Author: paulcollister

Continue reading “On the hard”

Yes I was talking with chappy earlier at the fuel dock who spoke Malay and he enquired about the name, he was an Iggy Pop fan and liked the name, I think? Anyway, I pointed out that it often caused amusement with the Malaysians when I had to give them the name, and he explained that it would, given sister means gay here. The Malaysian government have banned gays, and officially these aren’t any, except, it seems, for my boat,”Gay Midnight” and she is quite brazen about it !!

I was up early and got the boat ready for the trip, fuelled up and left at ten, after giving some boat handling lessons to a lovely couple from Estonia who are just starting their sailing adventures, having bought their first boat here, from a guy I became friendly with when Tim was over last year, and now they want to head off into the blue yonder, just once he has worked out how to leave the dock.

The wind was strongish from the east, 10 knots at Langkawi, building to 20 by the time I arrived near Penang. It was a great sail down, with thunderstorms threatening all the time and plenty of things to dodge. I will write more tomorrow, as right now I’m at anchor in a rather uncomfortable spot just north of Penang. I couldn’t get to the shelter of the main island before dark, so I pushed on to the last island before Penang, much further than I had hoped, but then I was making between 6 and 7.5 knots most of the time, under full sail.  All of the islands en route are long thin affairs and generally lie North/South so great if the wind is from the east or west, but by the time I got here the wind had changed to the NNW, So I sheltered on the SSE corner of the island,  not much shelter as the waves, which had risen to 1.5m were getting round the whole island and the wind, a steady 20knots was everywhere. Anyway I dropped the anchor and it’s holding very well, I just have to pretend I’m crossing the Atlantic and it’s a bit choppy an the boat is bouncing around a lot, in order to get some sleep. As I write this the wind has dropped to 15 knots and the sea calmed a little, so that’s good.

Things I need to put in tomorrows blog, once I work out how to get the pictures off my iPad are, birds on the sheets, Caught a fish, but it got away, and nearly took me with it, Almost drove through the biggest fishing net I have ever seen, self steering hassles, and fish sticks up close.

 

Paul Collister

Tomorrow morning I’m going to slip my mooring here in Langkawi and head south. In theory this should be a simple operation. The plan is to get some fuel at the dock here, then I can do a 3-4 hour trip to an island called Pulau Paya (2 on the map), if all is going well I might continue onto another island 3-4 hours ahead called Pulau Songsong (3), I have stopped here before a few times doing the sail from Penang (4/5) to Langkawi. It all depends how quickly I can get away, the fuel dock doesn’t open till 9am.
The plan so far is to get as far as Pangkor Island (8/9), which is not far from Kuala Lumpur by Friday. There I can haul out the boat and check how much damage I did on the rock. I  can also see if the osmosis has re-appeared and I may try to adjust the Max-Prop propellor to see if I can’t get some better efficiency from it.Since Kathy went home I have been busy doing chores on the boat. I have fitted the new Throttle and gear cables, Changed the oil and filter, cleaned out the raw water filter and changed both the fuel filters. On my last Volvo engine on the baba 30, I only had to look at the fuel system to induce an air leak into the system. These were always annoying, often they would hide while the revs where high, but as soon as I throttled back entering the marina the engine would stop and not want to start, good game. So after changing these filters I bled the system and it has started perfectly, high revs, low revs, it works great. I haven’t tested the new cables away from the dock, but they seem fine now. What could possibly go wrong 😉

What could go wrong is the weather!Above is typical of the weather here now. It’s forecast for thunderstorms for the next 7 days. A met office warning to shipping for the Malacca straits for today warned small ships to stay home, the forecast said in areas of multiple thunderstorms, waves could reach 12ft high with 30 knt winds. However that was for today, no warnings for tomorrow. I have a variety of sources for weather information, The national weather services for maritime service, the equivalent of the uk shipping forecast is a main one. I make a lot of use of grib files. These are weather data files you download over the net. They are a very compact form of data, so ideal for loading over HF radios, or expensive satellite links. With a viewer on your PC you can see the data as wind and wave patterns as shown belowThis covers the area I will be in tomorrow. It is animated on our iPad, showing the changes every hour over a 96 hour period. Here is the legend/key expanded

So the worst weather tomorrow will be at 17:00 and you can see inshore the wind is about 5 knots, calm, and further offshore, at the extent of where I might be, the wind increases to 15 knots, very healthy for sailing, plus it’s from behind me, so that’s even better. Also the waves go from <1m inshore to 2 mtrs offshore, This might make it a bit more lively, but as they are in the same direction as the wind, and behind me, I’m not too concerned. The only problem is that at some point there will be a strong current flowing north, on the ebb tide, this will slow my progress down and make it less fun, but at the same time, well actually 6 hours later or earlier, the tide will be pushing me along adding a couple of knots to my speed. I think High tide is about 5pm, so the southbound current will be strongest between 3 and 6 pm, roughly. and the current against me between 9-12pm.

I bought a stack of squid from the street market last night, and had them for dinner just now, I’m very pleased at how quick I can prepare them, ripping the body out, removing the plastic spine thing, and skinning them, all in seconds now. Just need to work out how to catch them myself. I don’t eat the tentacles, seems like to much effort, which I know some will think a crime.
I read an article today about how Trump was turning off GPS Accuracy for non military use, and would allow Americans and certain others to buy a license to use it. This would not be great news for sailors, even worse for satnav users, I was concerned. He was quoted as saying it was a great way to raise money for ‘the wall’, he might even make so much money from it he would build a second wall on the Canadian border. At that point I checked the date on the article to see it was the 1st April, I’m just hoping it was a hoax. It did make me think though, just how dependent we are on GPS these days. However I think the European system should be online soon, oh, just realised, as a Brit, we might not be allowed to use it, damm 😉 !!

Paul Collister

Kathy is back in Liverpool now and I’m having to endure this relentless heat on my own. Actually, I decided to go crazy now she has left and yesterday I headed off into town for some fun. First stop was the department store where I bought an omelette pan, guess what I’m having for dinner tonight, and a food processor. Next I bought a giant bag of kit-kat chocolate bars, it’s going to be wild back on the boat tonight, I have already ground some coffee beans up that I’ve had since Tim was here and made a very strong cup of coffee. I might even make up a smoothie with all the fruit that’s hanging around (literally) on the boat.

Seriously I have made a list of the chores and tasks to work on. They are:

1. Work out where our next stop is, somewhere between Africa and America (not the Atlantic side) is as close as I have it now.
2. Sort out the head waste system, somehow the holding tank is filling up, yet it’s not connected!
3. Get the engine looked at, it’s like I used to be, smoking and drinking too much
4. Get a new canopy made, the current ones won’t last much longer
5. Get the boat hauled out, the hull checked for damage after the grounding, and some new antifoul
6. Get the water-maker into service
7. Source some new solar panels, these computers/phones use more power than I thought
8. Buy a liferaft
9. Wash the hull and polish, this could wait till the haulout
10. Fit the WiFi aerial.

There’s quite a few other minor jobs as well, but these are my main tasks I need to complete in the next week or two, certainly before Kathy gets back.

I have uploaded these two videos to accompany Kathy’s blog about the river trip in Tarutao, It doesn’t look as good as it was, honest. I’m still trying to learn what works and what doesn’t, probably should have taken a video making course before I started this trip. Must also remember to keep the lens clean, sorry 🙁

Going in

Heading home

Paul Collister

We are back in the yacht club, it’s not like a real yacht club that we have back home, this is a marina, and now it’s grown to quite a big commercial operation. The office hangs off the end of a large development of apartments/hotel rooms, trendy designer shops and the usual array of franchised food and drink outlets. However, having said that you can see from the header picture I just uploaded, you get some cracking sunsets from Charlie’s bar. The complex is a short walk from a decent shopping mall, and a nice walk a little further into town, but not for the faint hearted when the suns out. I’m ok being an Englishman (mad dogs and all that).
We have had a week here, and haven’t done a lot really, the gang of grey ships we passed through on the way into the harbour were part of a huge military showcase here for the International Maritime and Air Festival, I think that’s the front for what is more honestly known as an arms fair. But we have had fighter jets flying overhead all week, some of them are very noisy. It coincides with school and public holidays, so the whole island has been rammed.
I was very pleased to find my favourite hardware store here stocked the cable I needed for the broken gear stick, so I picked up two, as the throttle cable is the same age, and presumably on its way out. It took the best part of two days to change the cable, as the steering had to come off, the bracket on the engine was seized, on and I had to saw off the connecting rod and fabricate a new one. I took the opportunity, while I was deep in the bowels of the boat to do a few other jobs, like cleaning the raw water filter, and generally cleaning the hull inside. I also managed to identify a couple of jobs to add to the list, like replacing one of the water hoses, that seemed a bit crunchy when squeezed.
I have put a few pictures of the binnacle, which is the thing that has all the engine and steering controls on it, mostly so I can remember how it all works in the future 😉

The new cables waiting to be connected

The gear works well, but I have a problem with tension on the throttle, I have a practical solution, involving a clamp, but it’s abhorrent to me as an engineer, so I’m musing on a better solution, I will probably post to the baba owners group for their wisdom on the matter. Basically a big spring at the engine end is always pushing the throttle back to idle, much like the spring on a car’s accelerator peddle, but unlike a car, you don’t keep your foot on the throttle, you need cruise control, the clamp I took off, basically crushes the cable casing onto the wire inside, that can’t be right.
Still, I have a strong elastic band that works amazingly well for now 🙂

The authorities here threw a maritime parade for the holidaymakers this week, about a dozen big cats, motor boats and old schooners were dressed up with lights and TV screens and paraded around the harbour/bay for a couple of hours, they seemed popular, I can understand that as the Malaysians seem to love their bright LED lights, and these boats were so decorated, that to me they looked like garish fruit machine/one armed bandits, on steroids. One catamaran had the whole side covered in a wall of flat screen tvs displaying flashing lights, 80 style pop video effects and adverts. 

The fireworks at the end were nice, above the giant plastic eagleFinally I managed to upload one of my videos, it’s me and kathy swmming around the boat in Ko Phi Phi. The boat is in about 8 metres of water, so clear.
Let me know if it doesn’t work.

We are hiring a car tomorrow, it’s Kathy’s last day here, so we are going to take a ride to the top of the big hill here in the gondola ‘sky ride’ and also stock up on a few bits and pieces. We will also check out the food festival in Chenang.

Paul Collister

 

 

For Yasmin

Hope that’s all cleared up now Yaz

 

We checked into the Harbour Master, Immigration and Customs this morning, then we upped anchor and went to get fuel, however they didn’t have any. This was the main reason I went to Telaga yesterday, Oh well, we left at 12:00 and motored straight to Kuah, passed through a very large convoy of grey ships and their support vessels on the way, I wondered what the protocol was and if I would be asked to change course, but they didn’t care. Last night 4 fighter jets flew over us, in extremley close formation, very impressive. Kathy said ‘What’s Trump done now?’ which was kind of funny, and kind of worrying too. We managed to sail for the last hour went the wind changed from ahead to astern.
Now we are tied up in the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club. It’s nice to on a pontoon, plugged in to mains again. I can catch up on some of the jobs here. Mainly fixing the gear shift cable. we have good wifi here so hopefully I can upload some of the videos we took over our time in Thailand.

Paul Collister

So I’m writing this as we arrive in Malaysian waters, I don’t have a signal on my phone yet, so I don’t know if that’s because my PAYG contract has expired, or if I’m still too far away from land.

It’s been an interesting few days. We have spent the last 5 days cruising around the Butang islands. On Thursday morning we anchored off a lovely little island, maybe only a few hundred metres long, but surrounded by a stunning coral reef with lots of fish to look at. I have a lot of video waiting to be edited .

We didn’t actually anchor, the National park service here provides buoys, some more reliable than others, and we picked the first of the two there and spent the night swinging on that. The only real problem we had was the swell from the south built up overnight, there must have been some anomaly in the weather down in the Malacca straights that sent the swell our way, and by breakfast on Friday morning 8AM, it was so bad we had to hold on to things while brewing the coffee. I decided to head around the side of the island to pickup the other mooring buoy, protected from the swell. I checked on the chart, and we were well clear of the rocks/coral and should have 6 metres of water below us. Off we went, maybe doing 3-4 knots, and after just a few minutes CRUNCH, it was a very shocking moment, the whole boat stopped dead in its tracks, there was no doubt, we had hit a rock.

To put this event into context, it’s one of the worst things that can happen to a yacht. The result, depending on many factors, can range from, no damage, just minor scratching, to complete loss of the boat and loss of life. So that noise we heard, sent shivers down my spine. Fortunately it was clear we were in no personal danger, worst case, we could swim to the shore in lovely calm(ish) waters easily. Also the boat is very tough, unlike many yachts built today, ours uses a different style of construction. The keel is part of the hull, very thick and solid and won’t snap off, this would have been a real worry on a modern production boat. After a collision, it’s imperative to get the keels checked on these boats. So all I had to do really was get the boat off the rock.

Usually it should be possible to reverse and that’s it. however we were properly stuck on. No amount of reversing had any effect. Then the swell came and said hello, the boat was lifted a foot or so by a large rise in the sea level, then dropped back onto the rock. BANG, now that sent another shiver down my spine. It actually sounds and feels a lot worse than it is, but it does help focus ones thoughts to the task at hand. In a big sea, we have been thrown onto waves by the sea, and that makes a bigger bang.

The propellor seems more efficient going forward, but it’s counter intuitive to motor onto rocks, so I didn’t want to try that, going back didn’t work so I was a bit stuck. So I launch plan A, , to kedge myself off backwards, sounds rude, but basically it requires me to put my little anchor I keep at the stern of the boat in the water, say 50metres astern, and winch myself back towards it. I have done this on Oracle once in Greece, but we were in sand, it was very calm and we had all day to mess around. Now I had to move fast as the swell had us bumping again, though thankfully the first bump was the worst. Now this is were the plan turns to farce.

I untied the kedge anchor, and tried to hang it over the stern enough so I could get it into the dinghy which thankfully was tied up below, however the chain in the locker must have been snagging, or more likely had fallen on itself after I stowed it last year. I was tugging the chain like crazy to get it out when Kathy shouted out something about rocks from the bow were she was peering over. I left the anchor hanging over the pushpit (the rail around the stern of the boat) to see what she was saying, she was shouting out that she couldn’t see any rocks, so I had to investigate, possibly it was all a dream and I might wake up after seeing a spaceship rise from the water and Captain Kirk offer some help. Maybe not. I ran to the bow, and looking down to starboard I could see we had at least 5 metres of clear water below us, over the bow was clear as well, looking to port made me realise we were on the very edge of a large granite boulder. Now one of the things about Sister Midnight is that the propeller produces a large amount of prop walk, and it’s all to starboard when going ahead, this means that if I give it a surge of power ahead, from stationary, the boat instead of moving forwards, tries to swing hard to the right. This has got to be worth a try I thought. So back to the wheel, Hard to starboard, mucho revving, no revving, mucho revving, no revving, then WOW, we are off the rock. and moving away from it slowly. So where’s the farce you ask? Well just as we clear the rock, my kedge anchor cleared itself and went screaming over the stern and anchored itself to the very rock we were escaping! Bugger, I tried to grab the  chain/rope as it was shooting over the stern, but it was going too fast, and I didn’t want to slow my exit from the rock so I let it go. I could see the mooring buoy we had left, maybe 100 metres ahead of us, so I figured I should try to get back to that and work things out from there, however, would I have 100 metres of rope on the kedge, I couldn’t remember, and 100m seems a lot.

I shouted to Kathy to bring me large quantities of rope and a knife, plus a fender. I thought ‘plan A’ would be to cut the anchor warp, tie a fender to it as a buoy, and come back for it later, ‘plan B’, cut the line, tie more rope to it and keep going to the mooring until I ran out of rope. As it turned out, I had loads of rope on the warp, and we picked up our mooring buoy while still anchored by the stern to the rock. A kind of weird ‘med style’ mooring.

Next I jumped in the dinghy, and headed back to the rock and retrieved the kedge anchor and all was back to normal. As luck would have it, the water there was crystal clear, so I dived on the hull with my snorkel and could see deep scratches, possibly gouges in the surface of the keel along the bottom edge, I couldn’t see right under the keel, but expect the gelcoat to be cracked there. However that was all, above the bottom edge of the keel there was no damage I could see. I’m hauling out sometime in the next few months to refresh the antifoul, so will sort that out then.

I have since checked on the chart, I have my track recorded, onto and off the rock, and I can see that it’s meant to be safe water there, so I have learnt a valuable lesson about trusting charts close up to reefs.

That night we picked up another buoy, further north, protected from the swell opposite a monkey beach, where Kathy got quite freaked out when a few monkeys took over our dinghy and started going through the storage pockets playing with our sun tan and Deet, I had to shoo them away, but not before the Dad monkey tried to shoo me away.

We left there on Saturday and went back to Ko Lipe for our final night in Thailand, unfortunately it was a very noisy night at anchorage there, it’s a party beach with house music banging out. We anchored in 23 metres of water, and although the anchor seemed very secure, and the weather was very calm, I was woken about 2AM to the boat swaying and strong winds, on going above I found the wind to be very strong 20-30 knots and all the boats around me were swinging around a lot. Checking our anchor rode, of which we had all 110 metres out, I could see it was very taut, and this would be testing our anchor. I spent the next hour closely watching all the other boats and repeatedly taking bearings of objects on the shore and our relation to other boats, however when you have a swinging circle off 200+ mtrs in diameter, you can never be sure which way you are dragging, or if you are just swinging. After an hour or two, we hadn’t moved, our GPS was backing this up, another hour passed and about 5AM the wind passed on, leaving a very calm bay, I went to bed and slept well, only to be woken a few hours later by a bang. “Shit” was the first word I could think of saying as I flew from the bed, we had hit something, I knew that, I was just hoping it wasn’t land, that bay is fringed with very sharp jagged coral. I hoped it was another boat we hit. I’ve hit loads of them, never a big deal. Actually I t-boned a firefly dinghy with a big heavy clincker boat when I was about 13 in the sea cadets, that was a big deal 😉 As I came out into the cockpit, there was no mistaking the back of the Langkawi ferry that had moored right behind us at about midnight last night. He was on a fixed mooring, so it was safe to assume it was us who dragged, we had bumped against a big metal frame he had on his stern, I don’t know what it did, but it was a flat surface and hadn’t marked us at all. A few tugs on our anchor warp and we were away from him. It was now 7AM and Kathy was up, I asked her to flake the chain down, and I hauled in the anchor and we left. By now the crew on the ferry must have wondered what was going on and was walking around the ship looking for a problem.

I fail to understand how we stayed in position all night in the wind, then once it’s calm we dragged , maybe 150ft to the ferry. I suspect the current was strong when we dragged. On my new super powered boat computer system, all these elements, parameters and variables will be logged, providing real time playback analysis, until then, I’m going to practise anchoring 😉

We are now anchored in a little manmade lagoon area at Telaga, in Langkawi, Malaysia, I don’t have any 3g or phone service here, but I have managed to borrow some wifi data from the local hotel across the bay. It’s nice to be back in Malaysia, but we were greeted by thunder and lightning. We will sneak ashore tonight and have a meal to celebrate our arrival, in the morning, we check into the country officially, get fuel and head down to the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club marina, where I can fix the gearstick problem. Kathy returns to the UK a week tomorrow for a month.

Paul Collister

Just a very quick update to say we are about to leave Thai waters (and Thai 3g data range) and enter Malaysian territory. I’m not sure if my 3g will work on the old Malaysian phone SIM, so a quick post to say we may be quiet for a day or two.

However when back, I promise to post about our encounter with a very big rock that wasn’t where it should be, followed by our collision with a ferry this morning, It was exactly where it should be, our mistake there. All sounds much worse than it was, but I know Bob likes a good story, so stay tuned in.

Paul Collister

 

Alternate titles:
“Don’t Panic”
“If something’s going to break, then it will wait for the worst time”
“I really should have sorted that out earlier”

Yes we had a bit of a problem today, while Kathy was reversing on the anchor rode, to get it to really dig in, the morse cable snapped on the transmission meaning we were stuck in reverse, with not much we could do about it. But more on that later.

We spent Sunday and Monday on Ko Tarutao, a large island, which makes up the largest National park, and the first in Thailand, back in the 80’s I think. It’s a very beautiful spot, but unfortunately the wind has been unseasonal again, it’s meant to be from the NE but in fact has been blowing a steady 10 Knots from the West most of the time, this made our mooring very rolly and we couldn’t stop as long as we would have liked, so we took the dinghy up a large winding river inland and explored a very pretty river / creeks. I made a couple of videos, but until I get a proper wifi, they won’t get uploaded.

From Tarutao, we headed west into the wind and to a lovely little island called Ko Tanga, I think this is part of the Butang group, we were heading for Ko Lipe, a popular holiday island at the southern end of the Butangs, from here we can see Malaysia. All of the islands on the Butangs suffer from the same problem, the beaches are lovely, but go from very shallow to very deep in no time at all. In a boats length it can go from 8 meters deep to 20 metres deep. This make anchoring very difficult. So at Ko Tanga, we had to drop our anchor in 21 metres of water, This meant I had to lay out 60 metres of chain, then another 50 metres of rope, I haven’t done this before and was rather nervous, the previous night we were being rocked a lot, and although we were on a national park mooring I had fretted over how much the rope chaffed (rubbed) on the bobstay and fittings. Now the rope could chafe and if it snapped, not only do we get washed onto the very rocky shore, but I also lose a very expensive anchor.
Anyway, the wind was very light and all was fine, with no chafe to worry about. I am going to put a plastic tube on the bobstay now to help, I didn’t want to, as they look so ugly, but I need to sleep at night.

Ko Tanga, has this arch on one of its islets, you are meant to walk through it with your partner to ensure everlasting something or other, people were actually doing it too! (Eat your heart out Malta)

We left Tanga early, it’s lovely and cool at 7am and the 2-3 hour trip to Lipe was easy into a headwind of about 5 knots. However when we arrived we found the same problem with a very deep shoreline, no chance of getting close in as the day tripper boats had laid moorings everywhere decent. We spotted a national parks mooring buoy, and tied to that, we were just getting the ropes tidied up and about to turn the engine off when a dinghy came speeding to us, it was an Australian skipper who was keen to point out that there was no connection between the mooring buoy and the sea bed, just a rope catching in the rocks, and that he had almost ran aground yesterday when he tied to it. We were very lucky, as it looked great when we tied to it, we might well have gone below for a drink and not realised we were dragging to the shore! You learn something every day in this game. So off we trekked again, looking for somewhere not too deep to anchor, eventually we had to settle on a spot 23 metres deep, this is getting serious, we anchored, let out 110 metres of chain and rope, but by the time the anchor had set (got stuck in to the ground) we were too close to another boat, so we had to pull it all back in and start again. Second time we seemed to be doing well, the anchor was holding, we seemed to be in a good spot when Kathy declared the gearstick was flopping around doing nothing. I waggled it and it seemed to be disconnected, so either it had come lose at one end or the other, or it had snapped. These cables are like big versions of the brake cable on a bike, they often fail, and just a few days ago I noticed the gearstick was quite stiff and I was wondering whether it had always been stiff, or if it might be getting old. I have had very bad luck with these cables breaking on me, so I was thinking I really need to sort them out, or at least carry a spare. So a quick ripping apart of the steering binacle, were the gear and throttle controls live and the cable is attached to the gearstick lever, so into the engine, upside down, head first, as Kathy waggles the gearstick, no sign of life, noise, twitching or anything in fact, so that means cable broken. We are now swinging on 110 metres of cable, in a 10 knot wind, not 100% sure we are dug in properly. I like to reverse with a lot of revs for a few seconds to make sure the anchor is fully set, and I’m wondering what the correct procedure is for such a situation. We can’t go anywhere, but I have a few more anchors I could throw over, I could force it into ahead on the gearbox, and we could motor out, I think. By the time I have gone through all these thought, I realise we are holding well, the forecast is for the wind to drop now for a couple of days, so I decide to stay put and try to fix the problem. So apart comes the binacle, fully, the throttle cable has to come off now, that makes my means of escape harder, but when I realise I also have to take the steering chain off the wheel to get access to the broken cable, I sit down and have another think. No steering, gear or throttle, in a crowded anchorage! I fit the emergency tiller, and realise I can control the throttle with a pair of pliers once the cable is out, so off we go. 3 Hours later, I have it all back together, minus the gearstick cable, which now sticks out of a locker, and has a new control lever. Pic below.

Kathy wants the old control back, I quite like the new one, but it’s going to make the marina entrance more interesting. I’m hoping I will be able to pick up the cable in Langkawi when we get there. Kathy likes it here so much she wants to stay for a few days. They have lots of shops, bars, bakeries and book shops!

It’s bed time now, we had a lovely dinner ashore, the boat stayed just where we left it, but I have just been up and checked everything, the tide has turned and of course with 100 metres of anchor warp out, we have moved 200 metres to the other side of the bay, unfortunately, the guy next to us, has a much shorter warp out so didn’t move away that much, if he gets much closer I will be able to step aboard his boat and wake him. However his short warp might mean he drags away from me anyway.

Just a couple more years and I might get the hang of this boating thing.

Paul Collister