Author: paulcollister

Well I’m almost ready to go back in the water, the hull is antifouled, the anodes inspected and changed as needed, and the prop cleaned and greased.The faulty seacock and one way valve is working fine now, and I’m just going to do a few cosmetic jobs, like patching some scrapes along the waterline / boot top, then have a relaxing weekend before launching on Tuesday. I decided not to replace the hull zincs, although they look worn down, there’s still a substantial amount of zinc there, and given the rate of decay, they should be good for another year. One of my jobs is to redo the earthing wires inside the boat, several have broken off the seacocks so, this might increase the anode decay.

Oh almost forgot, the solar panels are installed and doing a fine job. 

A few mornings ago, I went into the cockpit to get some bananas, I have them hanging there, only to find they had been eaten, and the visitor had left me a load of rat shit as a calling card. How it got up the ladder is beyond me, but I’m not mad on the whole idea, I keep the hatches shut at night now.
I’ve had time to get to know Kudat a little now, the boatyard is at one end of a man made lagoon, most of which is surrounded by a golf course, that has its clubhouse / hotel resort on the front.  There’s a lovely little marina at the other end from the yard, and you can tie up to mooring bouys here for free. It’s very laid back, the marina has a nice little cafe, and a few berths, but it’s a low key affair.

Downtown is also sleepy and pretty laid back. The market below is very busy every time I have been down there, but no lettuce or plumb tomatoes, so my salads will have to wait a bit. The fish market is great. Mostly the town is home to a fleet of fishing boats, many of them squid boats. I had one of the crew help me choose the best lure for catching Squid today. I have restocked on lures, lines, wires, hooks etc. I fully expect to have a full freezer of fish by the time I arrive in Labuan in a weeks time.

Work continues in the yard, with a constant procession of fishing boats arriving and also launched. I have been told that many boats will haul out in 2 weeks time for the Chinese new year and stay ashore over the period, which is about two weeks long. I hope to see some of the festivities in Labuan.Of course, the boat has been quite a tip the last week, but all the jobs are done now, so I can start tidying up. I gave my three old solar panels away to some French cruisers who are in the yard here. So I built a mockup of the frame for the solar panels to sit on first, I found a double glazing shop that sold me a stack of aluminium extrusion, box shape, which I used. I had planned to have it welded together, but the hardware store next door had a good supply of stainless steel bolts at a very very reasonable price, so I bolted it all together, with the thought of maybe welding it later. I have since decided that bolts are better, and will have more give than a weld as the frame comes under stress.With a little help from Brent, a Brit on the catamaran behind me, I got the new panels mounted and bolted down. I can’t find  supply of jointing compound anywhere. I hope they have some in America 😉

I’m very happy with the physical install, there’s not a lot more weight than the three old panels and canopy, plus the windage area is much the same, so I’m hopeful it won’t blow away in the first gale. As for performance, look at the readings below. The panels are pumping 35A into the boat, I had to put every 12V device on, lights, deck lights, radar, fans fridge etc to get this up, as the batteries wouldn’t take more than 20-25A. I expect I could get 40A if needed, but at the moment, I have had the mains charger turned off for a few days, and I find the batteries are fully recharged from the evening/nights drain by about 10AM. At 07:30, not long after sunrise, with the sun low in the sky, they are providing 10A. I expect that in the northern latitudes, they will perform less well, but will be more than enough. I’m keen to find out.

 

For Kathy, some yard pups, hope that doesn’t get me into trouble with the metoo gang 😉

I had booked the 8 AM slot for launch on Monday, but later realised that I had to go to three offices to checkout, harbour master, immigration and customs.  I have to get my passport stamped to leave Sabah to travel to Labuan, both Malaysia, but different states. I don’t think people back home fully appreciate the benefits of freedom of movement.
Consequently, I have put the launch back to Tuesday, that gives me more time to get fresh food on Monday. I need to be in Labuan before the 27th Feb, so I have plenty of time to meander down there, it’s only 160 Nautical Miles.

Paul Collister

 

 

I do like ship/boatyards, it’s the real business end of the industry, in this yard you have everything from abandoned wrecks, through to fancy modern boats and shipbuilding in wood, steel and GRP. They have a great machine shop / workshop which is actually outdoors, but covered. In the workshop they have a machine for making propellers, big ones at that! Huge lathes for turning propellor shafts and a large milling machine, I’m not sure what you make with them, our metalwork teacher at school, wouldn’t let us near the milling machine, I’m not really sure why we had one.
The other aspect of boatyards I love, are the people who inhabit them, the staff are usually incredibly resourceful, and there aren’t many problems they can’t come up with a solution for, often in a very creative way. The cruisers who live aboard, are usually great dreamers, they are often doing up old wrecks with plans to sail them across the oceans.
In this yard I met a group of French sailors, one couple on their 40ft yacht, they had sailed across the pacific, where flying out to Tahiti tomorrow to view a 54 foot ‘project’ boat, they have been in the yard here for many months already getting their current boat ready for sale, and they will spend many months, if not years getting the next one ready, another Frenchman had sailed his 40 ft concrete boat from France 2/3rds of the way around the world to here. behind me a Brit is having loads of work done on his big cat, and next to him, a sturdy looking long keel boat has obviously had a bad encounter with rocks as a large chunk of keel is missing and the rudder is smashed up badly, I expect there’s an interesting, if not scary story there.
We have the usual pack of stray dogs that hang out here, perhaps a dozen or so, they make a hell of a racket if you disturb them at night, I expect that’s why the yard owner must send enough scraps there way to keep them here as cheap guard dogs, the reality however, is that they are very timid, and run away from you if you get close. I have made friends with two of them, and they are quite good fun, but NO Kathy, we are not getting a dog, at least not yet.
So I have just dumped the pictures I took today from around the yard, as the light was failing, below.

My boat cleaned and ready for some paint

The travel lift and some of the dogs The view down the ladder, it’s a long way and I must remember not to trust the guard rails

The five white dots are blisters I had to sand down, fill and prime, not bad after two years in the tropics, none were more than an inch in diameter

 

The yacht that lost out to the solid immovable object(s) exposed iron ballast The Machine shop The Prop Making machine. I have to see how this works

Some props they made earlier

New boats being built in wooden moulds, pretty large ships really The drums below hold the resin they use

I have been on a ferry like this one, it’s hard to imagine this will ever run again Other boats resting here

General yard shots The workers canteen

Paul Collister

Alternate titles are:

“What a plonker”
“For the sake of a split pin, an iPhone was lost”
“How not to make an entrance”

Everything is fine, the only casualty is my iPhone and my dignity. We are in Kudat and the boat is hauled out. There’s a little bit more work on the hull than I expected, but all in all it’s no big deal, and we should launch again in a week or so.
I had a great trip up here, except for this morning, just as I approached the little cut that leads to the boatyard, a heavy downpour started, I was so busy trying to get everything safely stowed out of the rain, that I almost went over the reef that fringes the entrance to the yard /  man made basin. Visibility was so poor that I turned around and went back out to sea, only to remember that there were lots of fishing boats passing this way, towards the town quay, and that  I might get run down if they didn’t see me in time. I pratted round for an hour before heading in and dropping anchor next to the yard, in front of the grand looking golf club.More rain, and eventually after lunch I got through to the yard who agreed to take me out in 15 minutes, which was great as I had originally booked a slot for tomorrow. All was going great, and I made it into the slings of the travel hoist without any effort at all, but I was worried that the rear sling was too far back and might be catching the rudder, I leaned over the wire lifeline in the cockpit to see if I could see it, but couldn’t, I leaned more, and further out when I suddenly find myself doing a somersault over the side of the boat and into the water, left hand immediately goes to left pocket, and sure enough my iPhone is there,  bugger!  looking up I can see the snapped life line dangling, I pull myself up using it, then notice both the lifelines are in the water. I have about ten people from the yard all looking down at me now. I have fallen off pontoons more than once in my life, but I think this is the first time I ever fell off a boat. How embarrassing. I had to swim around to the stern of the boat and climb back on board using the monitor wind steering frame. Then I have to act casual and make out like this is standard operating procedure for Brits arriving at a new port 🙂
Amazingly the iPhone came on when I plugged it into a charger, but only briefly, now it’s dead. I may see if it can be repaired here. Later inspection revealed the top line hadn’t snapped, but the nut that holds it on had worked it’s way loose, there should be a split pin to stop the nut coming off, but obviously that was missing. I had only recently agreed with a neighbouring boatie in KK how bad the lifelines looked, and I had assured him it was high on my priority list. It’s just not easy to get lines made in Malaysia, I’m not even sure if I can get the wire here.

They have an unusual system for propping up the boats, they use leftover blocks of concrete from when this little basin was built. Can’t say I’m 100% happy, but I expect they know what they’re doing.

The anode on the prop has fallen off, which is odd, as it was there yesterday when I dived on the hull in Pulau Kulambok 

The gigantic travel lift

 

Yesterday I arrived at Palau Kulambok quite early and had a swim around the boat, then I took the Kayak to explore the area. There is a sand spit that joins the island to the mainland and I enjoyed a snorkel around that. Some lovely little fish, but no great coral to see.

The fishing boats had all been very friendly shouting out hello and practising their english phrases on me as they passed by.  It’s odd to think this is as far east as I can go in Malaysia and still have insurance, in fact the military wont let me go further without an escort due to the pirates that operate out there.

Now, I had some success, on the fishing front, when I say success, the fish are still winning, but I think the aeroplane is a game changer, so much so that the fish have confiscated two of them from me. Each time they waited until I had to go into the cabin, and then they took the hook, and I expect they must have been mighty fierce fish, maybe killer sharks, for they managed to snap the line, taking the lure and the aeroplane with them. So back to the fishing tackle shop for more aeroplanes and a much stronger line. I also need to rig up a better alarm system for when they do take the bite, I currently use the line wrapped around a winch system, but I didn’t hear it from below.

Paul Collister

Just a quick update…

I arrived at Pulau Mantanani today.It was a bit of a slog, I left at 7am and arrived at 17:00 and spent 30 minutes trying to find a spot to anchor.
On the way I passed Kinabalu Mountain, which looked lovely in the morning mist, I think it’s the tallest mountain in SE Asia. It was quite rough later on during the passage and I couldn’t motor then as the wind and waves were on the nose and slowed me to just 2 knots, so I had to tack back and forth for 4 hours, mostly steering by hand.  It was while the boat was heeling heavily, and was racing along with a double reefed main and just the staysail, that I began to doubt the wind speed indicator, that was showing 10 knots of wind, and in fact, when I thought about it, it hadn’t been above 10 knots for a very long time. I expect it’s faulty and will have to be replaced.You can see on the map below there are two islands, Besar and Kerchil, which means big and small. I went for the small one as it was recommended to anchor south of the lighthouse, however there isn’t a lighthouse here anymore, did they mean the new radar station? You can see on the google map how the two islands sit on a big oval lump of rock,.Closer to the shore, its solid shallow coral. I have a sonar depth sensor which shows me the sea floor surface, and I can usually spot rocky areas, and eventually I found a very flat area, dropped the hook, and went about setting it in, it was looking good until I upped the revs to test it, then it dragged along rock, and quickly came to a stop. It’s dug in now, but is it under a rock, or worse has the chain wrapped around a rock? I quickly dived over the side with my snorkel, but the light had almost gone, and I couldn’t see much, but it did look mostly sandy there with a few rocky bits. We shall see tomorrow at 7am, when I try to leave.

I decided to try my new fishing apparatus on this trip. As you can see I have an assortment of plastic fish, but now the secret weapon is being deployed…
The aeroplane! I have been assured this will do the trick. I have three of them, so no more buying fish for me.

Sadly things didn’t work out too well, the aeroplane kept dive bombing and in 8 hours I didn’t get any bites. Worse than that, the fish seemed to be mocking me, several times they put on a jumping show alongside the boat. There were big tuna, leaping out of the water repeatedly, right next to the boat, sometimes I swear they were imitating the dolphins in dolphin world, they seemed to be doing synchronised jumps just for me! all the time I had two lures trailing behind. I’m beginning to see why the locals might have turned to using dynamite instead of hooks!

 

Paul Collister

On my last day in Kota Kinabalu, I headed off to the Jabatan Laut, (Literally, Department Sea, or harbour master). I cleared out with them and customs. Then back to the Imago mall to get some fresh lettuce, tomatoes and spuds. As I arrived the dancers were kicking off again and I managed to get some lovely footage (no pun intended).

That evening I took some pictures of the sunset from the quay where the hotel guests go to see it.

The night before I visited the beach at Tanjung Aru again.This is the local beach for KK, and it was rammed with Chinese people, everyone of them seemingly fused to their mobile phones, It seemed that they had gone there, not to enjoy the beach, but to look at it, very odd. We used to spend our summers on the beaches at Barcelona, where the locals know how to use a beach, they build bars on them, setup volleyball courts, sit, tan, swim, drink, eat, smoke weed, and just chill. Now I had a few hundred tourists in front of me, marching up and down the beach, photographing it, photographing themselves and each other, ‘at the beach’. Nobody seemed to realise you can play games, jump in the sea, build sandcastles etc! I wondered if many of them come from inland China and hadn’t seen a beach before. I noticed new arrivals here at the resort often get quite excited when they see the fish swimming in the marina!

So after an evening of packing things away, and a good nights sleep it was time to fill up with fuel and checkout of this resort. No more luxury for me until we reach the Philippines I expect.

The boat has so much prop walk, especially going astern, I have learnt to take advantage of this when manoeuvring in tight spaces. Basically what this means is that if I rev up the engine, either ahead or astern, the back of the boat kicks to the left, I can make the bow move left easily with the bow thruster, so I can almost walk the boat sideways just by bursts of ahead and astern, with the odd touch of bow thruster. This came in handy this morning as there were many boats around the fuel dock, and I had to fit into  a tight gap.Not so good if the dock is on the starboard side. As soon as I fuelled up I left for the short 3 hour journey to my current location, in a little sandy cove just NE of the main port of KK

Leaving the resort meant motoring through all the day tripper boats that speed between the Marina, town and the cluster of islands out here.The islands look lovely, but crowded with fast day-tripper boats razzing around everywhere.

A little later I came across the para-boaty-thing boats, lots of them, all motoring into the wind for lift off and landing, which meant they all just crossed my path.One cut right across my bow, and I wondered what might happen should he misjudge things and the poor lass in the parachute found her line wrapped around my mast. I don’t think we covered that on the RYA Yacht Master course.

Once past the main island Pulua Gaya, I turned into the wind, got the mainsail up, a little startled by the dead cockroach that seemed to jump out of the mainsail at me, then turned off (away from ) the wind and sailed close hauled to my destination.

So I was able to sail for the last 90 minutes at around 6 knots, which was nice.

Early start tomorrow as I was reminded that everywhere will be shutting down in a few weeks for the New Year, and I need to get into the boatyard pronto if this work is going to get done.

Paul Collister

 

I had a long cycle around the back end of town yesterday, it’s easier to throw myself across large 5 lane highway intersections without having to include the timings for Kathy’s safe transit, i.e. it’s only me that will get run over this way.My conclusion so far is that KK needs to get some better planners involved quickly, large chunks of the city are marooned by concrete constructions on islands that are only accessible by road, pedestrians are constantly trekking down central reservations and walking across motorway like roads to just get home.

Above you can see what was once a river has been concreted up, but the fishing village that existed, probably on stilts once, is now marooned inside a built up area.This river has been gentrified, in as much as there’s a cycle path, footpath and seating along its length, and elsewhere, say in Singapore, this would be thriving with visitors. However here,the paving is breaking up, it’s deserted and windswept, not very inviting.

Elsewhere in town, the architecture follows a very basic block style showing very little imagination.

I think this type of block of shops with accommodation above takes its design from the old shop houses, where a trader lived above his shop, and is very common here. It’s been interesting to see the older shops on stilts in the Anambas island, which where very basic, and to see how the have evolved into the modern stores here. It’s a bit like time travel but without all that annoying regeneration the doctor has to put up with.

The new shopping malls, like the one below, that towers over some weird Athenian like ruin has more imagination, but really they should pull the lot down and start again. Still eating seems to be the main activity here, and this restaurant says it all.

 

Electrical News
So the solar panel has been producing power and I am delighted with its performance. Yesterday I grabbed this screen shot of the charger and you can see that the one panel is producing 20A into the batteries. I left the batteries to discharge all night, in fact I’m leaving the mains charger off for a few days as it’s no longer needed.

This is just the one panel, so 40AH, for a few hours, minimum, on a sunny day is easily achievable. Today and yesterday we have completed the bulk charging phase by midday, and the absorption a few hours later.  It’s not even been that sunny, today has been quite overcast, but I was still getting 10A.
Of course we are near the equator, but I am quite confident that the panels should meet our power needs, even in the north pacific, where the wind will also help via the wind generator.

MP3 Player
A while back I was pondering on a music system for the boat, something that was low power, high quality, could play our library but also do most audio needs for the boat, well as a stop gap measure I bought a cheap Bluetooth Radio head from ebay for about £10, this came with a remote control and has worked like a dream. The quality is more than enough, the streaming works extremely well, so we can play music from our iPhones, Macbook, watch TV on the computer with lovely sound from the boats speakers. It also is a decent radio, but sadly Kathy doesn’t care much for local FM radio. Best of all it’s fully redundant and capable of surviving a total failure with little disruption to the music, as I bought a second one at christmas as a spare!

I tried to leave KK yesterday, but the Customs man said I had to come back on Monday, So I will check out then, and probably leave Monday afternoon, or early Tuesday.

P.S. The title is a play on words from my past excursions into the music business

 

At last the solar panels turned up at the marina and they are now onboard.

The day started well, I tidied up the install of the cabin heater, then looked at some old pics of the wiring and saw that the heater had a switch assigned to it on the switch panel, which I was now using for the new VHF Radio. Opening up the panel revealed the old wire, which I had disconnected and marked with a label “Heater”. I think it’s quite rare that my future planning has worked out so well before. Anyway, the heater now shares the cutout with the VHF and once connected, the fans on the heat exchanger fired up and blew hot air around, this was before I turned the heater on (it’s hot here you see 😉 ), So then I fired up the heater propper and within 5 minutes hot water was rushing around the system and hot air was streaming out of the heaters. It’s a lot hotter than the ambient air, but hot enough for Canada in September? We will have to wait and see.

Next I ordered the Sat Phone from PredictWind. It’s the Iridium GO system, and for the bargain price of $USD 120 / Month, we get 14k Internet access, eat all you can. Loads of free minutes and free SMS, This will be our prime method for getting weather forecasts when offshore now. I’m hoping this will be delivered to me when I arrive in Labuan in about 3 weeks time.

Finally after an awful lot of messing around, I got an email to say the Solar Panels had been delivered to the Marina. However I couldn’t collect them until security had cleared them, which was odd. After a bit of flapping, I carried them down from the Office to the boat, one at a time with the help of one of the marina staff, he was a great laugh, but gave me a really hard time about having been in Malaysia for two years and only knowing a couple of words in Malay, so while we carried the panels along, he taught me a few more. A lovely guy, looked about 35 years old, but was in fact 45, with 8 kids!

I had hoped to keep the panels below until I fitted them in Kudat next week, however, they were two big to fit through the cockpit hatch, so another location bove deck was needed. After a bit of head scratching, I decided to put them on top of the existing panels and lash them down. However this meant the existing panels wouldn’t work on the trip to Kudat, and I need the power, so I decided to put the top panel facing up and wire it in temporarily. It was now getting late and I was keen to finish the wiring while the sun shone so I could see if they generated any power. At this point a neighbour arrived for a chat, this delayed me, but I was now thinking, they are designed to outperform other panels in low light, so this would test them, the neighbour left and I continued the job, rushing below, only to find 0V from the panel. I knew the connections were good, but on inspection I had wired it up to the wrong cable, so more work, the sun is now just above the horizon.  rushing below I managed to see the panel generate 1W, which is a start, thats about 0.3% of it’s output. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day…

I have turned off the mains battery charger to let the fridge and the fans run the battery down overnight. Then tomorrow I can watch the single panel perform.  However this may just be a way of ensuring it is rainy and overcast all day tomorrow 🙁

Tomorrow I will check out, stock up and prepare to leave.

 

Paul Collister

Yss, Kathy is back in the UK visiting family, and I’m doing messy boat jobs, but more of that later. Before Kathy left we had a few meals out, I particularly liked the big covered Chinese food court / Hawker market we stumbled on. It’s a huge area, with stalls all around the perimeter.

In the middle of all the tables there is a stage. Now often on the stage they have bands and karaoke sessions, but I was delighted to see some traditional dance and yelping being performed.

Later there was some flame throwing / fire eating stuff.

We were invited up on stage, but I didn’t fancy it, you can imagine I had to grab Kathy to stop her jumping up to join in the traditional dance routines they were teaching.
But enough frivolity, let’s get down to the main business of the day, the heater. It seems odd to be working on the heater here, but we will need it later in the year when we close in on Vancouver / Washington, in September or later. We hate being cold, and when your clothes are damp and you have to do a watch in the rain, it’s just plain miserable. also this is my last chance to work on the heating system, where I am able to import replacement parts easily. I can have stuff shipped here Duty Free on export and Duty Free on import, which helps the coffers a bit. I understand this is costly and difficult to do in the Philippines, and I don’t fancy trying it in Japan either.
The heater we have is a diesel Eberspacher from Germany, it heats water which it pumps around radiators. It’s a neat efficient little system, but ours is very old and probably hasn’t worked for many years, possibly ten. So I stripped it down to try and find out why it wouldn’t start. As you can see from the pic’s it was quite a mess, closer inspection, with the assistance of many youtube videos, revealed that the internal air intake fan was seized, also the cabling for one of the temperature sensors has shed it’s insulation and was shorted. Also the exhaust was blocked with decomposing exhaust outlet pipe. The gaskets on the main heater chamber had perished, I was able to replace these with ones I cut out from some gasket material I brought out. 

As it turned out, I was able to clean it up quite well, and re-assembled it and fired it up. It took awhile for the fuel to get there from the tank, but once the pipe was full and fuel flowed, she fired up and ran very nicely. Hot water was soon reaching the two radiators in the main cabin. These have computer fans behind them which push the air out, this doesn’t seem like a lot to me, but I can’t tell, as they don’t work. There’s no power reaching the fans, but this will be trivial, probably just a case of me reconnecting the wires I pulled out 2 years ago as I had no idea what they did or where they went!.

 

This one’s for Kathy, expect it’s much the same in Swindon 😉

We had a last visit to the Imago mall a few days ago, and another dance troupe, almost identical to the one in the food court were performing. It was odd seeing this in a shopping mall, but I did enjoy it.

Today I went hardware shopping and was delighted to find all the various oddball bits I was looking for.
It will be fun playing with these honkers, I’m expecting lots of fog when we leave Japan, so they might come in useful, only £6, and they only have to last 6 months.

 

This is another filter, all part of making the water onboard nice and safe to drink.

Finally when I left Kathy at the airport in KK, I had a wander, and they had a display of lots of pictures of the town and surrounding country, laid out in a before and after style, usually pictures before the concrete, and then after. Without exception, every ‘before’ picture was lovely, old wooden houses, river boats, long houses etc, and all the afters were concrete blocks. I think it was meant to show how much the town has moved on in just a few decades, interesting how this ‘progress’ appears so different to a tourist.
However one picture really caught my attention, it was the town a few years ago, where the reefs are very clear. You can’t see these from the shore, but I often see waves breaking and know something is there, we also saw a fishing vessel aground on one of these the other day. I was thinking of taking the boat through here, but won’t bother now.

Paul Collister

Just a quick update, The windlass is back on the bowsprit, working fine, I can lower the anchor with the motor now as well as by hand, also I wired in a cheap wireless remote which works well. I ended up moving the windlass Solenoid into the chain locker.

Kathy has taken over the watermaker maintenance, and is keeping records of the state of affairs, we were able to run it up here in the marina as the water is so clear here. We are getting about 300 ppm (Parts per million) pure water, which is quite acceptable I’m told. We can also make about 10 litres per hour, which isn’t too bad.

Finally I’m working on our passage north, on the map below you can see our route north from Borneo up past the western side of the Philippines.

Zooming in, you can see our route passes up past the Palawan Islands, we will be checking into  the Philippines, possibly at Puerto Princesa.To the west of the islands you can see lots of lumps in the sea, these are thousands of islands and reefs, many of them, like the Spratly islands have disputed owners, with China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines all laying claim. Early on I thought I could sail across this area as it’s the most direct route to Hong Kong, but I soon realised you would have to be mad to go that way, the charts, where they exist, are often very inaccurate. Also there’s lots of  military activity around the place. Also there’s a load of uncharted reefs and rocks, for hundreds of miles the depth is only a few metres.
However, I was amazed to see a very large yacht had hit a reef known as ‘Mischief Reef’ a few days ago; as Kathy said, “surely the clues in the name”.

More details here
The area to the east of Palawan is where the pirates hang out, and although it’s supposed to be a fantastic place to cruise, we won’t be going there. We got friendly with a cruising couple in Miri who had been sailing the area where the pirates operate, for a few years, and on more than one occasion, they had missed the terrorists by a day or two. Sadly some of their friends they made there didn’t fare too well.

Once we get midway up Palawan, we have left the terrorists homeland and we will be well on our way to Japan.

I have been putting the next big job off for too long now, the heating system. The boat has plumbed in heating, but it probably hasn’t been used for twenty years, so who knows what state it will be in. I have started investigating the system and found out it’s an Eberspacher water heater system, so basically it burns diesel to heat water which it pumps around radiators. I have two radiators, or heat exchanges as they are known, these are small units fitted under the seating, which have fans to blow the hot air out. Much like the fan heaters you get on the local trains (I’m thinking Merseyrail). Fortunately the heater and the heat exchangers aren’t expensive, so if they are faulty, it’s probably easiest to replace them, rather than to think of a new system for the boat. My only worry is what happens when the unit decides not to start, mid ocean, when it’s freezing. I hate being cold. It has a computer inside (ECU), and I expect if it fails to start, there’s sod all I can do about it. On the last boat we had a diesel stove heater, diesel dripped onto a hot metal plate and burnt. It had a chimney, and that was about as complicated as it got, if the diesel dripped, and the chimney wasn’t blocked, it had to work. However, you had to keep everything clean of soot, and that proved to be a major pain, soot and boats don’t mix, especially if your as clumsy as me.

I mentioned I have ordered the solar panels from Panasonic, at a higher price than I can buy them in the UK, which is mad as they are made here in Malaysia, and are being shipped from the factory in Penang. Well just now I got the bill for shipping, £300 !!!!! I have never paid  £300 for shipping anything in my life, I’m still in shock. £300 buys me another fortnight lazing in this resort.

I bought a water filter today to put in line with the hose pipe, so that we are filtering the water before it goes into the tanks. I now feel like I have moved closer to being a real hardened cruiser as we are drinking the local tap water on the boat. We take the tap water through a 100 Micron course filter  on its way to the tanks, then a 20 Micron filter in the galley. While looking around the hardware store I bought the filter in, I wondered why they had so many kettles.

Paul Collister

We joined our neighbours for a barbeque on the pontoon here for new years eve, then we dragged some chairs to the end finger and watched the massive fireworks display the resort had organised (gif above). There was a big party going on over the water in one of the hotels gardens, with a live band on a big stage counting the new year in. It was odd thinking of our friends and family back home who were enjoying the afternoon (4pm) possibly thinking of their partying 8 hours later, also knowing we might get a few texts ( or WhatsApps as it turned out) around 8AM our time.

New years day was quite sedate, however one of the royal family turned up to have a little motor over to one of the islands, this was quite an ordeal, red carpet was laid out along the pontoons and a cavalcade of security personnel arrived, along with lots of armed police, and the army. Police motor launches (High speed RIBs) motored in and around the marina, inspecting the pontoons, and the boats used to transport the entourage were thoroughly searched. 

I really like Kota Kinabalu, or KK as most people call it, downtown is quite grimy, but it’s very lively, street markets everywhere, and a massive central market area that runs for a mile along the waterfront. Fresh fruit and Veg, herbs and spices, fish, meat and textiles make up the main sections, however within the fresh food bit there is another smaller, but very lively fish market, with the vendors hacking away at fish and shouting out their offers making a constant barrage of noise.

Tonight I bought a 1/2 Kilo of skipback tuna steak off these guys above, it tasted great. it’s £2.50 / kg here, back home it’s ten times that. I took some more pictures a week ago, hope you like looking at fish!

It’s fish heaven here. However, we learned of a darker side to all of this recently, some traders are alleged to go to some lengths to keep their produce looking fresh, this involves spraying the fish with hand sanitizer, using formaldehyde and other products you don’t want to be digesting. One stall was recently spotted with a dead bear sprawled across the table. I think this is illegal, but ignored in the market. I’m very glad we didn’t see that, there might have been a scene.

I spotted this raft off the main town quay a few days ago, there were a couple of kids sitting there fishing. A few days ago, we took a bike ride past the airport to Tajung Aru, the next cove along the coast, where the local sailing club is located. We took some old back roads I could see on google earth, to avoid the highway, as you can see below, if your not careful, the jungle will try to grab the land back in no time at all.

The beach at Aru had a great display made by the crabs

And later I managed to catch this guy casting his net in the bayNow the serious stuff, boat jobs.

The Anchor windlass is something I have been putting off, the fact is it works to recover the Anchor & chain, and that’s its main job so why mess with it. A good question.
Well the clutch has two clutch cones, they allow me to control the speed the anchor drops at, and they need to be kept clean. I can only access one, because I need to remove a bracket on the windlass to release the gypsy to get to the second cone. I can’t remove the bracket, because the allen screws holding it on are wrecked and need to be drilled out. This is a job I hate, but I also need to remove the motor to check it and maybe clean it, and to replace the solenoid so I can use the motor in reverse.
The bigger reason for doing this is that I know if I ignore it, then it will fail at some point. I don’t know which bit will fail, but I won’t be able to fix it, because when it fails I will most likely be dragging in a big squall, heading for danger, probably at night and I will be cursing myself for not servicing the damn thing when I was lazing around in some luxury resort wondering how to kill time!

Day one had me drilling out the two reluctant Allen screws, which took an hour, followed by a very careful extraction of their stubs. This went remarkably well, but in the heat, I decided to call it a day.
Day two and I was able to remove the other very dirty cone, and extract the main axle that drives the chain gypsy and rope drum. Now of the 8 screws that hold the motor and gears in place, 7 came out, after a short fight, the 8th can’t come out because another bracket is in the way of the screw, so I tried to undo the 4 allen screws holding that bracket in, and they won’t budge. I wrecked one trying, so off to the shops to buy some new HSS bits to drill them out.
The problem here is that the screws are stainless steel and they screw into a cast aluminium alloy case, the two dissimilar metals react over time, I think the salt in the seawater and air provides an electrolyte and the corrosion joins the two parts. This is very difficult to overcome.
If you look on youtube, Lewmar has a video of a tour around their production facility in the UK, I was watching this while trying to find teardown videos for the windlass, and they actually had a shot of the man putting the very same screws into the windlas that I was trying to take out. He added a chemical to the screws, specifically to enable them to come apart, (Duralec or similar, I expect) while I was shouting at the laptop screen, “It doesn’t work”

Tomorrow we start drilling. Then I will hopefully complete the disassembly, followed by the service and re-assembly, all in time for my departure from here on the 18th

Below you can see the starboard water tank, that lives below the settee / sea berth. I had noticed big rust stains all over it, but couldn’t find the cause. However when filling up the tanks a few days ago, we saw water on the cabin sole. Further investigation revealed that the water level sensor (black thing on the far right) was leaking. I think this meant that on a full tank, or if the boat rocked a lot, water squirted out onto the tank top, then down the side. I have fixed the leak, polished the steel, and took this picture so I can remind myself what it looked like, for when I next inspect it in a few months time.

I have ordered 2 * 325w HIT Sanyo/Panasonic solar panels direct from Panasonic. They are huge, and when I get to Kudat, I will arrange to have a frame made to support them above the helm position. 650W of high efficiency (19.7% with a low temp co-ef) panels will give me a lot of power, I can’t wait to see how they work out.

Paul Collister