the bath can only be taken once you are spotlessly clean, you cannot enter the bath if you have tattoos, as this implies you are in some way gang related, and there’s a stack of etiquette just around how you manage your hand towel. As you can imagine we didn’t follow much of this. Still it was a very pleasant relaxing experience.

Yuge has a few shrines and temples and this is typical of those we have seen here.

These are typical fenders used around here, huge polystyrene affairs, often wrapped in cloth, often not, and shredding waste into the sea, most un-Japanese.

The next day most of the rally boats left to explore the area, but we booked into the pontoon for another five days just to chill and do some boat jobs.

On one of our days we cycled around the island and on another we left the island on our bikes via the huge bridge to the next island, then another bridge to another island then across a short pass by boat to the destination island, which had a hardware store (Home Depot/B&Q) and a big supermarket.

So far everyone we have met has been wonderful and keen to help whenever possible.
More boats arrived over the next few days and our neighbour got chatting to us in quite good English, I do admire how hard they try to speak to us in English, especially when we are so rubbish at Japanese, and he proceeded to present us with a gift of a bottle of sake, this has been a common occurrence where we are presented with gifts, and feel awful as we don’t have anything to reciprocate with, other than a lot of bows and Aragatos. This same neighbour was keen to know our plans, and when I explained I had to find a marina near Osaka that wouldn’t break the bank, he whipped out his mobile and started calling around for me. Within minutes he had secured me a place in a yacht club in Kobe, which is quite close to Osaka and I was speaking to the president a few minutes later who explained that they had 3 berths for visitors and that one would become free for me, He would help me find an engineer for my injector problem, they would provide free electricity and water, showers, laundry as well and that it would cost me $2 a day. They also had a couple of bicycles for us to use if we wanted. Apparently this level of generosity is not at all uncommon here. As our Australian neighbour said “you can’t out-gift the Japanese”.
So after a fairly lazy week we slipped our berth and headed south to join the rally again at the small port of Nio on the southern island of Shikoku, the smaller of the four main Japanese Islands. There are nearly 7000 Islands in all here. It was a short 4 hour passage and the main hazard was crossing the shipping lane that ran east west, so we took a long route which took in a few islands and allowed us to cross at right angles. However we had to deal with a couple of big ships also joining the shipping lanes just were we planned to cross. With Kathy manning the AIS and calling out CPAs to me we got across just fine. The wind then picked up and by the time we closed in on Nio we were flying along, close hauled (Sails pulled in tight) at about 6 knots in a 16 knot wind. Once in the marina the wind dropped, and the sun shone brightly, an easy mooring and Kathy was soon sipping her wine while I enjoyed a Asahi Dry Zero beer, I must say the Japanese have got a lot of things right, and there alcohol free beer is the best I have ever tasted.

That evening we were entertained by the Nio Yacht club and the local rotary organisation, we were given free food and drink and then asked to go on stage boat by boat and talk a little in Japanese to the audience and also to sing a song. Oh they do like a good sing song here, of course Kathy has gone white now and I’m checking she is still breathing! In the end I go on stage and make a pathetic apology that we brits don’t do sing song, but I do a bit of bowing and thanking our hosts and just about get away with it.
Our hosts organised some dancing entertainment for us which was Hawaiian themed, a little confusing but very good.

One thing Nio is famous for is sunsets, and the view from the yacht club was stunning, We’ve seen a few now, but this was good.

The next day, (today, Sunday) the yacht club organised a coach trip for us all to the top of a local mountain where we had a fantastic view across the inland sea. Neo sits at the end of a peninsula facing north so we had a great view all the way from the west around to the east. I hope the video below gives a little feel of it, the colours are quite striking. On the mountain we were presented with lunch boxes, something else they love here, and we sat in this lovely spot munching away on all sorts of things I had no idea of, but not for the light hearted, and definitely not for the veggie.

Tomorrow we leave here and we have a few days to kill, I’m hoping that the very recent changes in the regulations here means I will get my ‘go anywhere permit free’ pass tomorrow, so we will wander around the islands before we rejoin the rally in ‘Bella Vista’. Our first stop is to a place referred to as Cat Island!
All the time I am studying the weather systems in the North Pacific and also reading up on weather forecasting. we may be departing these shores for the big ocean in about 3 weeks time, so there’s lots to do.

Now for the boring technical stuff, We lost another battery yesterday, So our house bank of four is now three and our engine starter battery is only just up to the job if the engine starts easily. Given that we have lost two from a batch of 5 the odds aren’t good for the other three lasting long. This is a major problem, I don’t think I can afford to replace them here, the first look on the net for replacements have them coming in at around £800 each and I need 4 to do the job properly. I’m going to get more details after the rally when we get to Kobe, but I’m thinking that we may just have to go easy on the batteries on the big passage and I can get a decent price when we reach America.
Water leak on port tank, Not a lot, but too much for our passage, I have to investigate.
Accumulator Tank, I think this may be failing, it’s been subject to a leak before and is quite corroded, I have been expecting it to fail at some point, its job is to make the water run out the taps more smoothly and also to reduce the cycling on the pressure pump, but I can bypass it if needed, what I don’t want is for it to fail and fill the bilges with our drinking water on the trip.
Rudder clunk. I have just noticed a small clunky noise coming from the rudder / autopilot area when hand steering, it’s only quiet but I need to feel 100% sure about this before we leave.
Gas issues. We have been unable to fill our spare & empty gas cylinder, the other one is about 50% full, or 50% empty, depending on your disposition to such matters, I think we can get across the pacific on this, but not if Kathy wants to bake bread frequently. They use the same type of cylinders here, but for ‘Health and Safety’ reasons, no one will touch our cylinder. I’m still hopeful I can find a back street supplier, but we may end up having to buy a portable camping stove and a few dozen bottles of camping gas.

On a more positive note, the boat has been performing well, all the systems seem to work well, I’m getting better at sailing it, I have messed with the spinaker pole a bit and feel I can handle that now, have even jibed the headsail with it ok. I fitted the new gasket to the eberspacher heater and fixed a hole in the exhaust and now we have been able to heat the main cabin up until it was quite toasty, without gassing ourselves. A few days ago Kathy and I spent a day cleaning the outside, the tropics take a toll on the brightwork, but now she is gleaming again, the boat that is, I managed to slap some varnish on, and also removed the slapped on varnish from the gelcoat from the previous varnishing. I also re-bedded the port chainplates, having done the starboard ones a few weeks back. it took me 6 hours to do that, and it should be good for 5 years or more I hope.

So all in all the boats doing quite well and we are having a great time in Japan, the climate is lovely, cool at nights and quite pleasant during the day.

Pul Collister

 

 

 

Sunday 5th May 6:00 AM

Up early for a 7am departure. It’s Sunday, very quiet and very calm. The skies are clear and we have no trouble springing out of our tight mooring between two big motor boats, all alongside on one long pontoon. We motor out to sea and once we have cleared all the fishing marks/nets, I get the mainsail up, with one reef, as I’m expecting the weather to get quite windy later, and both headsails. We spotted this Hydrofoil ferry shoot past,they go so fast and make no wake, but leave a foaming thin spread of white water behind them, like contrails.

The wind is on the beam and building and soon we are doing a fast 7-8 knots, on calm seas with a sunny sky, what could possibly go wrong. Well more of the same, the wind built and built, the sea soon followed with big waves and then it started to rain. Later we would add fog to the mix.

We were on our way to the entrance to the inland sea, this enclosed mass of water is similar to the Med in that it has narrow connections to the outside ocean, three in fact and although much better connected than the Med, with its single opening between Spain and Morocco, it still has a large mass of water to move in and out on each tide. Consequently the currents that race through the entrance can be quite fast. I wasn’t aware of this when I chose the narrowest entrance to the inland sea, and having arrived in Fukuoka, the nearest main open port to the entrance, I did some research and realised that we couldn’t go fast enough to cope with the worst of the current and would have to time our passage to be just after slack water, when there was little current, and race through with the increasing current. The strait we were passing through is called the Kanman Strait, and is about a mile wide and does a big u turn, it has a big city on each side and is almost as busy as Singapore for commercial shipping. I checked on a web site provided by the authorities here and found that 8am would be our best bet for a passage through, that meant arriving the night before and waiting at anchor.

Our passage there was getting rougher and rougher, and with the wind often hitting 28knots, I now had a double reef in the main, and just the staysail up, and we were still flying along and heeling a lot. I decided to get as close to the shore as possible, the wind was blowing offshore and was a little weaker near the shore, also the sea was a lot flatter there. However there were shallows, rocks, and a lot of concrete constructions to navigate around.  The area was becoming more and more industrialised, and looked like a giant version of Ellesmere port/Stanlow oil refinery where I come from. The air was full of sulphurous smoke from the power station on the shore front. I sailed between wind turbines, and while trying to understand what this huge pylon was that I was sailing towards, about 0.2 nm from shoreI noticed the chart had printed on it OVERHEAD POWER CABLES, crikey I thought, we’re about to be frizzled, or at best, get the electric toaster working for free. The thing was the pylon didn’t seem to have any wires on it, just a mass of aerials, and looking closer to the shore I could see the aforesaid cables going out to some big round structure off to starboard. so false alarm.

It was quite an exhilarating ride, and when we entered the Kanmon Strait at the western end, the sea was quite rough, we turned immediately to starboard into a river / tributary of the strait, which was seriously industrialised, and headed along to a spot I had marked to anchor and wait until the next morning. It seemed too rough there to stay, the wind was making the sea quite choppy, but I noticed a coastal cargo ship and a tug attached to a barge both at anchor where I had my waypoint. I went beyond them, turned into the wind, slowed the boat and decided it wasn’t that rough at all, we sleep through much worse on night watches, and the forecast was for an improvement anyway, so down went the hook in 10 metres of water. Kathy came to help with the anchoring, she couldn’t believe me that I was going to anchor in such a rough sea, but once the anchor was set, and we went below, shut the hatches and removed our soaking wet-weather gear, everything was just fine. We both slept very well, the new duvet we bought in Fukuoka, along with the three blankets works well, how very different from just a month ago.

I was up early, around 6AM and checking on the VHF to see if the harbour master (Kanmon Martis) was issuing any warnings about the strait, looking outside, it was a lot calmer, but I couldn’t see much due to the dense fog. I expected the strait to be closed, but looking on the AIS I could see a stack of ships passing into and out of this end of the channel. By 7AM the fog had cleared and I could see the giant video display a mile away showing the current in the channel, it was flashing 3, then E, then Up arrow, meaning three knots eastward and increasing. I had worked out slack tide to be at about 8AM and 3 knots to be at 9AM, so I was out by an hour or more. I quickly explained to Kathy we had to get a move on. The previous evening I had heard Kanmon Martis announce at full flood that the tide was now running at 10 knots and ships that could not make 14 knots must not enter the strait! Up came the anchor and off we went, we hugged the outside of the marked channel, I hand steered while Kathy spent most of the time at the chart table shouting out AIS Collision warnings to me, several of the ships in the strait we’re entering or leaving the many docks and channels along the passage and we would need to avoid them if they crossed our path. I was very pleased to make it to the bridge, the most dangerous part, in just under an hour, and with 3 knots pushing us along, we shot through, then 15 minutes later we were in the inland sea proper. A place I had wanted to see for many years. Unfortunately during our passage along the strait, the fog and rain returned, this is normal in Japan at this time of year, and so I wasn’t seeing much at all, Kathy maintained AIS watch, and I looked out for small boats from the helm. What disappointed me was the huge amount of fishing buoys/flags we encountered, I presume they have nets strung between them. They are everywhere, and although they don’t present much of a problem to us, due to the underwater shape of our hull with an enclosed propeller, it’s still a fear we might snag one, or have to deal with a fisherman who insists we go around them.  Our charts show lots of Fish Havens, which back home usually is a place where fishing is strictly banned, I presume to allow stocks to recover. Here it seems to be a place where you can fish and string out loads of nets. Interestingly our charts also shows Fish Heavens

I wondered if this was heaven for fish, but Kathy pointed out that with the amount of nets in the ‘heaven’ that it’s more likely where they start their journey to heaven!

From the exit of the Kanman straight we headed over to Nakatsu Harbour, about 2 hours away, arriving early afternoon, sadly I  had forgotten that wasn’t our destination. I had worked out a much better place to stop the previous night, but forgot all about it in the morning. Nakatsu has a small ‘sea station’ which is meant to be a yacht friendly small marina, often just a pontoon and maybe a water supply, but nicer to yachts than a harbour wall. Unfortunately we didn’t have any co-ordinates for it, just a fax number. We headed for the harbour in town, but realised it was way to shallow to enter, so we backed off and headed to a harbour that was shown as being under construction in the chart, several years ago. This was a big industrial harbour, and when we entered it, kathy spotted some yachts at the end, we motored along to them, but they were moored med style to concrete walls, no pontoons. then we saw a pontoon, full of commercial boats, so we turned round, found a quiet spot in the corner of the harbour, behind a breakwater and dropped the hook. very calm and peaceful.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, at least at the time of writing, when we next get internet is another matter altogether, and we have just two more day sails then we will arrive at Yugi Shima, the start port for the rally, we then have two weeks of laid back sailing, and social events, I expect we may have to drink some tea, and I’m not so sure about the naked bathing bit! Then we will start to prepare in earnest for the pacific crossing. I have been reading up on that, and my initial plan to travel 700 odd miles further north may be flawed and that we can leave from Osaka or Yokahoma and get more favourable winds, which also gives us a few weeks extra to relax and prepare the boat and ourselves.

 

Thursday 10th May Update
We have now arrived at Yugi port on the Island of Yugi-shima, the rally organiser was here to take our lines in a lovely quiet and pretty town. We are on a pontoon with water and electricity, unfortunately its 110v USA style, so not a lot of use to me. The journey here was fairly uneventful, except for one strait we had to pass through, underneath a huge bridge, I planned to sneak through the bridge using a route that was quite direct, unfortunately we had a tanker bearing down on us that thwarted that plan, then I had to port controller telling me off on the radio, first for not contacting him, then for not knowing the prescribed route, and finally for not being able to make 4 knots over ground, despite doing 8 knots over water. There was quite a strong current flowing. We have sailed for most of the passages in Japan, but for the last two days it has mostly been under engine, but at least that goes hand in hand with calm clear weather.

 

I have put some charts below showing our cruising area

 

Lots of ships pass through the inland sea, we had constant warnings on the AIS telling us of possible collision risks, where the CPA (Closet point of approach) was less than 0.1 NM

Paul Collister

 

It’s been a while since my last blog, mostly because we have been racing through the islands trying to get to the start of the rally on time. Normally I don’t like rushing, and taking on bad weather because of a deadline is something you shouldnt really do on a boat. However, our 2 week rally was meant to be the exploring bit of our visit here, so I don’t mind the rush, also I’m very much testing the boat before our pacific crossing. If the mast breaks, or the rudder falls off, we have a god chance of being rescued and getting to a port safely, not so in the North pacific, where rescue options are quite limited, out of range from helicopters, you have to rely on a satellite picking up your distress call and a merchant ship in the area diverting to help you. Usually you have to scuttle your boat when your saviour arrives. So I’m happy to push the boat and ourselves on this trip. We will have a few weeks before we depart for the USA to rest and make any lasting alterations we need. So far I have managed to check quite a lot of systems out in real conditions, we have had some very rough weather over the last few weeks.

Before we left Ishigaki we had a bike ride along the coast, It’s very pretty, and also very shallow with reefs extending tens of miles offshore.

I managed to get the boat status changed with customs, from a ‘special’ ship to a ‘coastal’ ship. This means that for the duration of our stay customs don’t give a hoot what we do or where we go. They wouldn’t give me this status because as a special ship, I had to give them my plan for our route, and that included a port that we hadn’t yet received permission to visit. When I wanted to leave they wouldn’t let me because this port on our route hadn’t been cleared. It was quite farcical, as I resolved it by saying I was going to one port, approved, then leaving Japan. they kept asking me if that was true, and I kept saying yes, so they changed my status to coastal ship, I said I might change my mind now and not go to that port and might go elsewhere, they just looked at me and said, we don’t care what you do, you are a coastal ship now. Since then they have ignored me at each port, despite the marina manager or harbour master calling them. Also the coastguard don’t seem interested. It’s gone from the most bureaucratic system ever to the most lax ever!

Kathy will give details of the passages better than me, they all seem to blur into one big battle with the wind. We had some sunny days, but mostly wet and cold. What we did have was wind, and plenty of it, and with the wind we usually got big waves, up to 3 metres often. At one point it was very bad, but everything worked, and we sailed most of the time, hardly using the engine once we left port.

Our first stop after Ishigaki was Yonabaru / Naha on the island of Okinawa, we arrived into a newly built marina on the east coast, lovely people and the manager came out to greet us, for the first time in months we had running water and electricity. Although we hardly need it these days with the solar panels and the watermaker, it was good to go crazy with the shower and leave it running hot water for minutes on end!

Japan has a lot of these guys protecting everything, I think they are called Shiso.

Yonabaru doesnt have a lot to offer, but a few miles over on the west of the island is the big city of Naha, we went looking for a bus to visit and see the castle and markets, I asked a man walking down the main street if he new where the bus stop was, and he insisted that he give us a lift in his car, he took us right to the castle which was really kind of him.

The castle is well old, 15th C I think,

This is a mockup of the layout.

Some nice architecture, disguising the fact that most buildings here on the islands are made of chunky concrete, and tend to be very boxy, designed for earthquakes and tsunamis

The market (above) was great, but everything in Japan is quite pricey, at least compared to what we have been used to, in actual fact it’s not that different to the UK.  Below you can see they have some unusual offerings.

Crime is very low here, people rarely lock up there bicycles, and like below, these cylinders were left on the dock where anyone could nick them, they were there for all our time in town.

From Okinawa we headed up to Miyanoura, a nice port on the island of Yaku-shima, This is a gorgeous island full of wonderful mountains, forests, hot springs, wildlife etc etc. We were running a day late because the previous marina here couldn’t accept us when we planned, due to being closed on Tuesdays! When we arrived we tied up to the only wall we could find, but it was very rough and high, and had a lip that the boat would slip under at low water, so I tied up, took another hit on the cap rail, fortunately on the section I need to replace, but I also lost the bow light (port) when a wave threw us onto the wall. I headed off to explore the port for a better berth and was directed to an inner harbour I hadn’t even seen when we entered by a local fisherman. You can see us on the wall below. We need 6 feet of water to stay afloat, the local fisherman looked worried when I said 2 m water, he shrugged and indicated ‘maybe’. The tide was going to drop by another metre so I took out the lead-line and measured around the boat, on the quay side we had 1.5 metres, on the offshore side we had 3.5 metres, so I figured we might just make it. In the end we didnt touch bottom, but must have been close.

The wall we were now on was much kinder, and you can see below how we rig up the fender boards to protect the boat and fenders

Later on we had a walk around the island, I had planned to hire a car for the day, but we had to leave the next day for Fukuoka, so we didn’t get to see the 3000 year old cedar trees. However we did get to feel the very peaceful mood of the island. Later we found a small funky bar/cafe that did nice food.
One thing I have loved about Japan is the food, standards are very high here, everything tastes amazing, the fruit and veg is the tastiest I have ever had. The fish is so fresh and also very good value, I bought a loin of tuna the size of a small loaf, for about £6.

The trip from Miyanoura to Fukuoka  took three days and nights and was quite rough, the wind was in the high 20 knots, Near gale force and the waves grew to be quite seriously threatening at times.  by now I had the boat prepared, I have been tuning the reefing systems, gybe preventers, jackstays etc, so sudden increases in wind don’t catch me out. 

You can see above at times we recorded 14.1 knots on the GPS, this must be when we got thrown off waves. We had the wind behind us most of the time, this has the effect of making things seem a lot calmer than they are. At one point as I was heading up the companionway to the cockpit when a big wave hit us hard and swung the boat around by about 45 degrees, this caused a crash gybe, this is where the boom flies across the boat from one side to another. This is really dangerous and has been the cause of many casualties on yachts, fortunately my preventers (ropes tied to the boom)  took the sting out of the gybe, but not as well as I had hoped, so there’s work to do there.

On this last leg we saw several shark like fins in the water, and finally for the first time in Aisa, we were joined by some dolphins.

I had put a waypoint in to miss some rocks on the chart, the height of rocks isnt normally shown, so it’s always a surprise to see them towering out of the sea.

Sometimes a fishing buoy will appear out of nowhere, at one point I was pondering how deserted most of the sea was, and keeping a constant watch wasn’t really needed so far offshore when a bloody submarine surfaced about 0.5nm from me. quite a sight.

We passed many islands, often uninhabited, but this one stank of sulphur, so I presume it’s still an active volcano.

The sea was very rough and the wind growing to 30 knots when we arrived at Fukuoka in the middle of the night 2AM, I had hoped to find my way into the marina with the help of the full moon, however the cloud cover took most of that advantage out. We were being tossed around the bay trying to identify the entrance to the marina, you basically have to come off a rough sea and into the marina, I was worried if the wind was as bad in the marina as outside I wouldnt be able to control the boat, never mind finding somewhere to tie up. I had a rough plan of the marina, but it wasnt matching up with what I could see. In the end we nudged the boat in and found it to be quite calm in there, I found an empty pontoon, and at 3AM we tied up and crashed out. I expected to be woken about 8am and told to move, but no, they left us alone, when we woke up around 9:30, I went to the office, they assigned me a new berth, and told me they didn’t need any ships papers, and as the authorities were on holiday due to ‘Golden Week’ we wouldn’t be bothered. Bliss.

The marina above is next to a big wheel, which is part of a huge outlet mall.

Later we went for a walk and found the locals all down on the river at low tide, cockling I think.

Below is the view from our berth, this morning a gang (not sure of the correct collective noun)  of jet skiers appeared Kathy ponders the instructions for the fender covers we make from a kit of tubing and cable ties.

I managed to fix most of the problems we had earlier, the LEDs were rebuilt for the compass, I have bought a new starter battery, and the boom cover has been restitched.
I have the AIS over wifi working reliably now, part of this meant trashing the wifi routers, and I couldn’t get wifi to the outside world working, but now it is, we have good wifi on the boat via the marina.  Moving the aerial on the wind sensor module seems to have solved that problem.

Yet new things break at a pace, the sump pump switch for the shower has failed, both of our toothbrush charges packed in, why?

I tried to get the blog to update with emails from the sat phone, but so far it only publishes the title, not the body of the email, so I will have to post empty blogs with very long interesting titles if I want to update from offshore.

Tomorrow morning (Sunday) at 7AM we leave to head for the inland sea, its about 200nm to the start point of the rally, and we have 5 days to get there, so it should be a breeze. We will be passing through the Kanmon strait, a very busy shipping route, but also one with very fast currents, On Monday when we enter the currents will reach up to 7knots, they also have the effect of pushing you into the path of oncoming ships at one narrow place.  I’m not too worried, I think I have the timing such that the tide will push us through very quickly and the whole passage through the strait will be less than 2 hours, also having sailed up and down the Mersey, I have some good experience with strong tides.

Plans are evolving as we progress, currently I think we will leave the boat in Seattle for several months and return to the UK earlier, I have lots of things I want to do with the boat once we get to the USA, including bringing the mast down for a service. we may return in the new year, do some work, then head up to Alaska or Vancouver for the spring/summer, leaving Mexico till the following year. If we do this, then we have more time for the pacific crossing, and may be able to break up the trip with a stop at the Aleutian Islands, somewhere I have been curious about since I first saw them on a map.

Once again, we won’t have much in the way of Internet access now, Kathy has a SIM with 500mb left, so we need to wait until we find public wifi again. At least now I have the Airmax working well again, I might be able to get connections from the boat.

Paul Collister

I will write more about the trip through the Philippines at some point, but now we are in Japan I wanted to get an update down before I forget it all.

Leaving the Philippines

We checked out in San Fernando La Union on the North west coast of the main Philippine island of Luzon, we had a lovely stop there, a local fisherman rowed out to us in his banca and offered to do any jobs we wanted, he took my diesel jugs ashore and returned with 60ltr of fuel, he also got us 30ltr of drinking water and finally he went to the timber yard for me and brought back two freshly sawn planks I could use as fender boards, I had heard they were a must in Japan. He did all of this with a smile and didn’t want very much for his time. The people there were very poor, they lived in a small shanty like town on the edge of the beach, and although very basic, the people there seemed happy.

It was some 500 odd miles to the southern islands of Japan from there and we called into Basco port on Batanes Island, which was a days sails out of San Fernando. On the way we had an engine problem, it’s only small I think, some gas escaping on the cylinder head, it may be a gasket or the injector seating as that was a problem before. However I don’t fancy finding a mechanic in Japan, or paying his bill. We will have to see. Anyway the winds were good so we hoped to sail the rest of the way. We anchored just into the harbour, and had hoped to get a nights sleep in without any fuss, but the coastguard had other ideas and ordered me to visit him in his office, which was a right pain, as I had stowed the dinghy and outboard away, not expecting to need them before we got to Canada/America. Ashore he went over all my papers and passport and after 30 minutes of questioning I was told everything was fine and now I had to visit the port authority to get permission to stay. Eventually I was back on the boat and checked the weather, using our sat phone. Things were planned to get worse in 3 days time, so I suggested to Kathy we leave now, and try to beat the bad weather, as it was coming our way anyway, so off we went. We didn’t beat it.

Although the first night was calm, early in the evening I smelt a familiar smell, that of a battery gassing, our batteries are sealed and so can’t gas unless they are in a very bad way, I looked at the battery monitor and could see the battery volts to be very low, and given the strength of the smell I assumed things were not good. In a controlled panic sort of way we emptied pots pans, clothes , two bicycles, and much more junk out of the quarter berth, and removed the mattress to get to the battery bank. As I thought one of the batteries had gone into thermal run-away. I wasn’t quite sure where this might lead, but batteries can explode, I wondered if they can catch fire, so I very quickly unbolted the connections to it, and saw the battery voltage rise on the other 3  120AH batteries in parallel with it. I lifted the faulty battery out of its wooden box and let the air flow around it, it was too hot to touch. I think we just caught it in time. Kathy went to bed, and I continued with my watch.

The next morning we put the quarter berth back  together, I replaced the faulty baterry with the engine starter battery, which was from the same batch. A few hours into daylight Kathy pointed out an approaching dark patch, the temperature was already dropping and it was a very grey day, within another hour it started raining then the wind hit us, we were now in the 20 knot range and the seas started to build quickly. I had hoped it was a squall, and the radar seemed to confirm this, yet when the rain passed, we still had grey skies, strong wind and building seas. A few hours later we were being thrown around something wicked.

Not long after this A pigeon landed on the boat and made it his home, shortly followed by four more pigeons.They were all ringed, so presumably they were on their way home.  Kathy loved it, and tried to feed them some nuts and cereal, but they seemed fat enough and all it did was to create even more mess for me to clean up later. That night was difficult, there was no moon and with a cloud covered sky it was black. The wind was on the nose, the waves were about 10ft – 15ft high and we were going north, but a starboard tack sent us SW and a port tack sent us SE, so we were going backwards, and getting beaten up. In the end we tied the rudder midships, left the mainsail reefed and went below for the night. The boat moved along nicely at about 1.5 knots and we tried to get some sleep. At one point a very big wave lifted the boat up and spun us through 90 degrees or more, so that when we hit the water again we were on a different tack, but as we only had the main up we left it like that for a few more hours, perhaps the wind knew best.

The next day was still rough but we could make a little progress forward, during the night the wind sensor failed to work, it’s wifi and often looses contact with the sender, I need to investigate.  Also at one point the auto helm gave up against the seas and decided to send us back to the Philippines, I came on deck, stepping over pigeons to take control but found the wind sensor out, and worst of all the little LEDs that light the normal binnacle compass were out, so I couldn’t read it. In the total darkness, when you can’t see the sails, or the instruments, it’s very difficult to work out the course to steer. Also waves were making it into the cockpit and I had to have my full set of oililies on, and I was feeling cold and damp.I began to wonder what madness had driven me from Malaysia. Of course all was fixed with the help of a torch and a few resets on the wind sensor.

The next day was predicted to be calmer by predictwind.com, our source of satellite weather data. It did calm a little and the pigeons all took off in unison, there were two great big ships on the horizon and I wondered if that was were they were heading.

Soon we were in the lee of Iriomote, a large island we have to go around to get to Ishigaki, and things calmed right down. Kathy sailed us into the harbour were we headed for the best berth that I had been informed of by a local I contacted via noon site.

On arriving at the port, the berth I wanted was full, the berths here consist of huge concrete walls you go alongside, mostly designed for big ships. A man came out and waved at us to go to a space on a nearby wall, which we did, he helpfully took our lines and immediately 3 coastguard (CG) officials turned up and introduced themselves.One was the official I had been in email contact with to notify them of our arrival. Pre arrival notification, along with the 7 page forms you have to send is just the start of a prolonged check in process that takes a day or two. The CG was very polite but also vert very keen that we stay on the boat until formalities had been completed, he even seemed upset that kathy put a hand on the wall. We waited an hour while the CG made phone calls and chatted amongst themselves before we were told we had to move to another berth. Then they arranged for one of the big (200ft) CG vessels to launch a RIB to guide us to the dock next to us, something we could have found ourselves by them pointing to the spot. When we were in the new dock, much more foreboding in terms of concrete covered in barnacles, and also 6ft higher up than the decks on our little boat, the CG men reappeared, they were joined by several more CG staff. A regular occurrence over the next 2 days as we started the check in process. We were told to stay on the boat and Quarantine, customs and Immigration would be along soon. Sure enough they all duly turned up and I had 8 people in the cockpit taking turns to get me to fill in forms, customs, Quarantine and Coastguard. Immigration would be done later at the immigration office. While I was dealing with all of this the tide was dropping. I wasn’t allowed ashore to adjust the lines, and they had tied me off with little slack, I hadn’t noticed at first, but the boat was close to the wall, and some passing wake from a powerboat pushed us hard onto a big rubber fender bolted to the wall and smashed a chunk of caprail off, this is the very pretty wood that goes around the edge of the boat.I pointed this out to Kathy and she went and had a look and came back and told me the bowsprit was smashed up. Fortunately it was only the platform,This was on the replacement list anyway, but I expect it smashed when we slammed down into a wave on the passage. I have sellotaped it back together and hope it will get us to America. I may have to screw some wooden slats over it to make it more secure.

After a few hours they all left, customs did a search of the boat and took swabs from all the surfaces, Quarantine asked the usual question, did we have any dead animals on board, had anyone died on passage, were we ill etc. The coastguard wanted lots of documents we don’t have, Lloyds certificate, gross tonnage documentation, cargo description, last ten ports we called at! Had we ever been to North Korea? Later the Immigration officials drove us to their office were they very cheerfully gave us 3 month visas and drove us off to the port authority were we had to pay our dues for the concrete slab that was ripping our boat to bits. I paid for 5 days as I expected the boat jobs might take a while.

Thankfully by now I had rigged up fender boards from San Fernando and the boat was coping well.

Next we headed into town for some dinner and our first experience of Japanese culture. All I can say so far, things are different here, I didn’t spot a single chain/brand here, so far I haven’t been to a large town aywhere in the world that doesn’t have a McDonnell’s or Starbucks, but I haven’t seen one here yet, no Body Shop, no KFC, no Pizza Hut, but lots of very individual shops, bars and cafes. Kathy will elaborate I’m sure. We found the post office and got some YEN out, wandered around the market, I saw some amazing tuna loins, then found a nice bar that did food and had an english menu, and had dinner.

WiFi is proving difficult here, it’s complicated to get a SIM card, and prices are high, most people rent a MiFI data modem, but that’s difficult for us, I’m going to see if we can get one here and return it up near Tokyo. Until then I’m using roaming on my Malaysian SIM, or we use cafe internet.

I asked the CG today if they could help me get some fuel, this ended up with 8 CG staff all standing on the quay discussing the problem. after 30 minutes they arranged for a tanker to visit and refuel me. However they couldn’t fill my plastic jerry cans due to Japanese law saying cans must be made of stainless steel. They all disappeared and 30minutes later another man appeared saying he would wait until the tanker arrived. Not long after 6 CG people arrived and discussed the fuel situation. Then two guys turned up from environmental  control, they advised that my boat could not be refuelled this way because of the chance of spillage from the deck filling point, given the ‘High Pressure’ from the truck. More flapping, more CG come and go, next a CG with some english explained that I could use my plastic cans with fuel in them to fill my tank and the lorry could fill the plastic cans, something that was  illegal an hour ago. So I went to fill the tank with the 6 * 20ltr jerry cans, when there was uproar about a possible spillage, I showed them I could do it without spillage and they relaxed, until the 4th can, when the boss CG sent a man onboard to monitor my fuel gauge, and as it was showing 3/4 full he told me I could do no more in case it overflowed. I argued and tried to explain the gauge is not linear, and 3/4 meant there was room for another 50ltr, but he got pissed off with me and said he would cancel my request to visit the closed port. We compromised on another 20ltr.

The truck didn’t arrive, but one of the CG took my cans to the petrol station and filed them for me.

After the fuel was sorted I had to go to the Department of Transport to register my intent to visit some closed ports. Basically Japan has several thousand ports, and for many years no foreign ships were allowed into these ports without special government permission, after WWII they opened Tokyo to foreign ships, and later a handful of the bigger ports were opened, like Ishigaki where we are now. However several of the ports we wish to visit are still closed so we have to apply, in person, the the department of transport, in a building out of town for permission. it didn’t help that two of the ports we are visiting aren’t on their list of open or closed ports, so I have been told to apply for them in the office nearer to them when I get there. Customs here have already made me sign a form to say I can get 2 years in Jail and a 2,000,000 YEN fine for going to a closed port without the permit.

We ended the day with a trip to a supermarket a bit out of town which had a fantastic range of fresh food and fish followed by a lovely drink in a cafe with very fast internet.

I just received an email from the CG asking me if I got fuel and if so, can I call into their office to fill out a form for Ships taking on provisions. They like their paperwork here.

To be fair, the officials have all been extremely helpful and courteous, and given the communications problems, I can’t fault them, I think it might help them to see that yachts travel all around the world with very little paperwork, and it doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

Paul Collister

After a deep sleep we woke to a lovely Sunday morning, but there wasn’t going to be any chance of customs being open, we hired a Trike, which is basically a motorbike with a sidecar welded on. The whole construction seemingly made of re-bar. It was a one hour ride into Peurto Princessa (PP) where we were very pleased to meet up with Ian and Marilyn from Songbird, who had set off the same time as us from Malaysia, but had been more daring and gone up the east side of Palawan, spitting in the faces of the pirates, and they were able to sail right into PP. We had lunch at the delightful PP Abalinco Yacht club, and then hit the Mall for some real bread, wine, drinks etc. Then an arduous 90 minute ride back to the boat in the trike, and at the harbour/jetty I was able to purchase 60 litres of diesel from the corner shop which would get us to our next port of El Nido, I hoped.

I’m going to be brief about the following days, we have been racing through the islands here hoping to get to Japan on time, and my illness didn’t help. I could write pages on each location we visited, but we need to come back and spend at least one whole season, or year here. It’s a great country. However, I have to get working on my passage plan for Japan, I don’t have a lot of internet, or time, so briefly… (Pics to follow)

From PP we shot up to Jibboom bay, partly because it was a convinient stop, but also because I loved the name, it was a very secluded, and the perfect getaway, if it wasn’t for the sand flies that wreaked havoc on our legs. The next morning we left and arrived in Corong Corong with is a bay next to El Nido, full of tourists and quite a crazy place. I was beginning to get the feeling that Filipinos like to party. We stayed 2 nights there to recuperate a little then off again to Puerto Galera overnight, the place is gorgeous, we anchored as the yacht club mooring buoys were all taken by there easter regatta. We had four nights there and loved the place, we restocked on fuel and food/drink, and checked into the country proper. We were now legal and hadn’t had to pay any ‘coffee money’ yet.

From there we sailed to Subic Bay, doing this 24 hour passage overnight. However the wind was so good to us, we arrived in the middle of the night, 2AM, so we anchored off the coast till daylight then went into the bay, hoping for a marina berth in one of the two marinas there. Both were full due to a big regatta taking place, but we picked up a free mooring outside the lighthouse bar/restaurant. A great place to provision with huge well stocked American style supermarkets. After one night there we slipped are mooring and headed north doing another overnighter to San Fernando La union, where we are now. We went to checkout of the country this afternoon, but found their is a holiday today and they are shut. So tomorrow morning we check out and head for Japan.

Paul Collister

Breaking news…..

You can also see our latest position courtesy of our new Iridium Go satellite device. It updates every hour when on, unlike the map I have on this site which updates whenever I remember I have a map to update.
You can find the iridium tracker at this location (Opens on a new page)

We finally motored away from Malaysia and headed up the west coast of Palawan in the Philippines. The forecast was for winds on the nose, but not more than 15 knots, and calm some of the time. We wanted to go a long way offshore, firstly because the reefs are poorly charted inshore, and some of the shallows extend to 20 miles offshore and we would be doing 2-3 nights over this area. The other reason was to be well out of sight of land and pirates. Southern Palawan has been home to a recent kidnapping and subsequent beheading of a yacht couple who couldn’t pay the ransom. It has been over a year since there have been any incidents, and I believe the terrorist group, Abu Sayyaf, responsible for this are on the back foot right now. Still we didn’t want to take any risks.

Unfortunately the wind and waves were a bit more than I expected and we had a very slow passage, we were only making 2 – 3 knots into the wind when using the engine, and that was eating up the fuel. The passage was about 250 miles, and we wouldn’t have enough fuel at the current burn rate, so I decided to tack up the palawan passage, which was the obvious thing to do. The boat goes to wind quite well, and under sail alone it was a much more comfortable ride, and also faster as we were making 5-6 knots into the wind. However because of the zig zagging involved in tacking, we wouldn’t get there any quicker but at least we would have some fuel available, and a more comfortable ride. The Palawan passage is a route up the west coast of Palawan which is quite deep, mostly between 500 and 1000 metres, however it is 20 miles offshore and either side of the passage depths can drop to 1 or 2 metres in a very short time. On the NW side of the passage there is a large area of reefs and shallows, roughly the size of the UK. Amongst this area are many disputed islands including the Spratly islands

Much of this areas sovereignty is contested, and there has been a fair bit of military / Naval drive bys of late.  I looked at a recent news item about a big yacht going aground in this region recently and wondered why it was even there, yet we were now tacking into the same area. I needed to make sure we didn’t go too far, yet on the other tack we headed towards the shallows off the coast of Palawan. As it turned out the wind was shifting a lot so the decisions were quite easy.

Fridge woes digression:
At some point on the passage I noticed my coke zero was a bit warm, and yes, the fridge had packed in again. This was quite confusing, it had been running for a couple of weeks doing a sterling job, the controller I replaced might have failed again, but usually you would expect this within a few hours not weeks, perhaps the compressor had an intermittent fault that was blowing up controllers, a short? I was a bit disappointed at the thought of arriving in the Philippines without a fridge, I had heard importing boat bits into this country was a nightmare and to be avoided at all cost! So with a little trepidation I emptied out the lazarette locker, Something I felt should be possible while being tossed around at sea anyway. Looking at the fuse I could see something was wrong, half of it, the plastic bit, was missing. The rest of it looked burnt. You can see the normal type of fuse above the damaged fuse.

Very confused, I fitted another fuse and we were back up and running. A few days later when Kathy pointed out the fridge seemed to be fixed ok I explained that fuses never go faulty on their own, there’s always a reason somewhere, and I couldn’t understand what was going on, but I was sure there was still a problem. And as if by magic the next day the fridge stopped working again. An investigation of the fuse revealed a similar story, except this time the plastic was there, just melted and dripped and re-set all over the fuse holder. The thing was, in both cases the fuse hadn’t actually blown, and despite everything around it melting, it should have continued to work. This was getting to be an interesting mystery. Obviously great heat was being generated, the fridge draws about 8 amps, at 12V which is capable of creating 100W of heat in theory, which is a lot. If the fridge was drawing too much power, the fuse should blow. I suspect that the fuse and fuse holder where not making a great connection, and the heat generated caused the fuse to expand the contacts or move away from them. I’m open to any feedback on this one, suffice it to say, I don’t like these auto style fuses on boats, and will be replacing them as I come across them here. For now, I put a 10A circuit breaker in the place of the fuse, this has two advantages, 1) it won’t have the heat issues of the auto fuse, 2) if there is a temporary short somewhere, then I can reset the fuse easily without emptying the locker, and hopefully keep some life in Kathy’s vegan cheese

Ulugan Bay
After 2 1/2 days at sea, with the wind picking up, we turned to starboard and into the wonderfully calm Ulugan bay.

The entrance to the bay is marked by the three little islands shown below.

This bay is very protected from the northerly winds and we managed to find a spot to anchor in between the extensive very shallow coral.

You can see the coral on a google earth picture.

We were finally in the Philippines and once we had tidied up, I took a dinghy ride ashore to enquire as to the best way to get a taxi/trike into the main city here, Puerto Princesa (PP).

I was able to get a good look at the Bancas in the river, they are mostly made of wood and tied together with string/rope. Some of the more modern ones use GRP.

Back on the boat we both slept for the rest of the day and generally took it easy.

We would stay here for a couple of days and take a ride into the main city here of Puerto Princesa to check in.

 

Paul Collister

We were all set to leave Malaysia on Thursday 9th March (Yesterday), but just as we were about to leave we had a problem.

The previous night we had popped down to the market to stock up on fresh food and fish.

They know how to sell tuna here

The singing veg seller

Afterwards, we stopped along the boardwalk and Kathy enjoyed what was meant to be a final glass of wine, the waiter must have been taken by Kathy as he made her a little rose out of the serviettes, at least I think it was meant for Kathy?

I was up early in the morning, topped of the water tanks, and I was almost ready to start the engine when Kathy pointed out that the fridge was quite warm, on further inspection it was clear it was faulty. We had just filled it with goodies, and Kathy had a big stock of vegan weirdness she had brought back from the UK, things like vegan cheese. We really need the fridge if we want to have any fresh food while at sea, in these temperatures, most fresh food goes off very quickly. Also I’m addicted to chilled fizzy drinks here. I don’t bother with them much in the UK.

The fridge compressor and controller are shown below,

I was able to make an educated guess that the compressor was ok and that the Electronic controller was most likely the problem. This is shown below.Looking closely once I had extracted it from the fridge, I could see a big crack across one of the power semiconductors, A Transistor/Triac or some such device

I reckon this is the problem, but it’s not something I would consider trying to repair, the wires go into an epoxy filled heatsink, so any repair might also fail. And the controllers are still available new, however the closest supplier is in Singapore, and he gave me a 10-12 week lead time. Eventually I organised DHL to collect one from an ebay seller in the UK and it should be hear in a few days time.

Neil, G4OAR, tells me he is moving closer to having a powerful Ham station setup with some serious aerials, so I’m hoping to be able to connect with him soon using the boats SSB Transceiver.

I’m not sure when I will get to post this blog, I’m going to wait until we leave port, assuming that happens in the next few days.

Update….

The day after I wrote the above I was hit with a Viral Infection, of an unspecified kind (Read serious man flu), that was last Thursday, 9 days ago.  At first it was just a bad night of fever , shakes, big temperature swings and lots of sweating, then it seemed to improve, then it got worse and eventually Kathy and our friends from Songbird persuaded me to go to hospital. It had been a few days and it wasn’t getting better, also it was possible it was dengue fever, as it had most of the symptoms and we are in the right place. But it was unlikely, especially as it goes for people who walk unprotected in forests on the islands or jump in mud volcanoes 😉 .
The public hospital here in KK was great, they saw me quickly at A&E, and agreed that with a temperature of 40 deg C, I was a bit on the fevery side and that they should take blood samples and check me out for dengue. I started to feel better during my few hours in the hospital, they injected a load of drugs into me and put me on a drip to rehydrate me. Also it was freezing in there, which might have helped. Anyway after a few hours they sent me home saying I had a viral infection, but my platelets were happy, and so were they.
Back on the boat I was up and down, up when the fridge part arrived, and although weak, Kathy helped me empty out the lazzareete lockers and get to the fridge. Replacing the controller had the fridge up and running, at the same time I jettisoned some of the lockers contents that I really didn’t need, in an attempt to create a better air flow around the fridge.  I suspect that may have been a factor in its failure.

The next few days were a bit of a blur for me, it’s been 8 days now since I first felt ill, and I’m finally feeling good enough to throw the lines and head off. We have now lost 2-3 weeks from my original schedule so our trip through the Philippines is going to be very fast. Perhaps only 4 or 5 nights actually looking around ashore in the 2 weeks we have to get from the south to the north.

 

 

Paul Collister

We are currently sitting at anchor off the lovely ‘survivor island’ Palau Tiga, waiting for suitable weather to head north east to the Philippines.Right now there is a strong wind predicted from the NE Monsoon, which will make the passage quite uncomfortable. We could try to beat it by leaving now, but that could backfire if the winds are early or if we make slow progress. This passage takes about 3 days for us and is just a bit more than we have fuel for, so we need the wind and waves to help not hinder us. Many of the upcoming passages are like this. Still it’s most pleasant sitting here in a very calm anchorage.

Kathy was out today doing a bit of Kayaking, which was a first for her, it looks like we are going to need a second kayak soon.

Yesterday I went for a mud bath.Not sure why, I was dirty enough already, but this is one of the main reasons people visit the island.It certainly was an interesting experience, I tried to swim in the mud but that didn’t work, but it’s very pleasant just lying on the surface, I can skip the Dead Sea experience now I think.

Back on the boat I am pleased to say the leaks I repaired are good, we had quite a lot of rain on passage here and since we arrived, but Kathy has pointed out the leak I missed in the galley. One weird thing did happen when we arrived, we have a depth sounder which is crucial when coming in to anchor, it works very well, except just as we approached the land here it started mis-reading, saying we were in 40, then 45, then 50 meters as we got closer to the shore, then it would jump from 50, back down to 40 and repeat that cycle. Fortunately I had just setup the fishfinder device which was showing me that we were in 4 metres as expected. Today I swam under the hull and cleaned the transducer in case that was the problem, and as I swam back to the ladder I passed the transducer for the fishfinder that was hanging in the water at the rear of the boat, it was making a loud clicking sound, which I think is normal, but it reminded me that I had left it running. Back on board I turned it off and then noticed that the faulty depth sounder was now reading correctly. It then dawned on me that the sounder went faulty around the time I started the fishfinder, so they must be interfering with each other. That’s quite a relief and easy to prove next time the sounder mis-reads. I suppose they both work by sending pulses to the sea bed and listening for the echo, easy to see they could interfere with each other. The fishfinder is suspect anyway as it constantly shows fish passing below the boat, but as I have proved it’s very rare to find any fish around here?

Talking of fish, I finally caught one!My first this millennium. My average is now one per decade, with the last catch being in 2006, on the ARC. This was with a fancy lure and a wire leader, I’m confident this is just the beginning of a constant supply of fresh fish. The said fish was a Trevalli and tasted gorgeous, even if it was one of the most miserable looking fish I have ever seen. I suppose he/she might have been a lot happier before it took my hook, but I don’t think so. I filleted it into 4 large pieces and have just finished off the last two, which I cooked in the barbecue.The barbecue is made by Magma for the American market and uses a disposable gas cylinder which I haven’t found outside the USA. I bought an adapter to allow it to work with European Gaz cylinders, even though they are rare outside of Europe. I just ordered two canisters from a specialist camping store in Kuala Lumpur only to find they can’t ship them here due to restrictions on postage of gas bottles, you would have thought they might have known that and advised me before I handed my money over to international money transfer companies. Anyway, I spotted a camping shop in Labuan and couldn’t believe they had a big stock of gaz bottles, cheaper than the ones in Kl, so as the saying goes, ‘we’re barbecuing with gas’ ?

I’m now two days at anchor with the extra power consumption of Kathy’s iDevices and cooling eco system, and the solar panels have us fully recharged by about 11am. Also the airlock in the calorifier has found its way out and we have working hot water again. All the others bits I worked on have turned out good except for the masthead light which was not working, I now know what that old rusted solenoid in the bilge was for. I hacked it out and taped up all the wires as it was not working anyway. I knew if it mattered I would soon find out. I expect the old masthead drew too much power to route through the switch panel, the new LED light won’t have that problem, but the solenoid solution seems more appropriate to the spreader mounted working lights?

We took the dinghy about a mile up the coast and about 0.5 miles off the shore to visit a coral island, very interesting, something I wouldn’t like to hit at night, but seemingly made of dead coral fragments lumped up in the sea as if they had been dumped there deliberately to form an island.

 

From here on in, until we get SIM cards in the Philippines we might not be able to post much, so don’t be surprised if the blog goes quiet for a while

Tonights sunset

 

Paul Collister