Author: paulcollister

We had a lively trip up to Tioman from Tinggi, we started with the headsail and a full main, and we were making a nice 5 knots in about 10 knots of wind on a full run (wind directly behind us). I turned off onto a broad reach after a while as the wind dropped and the headsail kept collapsing. This point of sail meant we were about 20 deg off course, but we could jibe half way and reach on the other side, we go faster this way anyway, and it all works out much the same. I have a spinnaker pole which I could put out onto the headsail to help it when we are running, but I don’t know how it works on this boat yet. It’s something I must investigate, but frankly, it’s a little intimidating, the one on the baba was big, and I could manhandle it out onto the sails myself, but this one is another 50% all round, it’s going to have to be hoisted, probably with a winch, and needs to be steadied in several directions, for/aft, up/down. It’s a job I have set for this week. Charts of our route are below.

Not long after the wind calmed, a squall came through, we quickly dropped the main and rolled up half the headsail, this was enough to push us along at 6 knots towards our destination as the squall passed through us, it came from the west, whereas the prevailing wind had been southerly for the last few days, this meant that after an hour we had big waves rolling in from the side combining with smaller ones from behind. This made the next few hours quite ‘rock and roll’.

I hooked up the wind steering, conscious that we weren’t getting any charge from the engine and the autopilot can use a lot of power. Also I need to have confidence in this particular piece of kit. It worked very well and sailed the boat nicely for a couple of hours.
About 3 miles before Tioman, the wind dropped right off and we motored the last bit in quite a rolly sea into Tekek Harbour, the main port on the island.  We anchored in 18m of water, with about 80m of rope and chain, always a worry for me, I had a swim and I think we are outside of the coral, the anchor seemed to set well.

Tuesday morning and the anchor held, but then it was a very calm night. We headed into the port to check in with the harbour master and customs. Then a walk around town. There’s not a lot here, a few basic shops, a couple of duty free stores, as this is a duty free island.

The most amazing thing is that it has an Airport, 

For such a small island, the land rises quickly into rocky hills covered in trees. It must be quite a thrill flying into here.

Managed to spot a couple of project boats in the harbour here.

Back on the boat and another squall came through, when I went up to have a look, there was another boat about 20ft in front of me, close enough to chat to the skipper, he had just moved because the boat by him was dragging its anchor, and he had miscalculated where my anchor was and had laid his over mine, he moved even closer, then decided to head off and try again. All the time I was trying to work out if we were dragging our anchor. I think we are in sand, and that’s not great for anchors, mud is the best. I let out another ten metres of rode, so now we had 90 metres, but when you have 90m or about 300ft, you have a swinging circle with a 600ft diameter (ish), thats a large area, and these boats point one way, and can pull on the chain in another. The upshot is I spend a lot of time wondering what is going on. Since we dragged in Ko Lipe with 100m out, I’m very wary. As I write this the wind has dropped, and we have moved from some distance out to sea, back to where we started yesterday, so I think we are holding fine.

Paul Collister

Quite horrible, a swarm of Flying Soldier Insects, Termites I suspect, left land in their hundreds, if not thousands and landed on our boat. They shed their wings then tried to take over, it was horrible, some of them were quite big. Most of them died on the deck, a few dozen wished they had kept their wings on as they couldn’t get out of the cockpit well, I suspect some found their way inside and went searching for some wood to munch on and make a new home in. This was on Friday evening as we were anchored in Johor Strait, off from a forest/jungle section. I spent the next morning spraying all the non teak wooden surfaces with a borax solution, which should see them off fairly quickly. I’m not going through the new bowsprit route again. I’m pretty confident we wont have any problems though.
We had left the boatyard that morning, and I took these pictures from the boat as we were craned to our launching spot.

From our anchorage a few hours from the boatyard, we headed off early on Saturday morning to put some distance between us and Singapore, and all the heavy shipping that goes with it. It was busy, but we were able to keep out of the shipping lanes and stay inshore, except inshore has mostly become new docks and oil/gas terminals now, and the charts, even though they are up to date in chart terms, they are out of date in reality. It took about 8 hours to reach Jason Bay, a quiet anchorage just up the eastern side of the Malaysian peninsular. We took these pictures along the way.

 

These jack up platforms are everywhere

We weaved our way through lots of tankers like this anchored along the coast.

The predicted wind didn’t materialise, except for a mini storm in the afternoon. It was mostly overcast and cool, which suited me. Jason bay had nothing special about it, it was just a way to break up the journey to Tioman, however it did provide us with another attack from the shore, this time smaller flying ants, they looked like little flies. They managed to fill the cabin while we had dinner. I had anchored a long way off shore in the hope nothing would get to us. By this morning, the ones I hadn’t killed had left of their own accord. I’m hopeful tonight will be bug free, but you do have to accept in this climate, when so close to jungle lined coast, there are going to be lots of living things wanting to join you.

So today we had a little Sunday morning lie in before heading North towards Tioman, we had a few options but settled on a protected area on the southern coast of Pulau Tinggi, The wind had been from the North yesterday and overnight, so I figured we would be safe there from any swell that might have built.
We had only just motored out of Jason Bay, past a dangerous reef, when the wind piped up from the SSE, which was great for us, it put the wind behind us, even though there was only about 10 knots, it pushed us along between 4 and 5 knots towards our goal. The engine went off and we sailed all the way to Tinggi. however the steady southerly built and by the time we reached Tinggi, the waves were getting big, we cut around inside the reef, Kathy Tried to drive us through the reef, and I had to point out that wouldn’t work, and a sharp left was made. Once behind the reef it was calmer but not that calm, especially if the wind increased, so we went for my fallback plan, which was a little cove on the north side of the island. Just 40 minutes motor away. Just as we decided that, a squall blew in causing a lot of wind, big waves and poor visibility,
We got soaked, and I just managed to get the electronics (iThings) hidden away before they got wrecked.

There are a lot of little islands, sixty or so, within 30 miles of Tioman Island, I think they are volcanic, but they all make up a national park, the waters are very clear here, there are lots of coral areas, protected by the state, and great snorkeling. So you have to be careful and not anchor on the reefs. I had the GPS co-ordinates of a sandy spot just on the north, were we were heading to, we arrived in this massive downpour, and found the area a bit deep, so we moved just a little further along and quickly dropped the hook in 7 meters of water. The chart had this as being out from the coral also. It didn’t land in sand, and as we reversed on it, I could feel the anchor bouncing by keeping a foot on the chain as we backed up. Not good I thought and hoped we would be onto sand any moment, pretty quickly the anchor seemed to dig in and we were set. However back in the cabin sheltering from the heavy rain, we could hear and feel vibration from the chain. I went up on deck, grabbed my snorkel and dived to look at the chain. What I saw shocked me, we were in fact over a lot of coral, not much sand in sight, and the anchor chain was wrapped around a few coral heads, whilst beautiful tropical fish swam all around.  I made a mental note of the convoluted path our chain took through the coral and went back up to the boat to try and get us out, without doing any more damage. It took a while of gently pulling on the chain and nudging the boat beyond some of the heads but we did it. I’m going to be a lot more careful from now on. I then went back to the original co-ordinates for the sandy bit and went offshore from there by about 50 metres until we were in 12 metres of water. I dived, and couldn’t see any coral, just a sandy bottom, so we dropped the hook, no vibrations this time, and it set well.

Tomorrow I want to dinghy over to some of the reefs here and have a proper snorkel.

All in all everything is going well, the Cutless bearing seems to be fine, I suspect the engine alignment might be improved on, as there is a little bit too much vibration when I run the engine flat out at 3000RPM, which is not something I would normally ever do anyway.

Tomorrow we will probably head to Tioman where we will explore the island and neighbouring area for a week or so.

Paul Collister

 

 

We have launched and we’re on our way to Pulau Tioman, an island on the Eastern side of the main Malaysian Peninsula, the location for the filming of South Pacific, even though it’s in the North Pacific.

So due to the holiday, and nothing happening on the boat, we popped into Johor Bahru town, I was keen to do a bit of cultural stuff, some Sultan, back in the day, built a lot of amazing buildings and we were keen to explore the main museum, which was meant to be amazing, but finding it was difficult, even the taxi drivers didn’t know where it was, asking them for the cultural sights would elicit the usual ‘No have any‘ response we get for anything slightly out of the normal. eventually we found it , but it was closed. we checked out the ‘happening’ down town duty free zone where all the clubs where, but it was mostly closed, the duty free zone was somewhat disappointing, so we headed over back to a local shopping mall. I left Kathy there to browse, while I jumped into an Uber and headed back to Puteri Harbour, to collect my parcel, the missing blade for the wind generator. then back to the boat.
Thursday arrived and I fitted the blade to the turbine, not very well as it turned out. The guys arrived earlier to fit the new cutless bearing and the engineer amongst them understood exactly what I meant about the stripped inside of the allen screw, I could tell by the groan and look of despair on his face. However after 40 minutes, he had drilled out the old screw, without damaging the thread at all.

 

He instructed his assistant to cut out the old bearing with a hacksaw blade, a tedious job, it took me all day last time I tried this, but he had it done in 30 minutes, and the old cutless removed. The damage was clear, after I had pulled out the shredded rubber on haulout, there was about an inch of rubber missing, that still left 3 1/2 inches remaining, in good nick too, but I think it best to replace it, even if it might have continued working for a long time, I wouldn’t feel confident.

It all went back together fine, however they seemed to have some problems getting the shaft to fit into the collar on the coupling, but nothing had changed, so I think there might be a slight alignment problem. By mid afternoon they had completed everything, and I did a few jobs, mostly cleaning up and we were ready for a Friday morning launch.
The yard informed me I had to pay cash, so an ATM was called for, we decided to get an Uber into a big mall so we could stock up a little more. This was an amazing Mall, I don’t normally think much of Malls, but they had everything here, and I especially like one huge section called the Japanese village, full of Japanese shops, obviously I suppose, but all done very well.

I was up at 6:30 Friday, The sunrise was lovely, the light much nicer than the camera’s false blue haze. I managed to shoot a few good pics, at this time it was low water, on a spring tide, so very low, and there was only a few inches of water on the path we would have to take out. So it was good to be able to work out our exit route.

We launched at 12, Kathy and I stayed on board as the travel lift took us to the launch bay, I didn’t want to, in Europe it wouldn’t be allowed, H&S, but we had no choice they just took the steps away and started lifting the boat! As we lowered into the water, there were several disturbing jerks, where the wire supporting the front of the boat snagged then jumped, I reassured Kathy that we were over the water now so it would just make a big splash if the wire snapped, a very big splash I expect.
I rigged up a block and tackle to the topping lift, and was able to pull the mast back far enough to get the backstay onto it’s turnbuckle. I was worried I might have to slacken the Furlers, which is a major job, but it all went very smoothly, topped off the fuel from a drum raised up on a fork lift truck, (Malay style Fuel Stop) and we headed out. Now we are at anchor 4 hours away, close to the SE of Singapore. Tomorrow we head off towards Tioman, the wind has been consistent and good from the SW for a few days now, I wonder if this is the SW monsoon settling in now, I hope so, as it means good sailing tomorrow. We will find an anchorage half way to Tioman off the coast of Malaysia tomorrow, and maybe another before we arrive.
It’s good to be afloat again. At the moment, our delay has made me think it’s too late to make Japan and then America, so it’s looking much more likely we will do that next year, when we are better prepared. So I’m really looking forward to just chilling in Tioman.

Some pics from this morning before work started

Paul Collister

We are hauled, and awaiting repair.

Not long after we anchored the sun set and the fishnets we anchored off moved a lot closer. I have noticed this before, at night hazards always seem to move closer, not sure if this is an optical or psychological effect, either way, it’s a pain, we moved very close to the nets, and I made a good note of where we are by taking transits around the area, that basically means lining up the edges of the net with something on the land, and making sure they stay lined up. Of course, a few hours later the tide turned, we swung and ended up even closer to the nets, which was odd as I thought we should have gone further away. I told Kathy we might need to re anchor, but I sat on the bowsprit for 20 minutes, enjoying the fading light and watching my transits, only to decide we were safe. After a lovely pasta & pesto dinner, I went to sleep in the cockpit, waking every hour or so to check my transits, until at 3am, when the tide swung us again, back to roughly were we started, then I slept through to sunrise.

Looking over to the yard, I could just make out the route in, but it looked shallow, sticks in the mud showed the way and later I watched a motor boat make its way in which gave me a boost.

The nets looked amazing in the morning sun, they are all different coloured 5 gallon plastic containers, large jerry can size.

These drums above on the right are spares I think, they were about 40ft to our stern. This is what you can see from space, credit to google earth.

So just 30 minutes before high water we headed in, Kathy called out the depth. We started with a metre more than when we went aground, so I was optimistic, however we soon hit 2 metres, but were still going, we should be aground at 2 metres, but I added a little into the calibration of the meter to help, but when we reached 1.8 I was wondering how we were still going forward, whatever was under us must have been very soft, so I upped the revs, and we raced in, I figured if I was going aground I wanted to plough through, into the deeper water in the boatyard. It quickly went back to 2 metres and stayed around that for the short trip to tie up alongside in front of the travel lift.

Once tied up, the first of several disappointments arrived, I was told the travel lift is to small to take us in the normal way, so I had to drop the backstay, remove the wind generator and reverse into the travel lift. I didn’t want to do the backstay as it’s going to be difficult to get it back together without loosening the forestays, which means taking the headsails off and removing the furling drum.  I will have to think of a cunning plan, probably involving rope and pulleys.

I managed to keep the wind generator on, the problem would come later once we were on land, then the travel lift wouldn’t be able to escape without decapitating the turbine, and that’s normally my job, using a fishing rod or forehead. To turn the boat around, a man was dispatched into the water to push it around, A dinghy might have been better, but who am I to judge.

The next blow was that rather than change the bearing and launch in the morning, I was told that they couldn’t start today as planned, as they had to do another boat in an emergency, and that tomorrow is national holiday, but they could start on Thursday. So the earliest we can launch will be Friday, I expect it will end up being Saturday. The tides are good until next Monday, after that we can’t get our for another week or more.

I was able to see that some more rubber had worked it’s way out of the cutless bearing, you can see a strip of it here, I have pulled it out to see better, but it didn’t take any effort, so I’m assuming it’s a bit of a mess inside the bearing.
I removed the blades and vane off the turbine so they can get the travel lift away, then I set about doing the job myself, I thought perhaps I could get the prop off, and pull the prop shaft, making it easier for them, I’m still going to be paying them, whoever does the work, but at least this way I might get away earlier. The prop came off no problem, but the PSS dripless shaft seal won’t come off. This is a device that stops the water getting into the boat through the tube that the prop shaft goes out of the boat through. It seems that the LBM engineer, who was the last one near it, had stripped one of the 2 allen grub screws that holds it in place. This is a tiny grub screw made of 316 stainless steel, inside a block of 316 stainless steel, in the bottom of the boat in a most inaccessible place.I’m at the point of drilling it out, but that might damage the seal, and I might end up having to wait a few weeks to get a replacement shipped in, so I’m going to wait until the yard’s engineer turns up, and get him to sort it. Good engineers know how to sort these things. I once had a similar problem on the baba 30 which required me to cut the prop shaft in half to get the job done, I really don’t want to go down that road again.

I forgot to add this AIS chart yesterday, you can see us as the little boat with the white dot, down in the middle, working our way east and edging across the channel getting ready to hang a left up to the eastern buoy and back into Malaysian waters. You can see it’s busy, each triangle is a boat, mostly big tankers or container ships, doing between 5 and 20 knots.

As it’s a holiday tomorrow, Kathy and I will pop into Johor Bahru and check it out, it’s supposed to be a bit of a party town, so I better get my John Travolta suit out, just in case we go dancing 😉

Paul Collister

 

Now if that isn’t clickbait, I don’t know what is.

So we arrived safely, at the entrance to Dalac Marina, We have to wait for high tide in the morning to get in, we went ashore earlier, well the boat did, we stayed onboard. We were looking for somewhere to anchor outside the boatyard. It’s a bit scraggy here, lots of rubbish in the water, we are kind of out of the way, tucked behind the docks, and opposite a big Singapore port, but the charts don’t cover this stretch, other than to say it’s all mud. When we arrived, we went right past the spot we are supposed to anchor in. All along the coast here for a few miles are fish farms, not a type I’m familiar with, they seem to be laid out in an S shape but with scores of bends. See pics below.

We found a gap, about 100m wide between two sets of nets that leads to the boatyard. We approached slowly as we are only a couple of hours after low water. The prospect looked great, the chart plotter said we were in 1-2m of water, but the depth gauge said 14m. the depth dropped steadily and Kathy called out each 1/2 metre drop every 30 seconds or so. When we got to about 5 meters I put her into astern to stop her as that would be fine, however, we went from 5 to 3 to 2.5 to 2 and aground as quick as Kathy could read them off, It wasn’t a problem, and I managed to reverse back after a few thrusts with the engine, and we anchored in 8 metres. It’s all mud here, perhaps a bicycle or two, but we’ve taken on Thai Granite rocks and survived, so there Mr Mud!

As to the police bit, yes that was a touch embarrassing, to get from One side of the causeway that links Malaysia to Singapore you have to almost completely circumnavigate Singapore, it’s a bit like if they had built a causeway/low bridge from Gosport to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, boats would have to go all around the island to get from Portsmouth to Southampton. I realise that means nothing to many of our readers.
Anyway, the Singaporeans won’t let boats into there waters unless you are visiting and check in with an agent and all that entails, they have police patrolling the island in varying sizes of patrol boats from 30 fast launches, through 60 foot very fast motor boats, right up to Navy Destroyers and frigates. We got the middle size one. Add to this annoyance, there is a traffic separation zone all around the bottom of the island, which is a bit like a motorway, central reservation included, The separation zone ensures traffic heading west is in the lane near to Singapore, we were going East, so we have to be on the other side. This means crossing the separation lane, very much in the way someone on a pushbike might cross a busy motorway, very carefully. There is a little bit in the middle you can be safe in. The lane is about a mile wide. Once across, then we flow with the big ships steaming up from behind us for 30 odd miles, then do the frogger game imitation again and cross back to the other side. Now in most places I have sailed, small boats like me sneak along the outside of the separation zone, on either side, and nobody cares, but that puts me in Singapore’s waters, but I gave it a try. I got about 3 miles along when I accidentally strayed , just a tiny little bit into the traffic zone, it was quite safe because the big boats in the lane all go on the other edge as it’s more direct. I was only there for a couple of minutes before I noticed and quickly turned to head back to the inshore bit, but too late. Screaming towards me with spary gushing from either side of his bow was a Singapore police launch. They looked very much like they were going to escort us back to the nick, as one of them started organising ropes on the side the where they were approaching us. By now I was out of the lane, still no other traffic around so no harm done, but I was told in no uncertain terms, but in a very friendly manner that I could not do my journey in their waters and I must cross the separation zone to the Indonesian side to continue. I also got told off for having my AIS off, which surprised me as I was using it loads. I asked ever so nicely if I could motor through the anchorage ahead then cross the zone there, which would save me an hour, they agreed, but followed me all the way, and shadowed me across the separation zone.  I suppose it’s a bit like driving up the hard shoulder between a couple of junctions on a motorway, but being on the wrong side, and doing it in full view of the police.
I checked the AIS and found I had disabled the transmitter, yes that was right, I had assumed it defaulted to on after a power down, but no, I turned it back on, and a few minutes later the police launch screamed up to us again, just to tell us they had us on AIS and all was ok. Which was nice of them. Once across the zone, we were in Indonesian waters, and they don’t go there. But later we had to make a load more detours just to keep away from their coast. Seems a bit over the top to me.

 

The Johor Strait, which is were we spent all afternoon is full of shipyards and old ships, ferry ports and docks. Very busy really, but some parts had lovely beaches. I’m sure Kathy will have more in her post.

We left this morning at 6:50, just as the sun rose, and just a few hours before my replacement wind generator blade arrived. That’s a good game to play when cruising, “What’s my postal address”.
We arrived and dropped anchor just as the sun set at 7:10.

Paul Collister

Yes, our time lazing around in Puteri harbour marina is up and we head off to the boatyard tomorrow.  I’m hoping to leave at about 06:30 as it’s a good 10 hours+ and I’m planning to pick up some fuel on the way from a barge moored in a river. It’s going to be an interesting passage, we could save an hour or more if we pass south of two little islands, but I have been told we will be in trouble and chased away by the Singapore marine police, so we have to go to the north of them which adds a few miles. We will be motoring through one of the worlds busiest ports, looking at the chart it looks mad, millions of buoys, loads of no entry areas, and exclusion zones. and there will be scores of ships motoring through a hundred odd ships at anchor. It’s good Kathy will be here to help, she can steer while I stare at all the AIS targets on my MacBook, trying to work out which one is which, and is it heading our way. The worst of it should last for about 5 hours.
We will anchor outside the entrance to the yard tomorrow night and wait for the high tide in the morning before we can get in. That should be fun, we need to anchor in-between two fish farms. It’s a very rough looking yard, and we are living on the boat for one, maybe more nights, so out with the DEET (mossie spray), I don’t expect they have much in the way of toilets or showers, so it will be a relief to be back in the water later in the week.
I have been looking into the route to America from here and we will probably not go this year. Lots of reasons, but mainly it’s unlikely we will do this passage again, so I want to do it justice. To get to Japan missing the cyclones, we would have to race there, missing Taiwan, Japan would be rushed, Theres a port in Russia, north of Japan, that I hear is well worth a visit and I have heard Alaska is an amazing place, worth a year or two of cruising. Coming down from Alaska, I would love to spend a lot of time exploring the inner passage around Vancouver Island. All of these places would get crammed into a few weeks, plus the fact that we want to be home for all of September makes me think It’s just too much of a rush.
So I have put our next port of call as Tioman, a beautiful Island about 150 miles north of us, on the eastern side of Malaysia, as our next port of call.
We will spend about 5 days slowly making our way there, it would have been on our route to Japan, so if I revert back to the Japan plan, we don’t lose anything, but I expect by the time we have had a few days there we will have worked out some more destinations. We have a lot of options, which is nice, Staying in the gulf of Thailand is possibly and should provide good sailing during the SW Monsoon season, we can visit Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Or we can hop over to Eastern Malaysia on the island of Borneo, popping into The Kingdom of Bruni, or going to the rain forest music festival in Sarawak. We could head don to Indonesia and travel along those islands heading towards Austrailia. We shall have to see.

Our friends cat came to say goodbye yesterday, they have headed off to Tioman as part of the ‘Sailing east’ Malaysian rally, I expect we will bump into them later.
A lot of people use these air berths for their power boats, I think it’s because the warm waters cause growth under the boat to be accelerated. but they look strange. A small pump fills the big tanks with air to raise the berth, or the tanks are filed with water to lower it.

Here the boat has been driven into a submerged berth that has then been partly inflated

It looks like they have invented some kind of boat launcher

Fully inflated.

Paul Collister.

You can probably tell from the title, this post isn’t going to be a bundle of laughs, but I just managed to upload these pics, my iPhone wouldn’t hand them over yesterday until I rebooted my mac, an iPhotos problem I expect.

If you look closely you can see the one above has some rubber on the edge, and is noticeably thinner at that point. The other end is fine, so I suspect there was a manufacturing problem at some point with this one. I’m going to use the other one and keep this one as a spare.

It does make me wonder about the provenance of this, it’s marked as being made by MORSE in the USA, and has a morse part number on it, but the quality and finish seem a bit rough and ready compared with the countrose one I bought in the UK.
So could this be a ‘knock off’ cheap Asian counterfeit, or possibly as is more and more common, Morse now subcontract the production of their bearings to an Asian company. I would think it’s come from the same source as the one it is replacing, also bought and fitted in Malaysia a year ago, so I’m no worse off. I will have a look at them when we reach the shores of North America and ‘compare and contrast’

Other techie news, I bought a new PSU for the macbook air and that’s solved my charging problems, Apple now have another £60 to hide away somewhere offshore 😉 but I’m made up, what with a brand new replacement iPhone that charges quickly and takes brilliant pics, I’m feeling properly tooled up (IT wise) again. However WhatsApp is weird with new phones, and deleted all my history, which is a pain.

We have just had a load of fighter jets fly over us, the Singapore military have a base directly over the Johor strait from us, less than a mile, and every few days they make their presence felt with an air display, or a display of firepower.

Paul Collister

We are just back from a couple of days in Singapore. I had originally wanted to take the boat there, but it turns out to be very expensive to keep a boat there, it’s also difficult from a paperwork point of view, you have to go to a certain place in the straits, and anchor and wait for a customs/immigration guy to visit and check your papers, then you can proceed to a marina, where you have to appoint an agent to make your application to stay and clear you in. You need an agent to clear you out as well.
However, you don’t need to go through all the border crossing by road hassle in order to do a bit of shopping. We had to leave Malaysia on Tuesday morning, and check in and get a visa for Singapore, then do the same on the reverse. I wonder if the UK will have to go through this rigmarole when we brexit, it’s certainly looking bad, I guess it’s ok if like a lot of people in the UK who don’t travel much, but I would hate it. On the way over we used busses, you first get in a queue to leave MY you get a bus over the bridge, a short ride, get off the bus, get in a queue to enter SG, get in a queue to get a bus to the Metro. It took us about an hour for that bit, sometimes it can take 3 hours if it’s a public holiday or rush hour. We took a taxi back, that was much quicker as they stamp your passport at the toll booth and you stay in the car. The Metro in SG is brilliant, new, clean, quiet, frequent, very cheap, for £7 we got a card that covers all busses and metro for 2 days. 

I headed off to the chandlers to pick up the bearings I had ordered, passing this temple above, which like the chandlers, is in Little India. Sadly despite the fact I had a text msg from the chandler (aqua) saying he had 2 in stock and would be happy to sell them to me on Tuesday, he seemed to know nothing about it and didn’t have any! He said he could get them for tomorrow but I had to pay in full up front. I explained that I wouldn’t, as he had proved to be useless so far, and I wouldn’t risk it, he said they were in his warehouse and he would bring them early, but must be paid first. I pointed out there was little chance of me not turning up, and should I be struck by lightning, he could just take them back to the warehouse. I think that I might have said the wrong thing, because he then got upset and deplored me not to talk bout being struck by lightning, that it wont happen, and I mustn’t say that, he was genuinely concerned for me, which was nice. There’s a lot of superstition out here. Anyway, I found another chandler, MarineTech, just around the corner, that had a nice lady running the show and a deal was done for her to get the bearings, for a much better price for the morning. I also spent a load more there too, stocked up on varnish now. She had a liferaft for just £750, which is about what I am thinking of paying in postage to get a decent one shipped here. This one is made in China, I explained to her, in my most diplomatic way, what with her being Chinese ethnicity, that I had heard some unfavourable comments about Chinese liferafts, she had heard them too, but was keen to point out that she had sold loads, and had no complaints. But isn’t that the way with liferafts? I have a picture below, I think attention to detail is important in this area, so not checking the spelling of fiferatws is disappointing to say the least. 

Disappointed as I was to end up on top of a rock  a few weeks back, that’s nothing to how the skipper of the ship below must have felt we he hit these three skyscrapers.

Below is a very sacred buddhist temple, a fragment of the Buddha’s tooth is here, we didn’t see it, and frankly, I don’t remember teeth being that big a deal in any of the buddhist teachings I read, but all the same, I thought the temple very beautiful and I’m very pleased to have been able to visit.

In many ways, the towns we have visited have architectural similarities, brought on by necessity, the shop houses , where the shop is on the ground floor and the living quarters above, make sense for a small business, the covered raised walkways are perfect for a place where it can chuck it down at any time, and the roads can turn to rivers, and they also provide a great shade from the hot sun the rest of the time. On top of that, the shops can conduct their business outdoors where it is cooler.

So Tuesday night, and we had a lovely walk around town, it’s a very pretty place downtown by the river at night. Kathy has pictures, I can’t find mine. It’s like a mini manhattan, but all the high rise are clumped together, making it feel quite open.

Wednesday morning, I picked up the bearings, and bought lots of hose/pipe and stuff, I found a shop selling a TDS meter, but it turns out I have no chance of buying a membrane for the watermaker here. They have to be shipped from the USA. but I have everything except the membrane, and I have membrane cleaner, so I’m going to give it a go. I’m hoping I should be able to make water, but at a reduced rate. The TDS meter measures the salinity, and the purity of the water, so that will be useful.

Now I went to an area called Sim Lim, where there is Sim Lim Sq and Sim Lim Tower. I may write a separate entry on this, or even start a new blog devoted to them, but I was amazed, It was lie going back in time, floor after floor after floor of myriads of shops within a maze of corridors, and every shop selling stuff that cannot be bought in shops in England anymore, Im taking everything from resistors, capacitors, switches, cables, all the Maplin/Radioshack type of things but add on top of that, everything you need to build a recording studio, or a radio telescope, or a 3d printer or . . . the list goes on, I left Kathy in a cafe where she was falling asleep with Jetlag, and I wandered for a good hour. Here’s a shop that sold connecters 

Some speakers or cones

Reluctantly I had to leave, but Kathy was pleased, especially as the next port of call was to be Raffles, for a famous Singapore sling. Kathy seemed to like it there, I suspect she might mention it in her blog.

And here is the said Singapore Sling in the raffles bar /  snooker room.

Lazy day tomorrow as we watch the marina empty of the yachts, they are all heading off on a rally “Sail Malaysia, Passage East”, we might end up following and meeting them on our way north.

Paul Collister.

Generally I’m quite a positive person or so I like to think, but a run of annoying problems had me despairing last week, the cutless bearing, the watermaker motor / gearbox, all things I felt were out of my control and required me to bring the experts in. Normally I see most things as a challenge I can overcome,  normally I would take the view, as made famous in “The boys from the black stuff” with the phrase  ‘Gizz a job, I can do that’. For example, if I was a long way offshore, and I had a mad headache problem requiring surgery, I’d be up for a go. I mean how difficult can it be, I know doctors spend five years + studying, but I gather a lot of that time is spent doing practical jokes on each other, and anyway I bet there’s a whole stack of videos / tutorials on brain surgery on youtube these days. So Friday dawned and it was with this renewed attitude I went back to the watermaker. I’m saying nothing, but check out the video below!

It doesn’t actually make water yet, a trivial point, but it does pump sea water around the system at 800PSI (ish) and brine / sea water is returning from the membrane.
I was able to tease the old brushes out of the motor, and clean it all up quite well, I think the pump does need to be replaced at some point, but I left the motor running for an hour and it didn’t get hot or make any funny noises so I think it has some life in it yet. The main problem now is, 1) the pump needs the seals replacing, I have 2 seal replacement kits on board. 2) the Membrane needs replacing, I can’t be sure, but everything I have read says it has to be stuffed, especially as 3) some of the pipes in the system have started to dissolve and produce an oily black substance from their inner rubber lining, so all the piping has to be changed. I’m hoping to pick up the bits I need on Tuesday when we go into Singapore.

Last Thursday I took a cab over to the boatyard, it’s 40 minutes by road, about 14nm away, but I will have to take the boat all the way around Singapore because of the causeway being in the way. Thats more like a 10 hour trip for me. What’s worse is that the entrance to the boatyard is very shallow, and I have to wait for spring tides to get in, which is another 10 days away, this means that by the time we launch, we will be much further into the cyclone (aka hurricane) season here and the trip north will have more chance of bad weather. Fortunately cyclones are big business here, they are regular each year and do lots of damage so there is a lot of support available. Forecasting is very good, protected harbours are available to jump into, so most of the time it’s not a big deal. Of course there’s always the chance of an unpredictable storm, and a boat problem combining to bring grief, but lets not look on the gloomy side. I’m picking up a new bearing in Singapore on Tuesday, and a spare, incase I should take up fishing again 🙁 It’s not going to cost that much to haul, and do the job, there’s even a chance It might be something we can do in the slings, but unlikely.

Of course the main event of the week/month, if we put the watermaker to one side, was the return of Kathy. I met her in KL yesterday and we flew back, after a much delayed flight, to the boat. It’s great to have Kathy back, and she brought lots of goodies as well. Sadly the missing blade for the wind generator, which the astute of you will have spotted, was 20cm short, can’t see that working. but I have lots of bits to fit to the boat now to make it just that little bit better, a lot of USB charging sockets is one of these additions! I also have a lovely new iPhone, so lots of pictures now. Thanks to Yaz and Chris for sorting that out, it’s only when you need a replacement phone and you live in another country that you see how mad things can be, the old phone couldn’t be posted back, required by the insurers, no carriers will take phones as air cargo at this end. Then the phone comes unlocked, but locks itself to a network, which then has to be unlocked. Then you need a human to transport it back as carry on. What a lot of bother, I’m definitely not jumping into the marina again with it in my pocket.
I expect it won’t be long before Kathy posts her thoughts on Puteri Harbour, she likes it more than me.
I’m spending tomorrow working on the SSB radio, I have just learnt how to use the tuning, and how the bands work, I need to get the wefax and pactor working now. I also need to get the satphones out and fired up before I go into Singapore.

Paul Collister

I’m doing a little bit of consultancy for the windfarm at the moment, so didn’t get started on the boat till lunchtime. But I managed to extract the watermaker from the bilge area where it lives, As predicted it was difficult, it was bolted to a piece of wood, with the nuts underneath. This wood was then fixed to the bilge with more bolts, or screws, or glue. I couldn’t tell, because the deck-wash and water pumps were fitted over the fixings, these pumps were plumbed in rather rigidly making the whole affair rather complicated. Fortunately I found a ring spanner I could get underneath the wood to fit on the nut, unfortunately I only caught 3 out of 4 nuts as they came off, but I was happy enough to have kept the spanner from going under the fuel tanks in the bilge.

So I took the Drive unit, or motor as I would call it apart. I love taking things apart, and this was quite easy, especially with the manufacturers instructions handy.It became apparent quite quickly where the problem was, water must have been getting to the outside of the motor end cap, and had found a way into the motor.

You can see a lot of white powder, this looks like aluminium oxide to me, or an oxide of whatever the motor casing is made of. The cap / end cover from the motor has a bit missing, this is what became the white powder, or oxide (rust). the presence of water has caused some other rust, not a lot, but the brushes that carry the power to the coils were/are seized in their carriers and don’t make contact with the armature, or is it a commutator?

I could fix this up, I need to get new carbon brushes, probably not that hard here if you know where to go. I could use some epoxy resin to fix the end cap.  I moved my attention to the gearbox at the end of the motor, where the direction of rotation is turned into a piston like action and found a crack in the casing. I don’t think it matters actually, but I couldn’t get the piston to budge, so either it’s seized in the gearbox, or the gearing is so high I wouldn’t be able to anyway.
By now I’m wondering what’s actually ok, the membrane housing should be ok, presumably the high pressure hoses will be ok, Im replacing all the fresh water hoses anyway, but they’re pennies. The high pressure pump looks ok, but until I can run it I won’t know if its ok. Presumably it’s feeling its age too.
I’m thinking I might not be putting this back together again. I packed all the bits up, wrapped them up, and they are in a locker now. I sent off a few emails, to the manufacturer and to a spares stockist to get prices for a new motor/gearbox. I will wait and see what happens. A similar brand new watermaker is about $6500 USD. I think it can wait until we reach the states, our longest passage will be about 5 weeks and we can do that on our tanks without any problem, might need to get one of those deck solar shower jobs and fill with rainwater. I think the watermaker will come into it’s own when we cross the pacific on the way back, where we will go for months at anchor, and this saves us lugging jerry cans of water back and forth in the dinghy.
I’m coming to the opinion that very few things on a boat get to enjoy an 11th birthday, ten years seems about the most you can expect from electrical or fancy mechanical kit. My Macbook air is playing up now, which is devastating, but I can see corrosion inside the USB and charging connectors. I do need an excuse to buy the latest and greatest macbook, but not if it’s going to fail within a year too.

I spoke to the local boatyard today and arranged to visit in the morning to see what it’s like and get some commitment on the cost of the cutless bearing job and when it can be done.

Kathy hits the sky tomorrow, looking forward to her arrival, you won’t believe how high the dirty dishes are stacked 😉

Paul Collister

 

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