Author: paulcollister

Yesterday I set to work on fixing the instrument panel I blew up on the way up to Langkawi. The fuse I blew, turns out to be a little resettable button on a box at the back of the engine. If I had known that, I could have reset it on passage. at least I know now.  So I took the panel apart after studying the circuit diagram for an hour or so. Some of the circuitry is in an epoxy potted box and the circuit is kept secret. Somehow I seem to have found the details on the internet of this unit’s internals so that was a help. Anyway the main culprit was the connector shown below,this connects the panel switches and alarm signals for oil pressure, water temperature and battery charge to the aforesaid secret box with the lights in it. Someone had previously rammed the plug and socket together, but 90 deg out of position. It’s there so you can replace the box if needed, I understand Volvo wanted about $500 for the box, which is effectively four LEDS, and a few diodes, so I was never going to buy it, even if they hadn’t stopped making it several years ago. So I hard wired around the connector. I replaced all the bulbs in the meters, and epoxied the front of the temp gauge that had fallen off. Now it works 100% and lights up in the dark. Oh I replaced the buzzer, though I hope to never hear it, it only sounds when there’s a big problem. Cleverly those diodes stop it screeching when you turn the key or stop the engine, as it does on most boats.

So I expect you’re wondering how I can top that story, well just wait till I get on to the hose clamps later, but first I had a birthday today. Kathy kindly got me some lovely chocolates and a nice new money belt, which is handy, my old one is disintegrating.

I managed to get the last of the metal strips onto the side of the boat this morning, these are thin strips that stop the fenders ropes from rubbing the varnish on the cap rails. They also look classy, Kathy polished them to a fine mirror like finish.

So onto the hose clamps, I decided to fix the manual bilge pump which wasn’t working, This will be my last contact with the boat before it sinks, should I ever end up in a sinking situation 😉 It’s a pump for pumping water out the bilge, assuming the two electric pumps can’t work. I took it out, serviced it, tested it and couldn’t really find a problem, so put it all back together. On tightening the hose clamps, it has two, they both snapped, this had me thinking, My surveyors and insurance company always insists on double clamping the hoses so that if one breaks, the other will still hold the hose on to the device, yet they both generally are identical when fitted, often from the same production run, live identical lives, and should fail at exactly the same time, all things being equal. I bet they have a different strategy on the International Space Station!
Anyway, both electric pumps and the hand pump work now. The second pump, marked “Emergency Bilge Pump” can’t half shift water, like gallons per second. I was very impressed. I cleaned the bilge some more and ticked that one off the list now. We had some fun when I turned up the tap on the hose pipe Kathy was squirting into the bilge with and the hose jumped out of her hand and started a snake like dance around the galley 😉

While I was in the engine area I had another go at fixing the oil leak, I had tightened up the scavenger pump fitting where I could see it had been weeping oil the other day, but it was still weeping. I think it was a lot better, but it was hard to say as we hadn’t used the engine much on the trip up here, so that may be a factor. So I took the fitting out this time to inspect it. It comes with a soft washer, I remember having an air leak on the fuel system of the old baba , which was a Volvo, and it was down to a slightly worn brass washer somewhere in the fuel line. I wonder if this washer might be causing the leak. I will order a new one. For now I cleaned the surfaces and re-assembled, making sure to get the fitting up tight, and the pipe that goes onto it, snugged up tight too. We shall just have to see if this works or not.
I also had a made a note to look for a water leak, back in May I had to top up the fresh water, not by a lot, maybe half a cup, but it shouldn’t need topping up at all, there’s no way out for the water.  However the water level has been fine since, so I had a look around and found a small leak where the hot fresh water leaves the engine block to go off to heat the domestic water via a heat exchanger. It’s just on the pipe with the hose clamp in the picture. There is the tell tale sign of corrosion building up on the clip. This is going to be a sod to change, the reason it’s leaking is because it’s not fitted on snug, and it cant because of the angle the hose approaches, so whoever fitted it must have struggled, and given up before getting it to fit properly, then tightened up on the clamp and hoped for the best. The worst bit is that it slowly drips hot water onto fittings below which are showing signs of corroding. It’s either bad design by Volvo, or more likely, there is another fitting that should be used to get the pipe to connect properly. As it’s used for an optional external domestic water heater, this hose will have been fitted by the engine installer, not Volvo.
I won’t be happy until this is sorted, because when this pipe fails the engine will lose it’s cooling water and fail. worse than this it will be a sod to fix if under way.
We had a very similar situation on Lady Stardust in Martinique with Max and the boys nearly 10 years ago, a leaking pipe was dripping onto the throttle cable for some years and had caused it to corrode, just as we were trying to get into a port in a very heavy headwind, the throttle cable seized up at the point where it had corroded, I couldn’t work out what was wrong as I couldn’t see the spot on the cable, and had assumed the fuel pump the throttle was connected too was seized and we ended up needing help to get into the port. A very expensive affair, all caused by a slow and persistent drip drip over time.
So given that I had fitted the steel strips, fixed two pumps, an oil leak and found the water leak, it was time to go for my birthday dinner with Kathy at my favourite Langkawi restaurant “Wonderland”
I had Sea Bass grilled and served with a black bean sauce, It was very tasty, we also had a sauce called ABC, which along with the black bean sauce and the rice, they had made vegetarian so Kathy could enjoy it too.

Wonderland was  Kathy’s first encounter with Malaysian restaurants and she was a bit shocked when we first went the back in July, but now after she has eaten at several different places, she appreciates what a class joint it really is 😉 they even sell beer!

I picked up a parcel here that Isaac had sent out, it included lots of things that need to go on the mast, LED lights etc, so that’s tomorrows fun.

Paul C.

So Tuesday morning had me up early to get down to the post office for 8, to get a ‘money order’ to pay the marina. All post offices in Malaysia open at 8, or so I was told by the marina manager. So off I popped at 7:45 sprinting along the coast walk to the post office POS in the mall. It was nice seeing lots of Chinese out doing their Tai Chi routines before work. Arriving at the mall I was disappointed to see it all shut up, the security guard told me the mall and post office don’t open till 10. so after a bit of research with my trusty friend Mr Google, I worked out the University USM had a post office and that might be open now. I asked the guard for his opinion and he replied, of course it will be open, all post offices open at 8! so into a taxi and off I went.

Not long later with the bill paid, and the air-con dispatched to a locker we set off for Langkawi. I think Kathy was pleased to leave, judging by her massive smile and the fact she was dancing and skipping along the pontoon singing , “were leaving, were off,hurrah, hurrah”, I might have exaggerated a little, but Batu Uban is a bit basic / back end of nowhere, but I liked it. I will also miss the interesting group of sailors there too. Touch from ‘MV Memory’ snapped this picture of us leaving, Kathy at the helm, and me bringing fenders in. That’s the Malaysian mainland coast ahead, but we have to turn 90 deg to starboard here as the water is only 3ft deep ahead, and we have to go around Palau Jerajak to get out.

Shortly after our departure at 10:00 AM we are  around the island and passing under the old bridge to the mainland, this is my third time under the bridge and I felt very confident we would fit this time 😉
We were fortunate to have a dry day, with the wind at a nice steady 10 knots from the North West, which allowed us to sail 90% of the time, making 5 knots to the north. I had all the sails up and she handled well. I messed around with the Dutchman, but will need much stronger winds to see how well it works really, but the setup I have seems ok for now, and will control the boom making it safe.
The waters were very quiet, no fishing boats to worry us, just one small course change to miss these fish sticks you can see behind Kathy.

We had a choice of three islands to rest at overnight, the passage is just a little to long to do in one day if you want to stay in light, and sailing at night this close inshore is hazardous in the dark because of all the unlit fishing boats that appear, or rather don’t appear until too late. The previous two trips along this route we stayed at Palau Sonsong, but this time Palau Bidan took Kathy’s fancy so we dropped anchor there. The Spade didn’t set again, but in a way I was happy because it was very calm, we were not in a rush and I fancied the practice, mostly I wanted to play with the windlass and watch my fluorescent cable ties going up and down. Kathy also needs practice and we are still working out how to communicate effectively from me at the bow to Kathy at the wheel. We agreed that me shouting “More” would be more effective if I added a noun like “More Revs”.  Of course more Revs means more engine noise by Kathy so “Less Revs” doesn’t get heard so well. Some couple use hand signals, others have walkie talkies, some end up divorcing!
However we very effectively recovered the anchor and re-set it quickly. I’m very pleased with how the cleaned up clutch works, I can easily control the speed of chain descent, and also set the clutch so it slips when the anchor is fully up, something it didn’t do before, possibly explaining why the anchor platform had been so mangled. Once set we could put the boat fully astern and I could see the chain taught and rigid, the boat stationary, and a lot of water being churned up by the prop. That’s a nice feeling when you have to sleep soon and you’re quite close to a rocky shore. We anchored just beyond the palm trees on the right hand end of the beach below. I think Kathy will post better pictures as she was fascinated by the people living on the island. It’s a place you can go to be part of an ecology project, living in a tent with no amenities.
At some point I checked the Navtext to see if there were any weather warnings and the first line said “Typhoon” when I scrolled down it said Force 17, which seems a lot, I thought it only went to 12!. Anyway, this was for much further north and of no concern to us. The weather here is very predictable, other than for powerful squalls that pass through, it’s generally very safe.

We left P.Bidan early, 08:20, on Wednesday as it’s quite a way to Langkawi still, some 9 hours and we wanted to be there before dark. I also wanted to sail as much as possible. The sea was very calm and the wind was light and from the NE which is all wrong, it’s meant to be from the other way, which would have been lovely, but from the NE meant we had to sail close hauled, which isn’t that fast, but the boat performed very well. We managed 5 knots in about 8-10 knots of wind, I would be very happy to sail around the world under these conditions. We sailed between the two islands at Pulau Payar, a renowned scuba resort where the water is very clear and there is an abundance of fish of many varieties. They say if you can’t catch a fish in these waters you may as well give up, however I think my problem with the two lines I had out was that all the fish were over by the scuba divers. Perhaps next time I will be lucky.

Not long after we left the engine temperature gauge stopped working, this is a pain as we had been running the engine on and off and I like to keep an eye on the temp. If it overheats, and they often do on boats as they are cooled by seawater, and that system can get blocked, or the pump stops working, then when the engine overheats it can do serious damage.
The gauge didn’t work when I bought the boat, but after cleaning all the connections to the panel, it started, so I assumed it was a bad connection and I needed to find the exact one. What better time than now, so off I went with my multimeter. Sadly after a little probing my meter probe slipped and shorted the supply out. I could have predicted that would happen. The panel went crazy, showing revs of 4000RPM, no oil pressure, and no battery charging. Bother.
I brought up the laptop and checked the circuit diagram and it looked like I have probably blown the fuse, but where is the fuse. I have no idea, probably behind the engine, or under the very hot exhaust system. Anyway it will have to wait. After a little bit of fretting I thought that I could run a new supply to the panel from the cigar lighter in the cockpit. This was duly setup and Voila, meters reading again, except for the temp. So now we decided to keep a close watch on the water coming out the exhaust for the rest of the passage and the rest can wait.

I think I have posted a picture of this boat before, the Lili Marleen, but we sailed very close this time and she looked wonderful in the sunlight with the blue sky behind. She seems to be parked up here like several other big ships.
This boat, the one I scoffed at for being registered in Grimsby, was how she looked when I sailed past with Tim on board a few weeks back,
However on the way in the Kuah, the main port of Langkawi we spotted this ship, on the rocks along the coast, on closer inspection I’m pretty sure it’s the same ship. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but she was directly downwind from where I remember her being moored. I suspect she broke her mooring, probably at night. I will try to find out the story, I hope she can be salvaged, the coast there is rocks, then a stretch of beach, then more rocks, she missed the beach and is firmly on the rocks!
So into the marina at 17:00, I managed to get a clear view of the pontoon finger as we came in, and put the boat alongside so Kathy could step ashore and cleat the bow, walk back to me and take the stern line. Job done, and the smoothest berthing yet. We’re getting there.

A quick tidy up, then off to the bar for drinks and a nice dinner for Kathy, well it is her birthday, and the postman didn’t seem to be able to find us on Palau Bidan.

 

Paul C.

Yesterday started with me having a go at the windlass, this is the electric motor that pulls up the anchor, seeing as we will need it soon. It wasn’t letting the anchor go down easily because the clutch was sticking, like trying to start a car in gear.

Anyway I managed to get the clutch cone out to find it was very grimy as was its matching surface. I put the picture here as you can see how well it cleaned up. Now it works really well and I’m right chuffed. A full service of the windlass is still  required, but that requires me to drill out the allen keys holding the chain control in place.
Once that was done we headed off to straights quay, Kathy had a wine on the waterfront before we moved on to the shopping mall at Gurney plaza.
After the plaza we headed over the road for a bit to eat. On the way we could see a huge area of land reclamation going on.
Kathy was excited to find a new vegetarian stall on Gurney drive, however it was really the same one with a new sign.
Today is a national holiday, I had planned to settle up at the marina ready for an early start Tuesday, but due to the holiday I now have to get up very early tomorrow to go into town to sort out a postal order to pay the marina people. Still we might get away before 11 and be at anchor at pilau Songsong or nearby by 17:00.
So we took advantage of the tide, and moved the boat from the berth to the outside of the marina in preparation. Before we tied up though we went for a sail down towards Batu Maung. It was a lovely day with 5-10 knots of winds on the nose. We tacked up the strait making 3.5 knots in about 7 – 10 knots of wind. And this was just the main and staysail, we could have done more if I unfurled the big genoa, but I wanted to do a lot of crash gybing and that would have been awkward as you can’t tack the genoa without going up f’ward to manhandle the sail across. So I had the Dutchman working as a kicking strap as we tacked up and it worked well. On the way back it was pulled tight and we did some crash gybes and it worked well, often too well, but that made it no worse than a preventer. The biggest problem in a crash gybe is the main sheets, they still get tangled around everything, even with the boom going slowly across. More fine tuning is needed, but all in all I’m very pleased.

This is one of the land reclamation ships building the land for the new World City complex

Tomorrow we will be on our way north. possibly limited internet, but AIS should be good.

Paul C.

The last oxalic acid I bought was from eBay and I didn’t think much of it, however this acid, Penang Style really kicks, and no, I’m not snorting it. I tried some on the teak and on the fiberglass that was stained, and boy does it work wonders, the boat is starting to look really classy now.
I took some of the rubber sole and glued a strip under the bow sprit to protect the galvanised coating on the new anchor, it looks the part and should work well. I think I can just haul the anchor in really tight now and it will be snug, just need to put something on the whisker stay that looks better than the bubble wrap I’m currently using.
I had a problem when I bought the boat that the swim ladder was sitting on the deck with no obvious attachment points. Well I found these when I was painting the sides and later , after I bought new brackets, I found the original ones that connect the ladder to the boat. Now to refit them was a substantial job that took over 2 hours, Toshi, the previous owner had filled the inaccessible void where the nuts go with spray expanding foam which I had to hack out, but couldn’t really hack, because lots of cables were also in the void, also the void is not visible without mirrors, so mighty difficult, and very tedious. All the time I’m wondering why did he take it off, he’s an intelligent man, I can tell that, so when he took it off he knew he wasn’t ever going to put it back there, so I felt all the time that once I had finally got it fitted, I would realise that I too had to take it off. It’s all fitted now, and with a bit more cobbling I made little round feet for the ladder so it won’t scratch the boat. About a day later I realised why it’s not a good idea to have it where it is, it’s at the widest part of the boat, and sticks out a lot, and although it’s raised a couple of feet above the pontoon, sometimes the boat suffers big waves here and the boat can rise or fall several feet, and theres a chance the ladder could come down hard on the pontoon, probably ripping itself out of the side of the boat leaving a nasty gash. I’m going to move it, just as soon as I work out where, I will wait until the new lifebuoy, danbuoy and lifesling are fitted to find a place at the stern of the boat.

Kathy has been hard at work with her toothbrush cleaning the deck, (I’m a stickler for detail 😉 ). Most of the mess is from my varnishing actually, but thanks to her hard work the foredeck is looking very smart now.

I set about cleaning up the coachroof, the window air-con unit was removed along with the wood and blankets used to keep it in place and airtight. I also removed the liferaft so I had a clear deck. The Dutchman was then connected up and tested, its purpose is to prevent an accidental gybe. For the non sailors, sometimes when we are sailing downwind, that is, with the wind behind us, the boom and mainsail might be all the way out on one side, if the boat changes course accidentally, or the wind shifts unexpectedly, then the boom can suddenly decide it wants to fly to the other side, and when I say fly, I mean it, you hardly see it move it happens so quickly. If you are standing up in the cockpit or on the side deck and it hits you, then it’s often curtains for you. We always rig up a special rope called a ‘preventer’ to prevent this happening, but it’s a messy operation and a little dangerous in itself. The dutchman brake promises to tame the boom, so it can swing across, but at a leisurely pace. I’m looking forward to testing this out next week.
Another improvement we made was to remove all the tatty lines that we use to tie the overhead canopy down with and replace them with custom sized elasticated lines with hooks on the end, this way we can get the canopy up and down in under a minute, and it looks smarter.

Today I started with the aim to find the oil leak, we used too much oil on our trip back from Langkawi, this was worrying me as if the engine is consuming lots of oil it’s a sign of serious problems, however a look in the drip tray under the engine revealed about a pint of fresh oil, Erik had already suggested a leak from the sump drain.

Further investigation found a loose connection, this should have been an easy fix, but again, only having two arms, both of which are less than 5 foot long was a big handicap. Also there was less than a spanner length of gap for the spanner to go in. After an hour of cursing I was able to get it tight with some mole grips at the oddest of angles. I cleaned the sump tray so that when we get to Langkawi next week I can see if it worked.

Next onto the bilge pump. All this bending has loosened me up so I slipped into the innards of the stern and tried to work out why the hand operated bilge pump didn’t work, In cleaning the drip tray, I used the hose to fill the bilge with soapy water. I removed all the oil first with nappies and kitchen roll, so I could try to reduce the pollution, but I couldn’t do much about the fairy liquid. I couldn’t see any problems, so I removed the pump and brought it on deck to check. It seems ok on visual inspection, so perhaps the pipe is blocked. Toshi has been creative in his plumbing here so I may need to investigate further, but this is something I really don’t want to go to sea without. We have a great electric pump, but these often clog with debris in an emergency, and rely on power, which often isn’t there when you have a flooding boat.

Finally I must say the boat is starting to look smart, Kathy keeps it very tidy inside, and now the outside is clean and presentable, and all the crap on the deck has been lost, she looks like a slick, classy boat. The biggest handicap to presentation, is that near the equator you really do need the air-con, which looks well ugly, and lots of canvas strung above the boat to keep the temperature tolerable. I don’t plan to travel anywhere that needs jumpers or heating of any kind, but I think another 15 deg North or South might be better.

The plan has been revised, Monday we are waiting for the delivery of some safety gear, then Tuesday we head back north to Langkawi Yacht Club, arriving Wednesday afternoon/evening for Kathy to have her Birthday drink in the posh bar there. That’s assuming nothing else crops up.

 

Paul Collister

Todays main activity was popping into town and getting some hard to find chemicals. I bought:

2 litres of Acetone, for cleaning surfaces before applying epoxy glue
1 litre of MEK, not sure what that is for, but heard it’s very useful to have. I think it’s a solvent for epoxy, which means it can dissolve my boat, hmmm.
1 litre of Isopropyl, or something like that, another good cleaner, I think its like alcohol. Chemistry isn’t my strong point
1kg of Oxalic Acid crystals, these dissolve in warm water to make an excellent cleaner for most things, but it works very well in cleaning teak.

The total price for this was £10, can’t complain. I bought this from a shop run by a rather famous local man called Mr Ong, the chemical man. He is 91 and is thinking of retiring soon. I had a brief chat with him in the shop. It’s amazing what you can buy here.  Later I bought some sheets of hard rubber/plastic, used for cutting soles for shoes from a shoe repair and leather supplier. This will fit under the bowsprit nicely and protect the sprit and the galvanising on the anchor, again, just £2.

I bought some plastic sheeting in a shop and asked for a discount as it was a bit shabby, the guy dragged his abacus over and used it to knock 10% off, very impressive how fast he used it.

I use Uber to get around, they are very good, cheap and most of the drivers are ethnic Chinese so their English is generally better than the ethnic Malaysians. As was usual I had to explain everything about the boat and our plans, and as usual, the drivers are amazed we are sailing around the world, after lots of questions this driver asked me if I was a proper sailor man, I replied yes, I suppose so, to which he launched into singing “I’m popeye the sailor man, I live in ….”. When he extracted from me that I was doing this trip with my girlfriend, he started exclaiming over and over, “So Romantic, So romantic”. I would have said, stop here, drop me off here, yes, this motorway flyover is just fine. However it’s difficult to change your destination on Uber, even harder not to give your driver 5 stars after the trip, just in case you get him on the way home.

Later back at the boat I pulled the aircon off the deck and cleaned up, we will get this deck looking fit for purpose soon.

Tonight we went for dinner at Supertanker, a giant Chinese / Thai foodcourt. Erik drove us there and I think Kathy enjoyed it. I love the place, great food, dirt cheap and a lovely busy but friendly atmosphere. I had a tasty chocolate and banana pancake for pudding from a vendor who is famous for his wares.

General chores tomorrow, specifically the sails and control lines and the water tank guages.

Paul C

 

Well not really, but getting close now.
Firstly some pictures of the Kek Lok Si temple visit

I enjoyed the temple visit very much, they sure know how to do Buddhas over here.

So earlier in the week we went to the Mall at Queensbay, they usually have something going on in the main open areas, today was no exception, I think they were selling power exercise drinks and potions. Quite mad if you ask me, however the two kids joining in made it seem ok, except at the end when they turn to face each other, I think the boy thinks the girl is going to high five him, but she walks right past when she realises he is way to young for her. Tragic.

Saturday we went into town for a veggie meal, great that they have such places here and the food was good. We passed a lot of street food hawkers on the way

Time Square was interesting, I had never really looked around inside, quite classy.

After the meal, we popped along to the prom area where there was a big display of bears, think Cows, Penguins, Liverpudlian Lambananna, or just the latest way to move a lot of plastic around the world. But to be fair it has raised a lot of money for UNICEF, an organisation I have a lot of time for since I saw loads of little boys and girls marching to school for the first time in post Taliban Afghanistan, all carrying UNICEF bags with pencils paper etc.
Each bear represented a country, but we had one for the UK, which got me pondering again on our national identity. It had been a bad week on that front, firstly there was the independence day, when the British flag is lowered and the Malaysian flag replaces it. The whole country celebrates this day, then on the same day the taxi driver told me his son had graduated uni in Dublin and now lived near the post office on O’Connell’ Street there, and did I know it. Felt like shouting, look I wasn’t born then, it’s not my fault 😉 Anyway, so after trudging over to the E for England section, then over to G for Great Britain, I ended up at the UK bit, each bear represents an artists impression of his country and I was keen to see what we had, hopefully not a bear in a bowler hat with brolley. So I was rather disappointed to see this chappy. Perhaps he should have been placed by Germany, France, and the other EU countries, but facing the wrong way!

This one reminded me of the burning man, I named it burning bear.

Now I expect you are all thinking, that’s all well and good Paul, but what about the bowsprit!
Well I have finished working on that now. I need to replace the sprit and the platform at some point, probably when I’m in Thailand, but for now I have re-assembled everything and we are fit to slip our lines and sail off into the sunset, well once we finish the other 40 non-bowsprit related jobs.
Before I replaced the windlass, I thought I should re-fit the chain pipes, these are the metal tubes the anchor chain slides down. They were loose on the deck and would allow rain and waves to get into the chain locker, making it damp and smelly. When I removed them, I could see that they had never been sealed to the deck, and in fact worse than that they had leaked water into the deck core and the wood was rotted.

This can be a really bad deal requiring the deck fiberglass having to be cut out and just loads of horrible stuff that takes forever to do. Fortunately, these boats were designed with this problem in mind, and will not allow the damp/rot to travel far. In my case I was able to scrape it all out as it only went a few cm into the deck. Then I could fill the area with thickened epoxy

The deck is stronger now and this problem shouldn’t happen again, at least not here.
This gave Kathy an opportunity to polish up the chain pipes ready for refitting

Finally I had everything in place and brought the anchor back on board, I’m still trying to work out how best to stow it, it’s not a comfortable fit on the bow sprit and has to be lashed in, just not quite sure how yet.

I reconnected the Navigation lights on the bows pulpit at the connections in the chain locker and was most disappointed to find the port light didn’t work, after making sure the connections at both ends were perfect. I lost count of the times I went between the pulpit and the chain locker with my multimeter, but eventually I found a break in the wire about 6 inches from the light. Now the break was caused by corrosion inside the wire, some distance from the end connections. I only mention this because the previous owner spent a fortune using the very highest quality pre-tinned wire, which in my opinion is useless, or as effective as gold plated loudspeaker cables, i.e. not useful at all.

Tomorrow I go in search of Oxalic acid and Acetone to restock, then more cleaning up the deck and rigging the dutchman, which isn’t a euphemism, all will be revealed.

 

Paul C.

This week has been slow, but mostly enjoyable for me.
The main focus has been on this bloody bowsprit. For those of you who haven’t worked it out yet, it’s the pretty big wooden stick that protrudes from the bow of the boat. It’s job is to allow us to get a bigger sail on the boat than would otherwise be possible. Boats don’t have them these days, as a longer boat means a faster boat anyway, so boats tend to be longer and also the old fashioned look of the square rigged boat with the multiple headsails is not in fashion.
So just to give a chronology of events on this bloody stick so far.

1. Decide the varnish needs re-doing on the bowsprit as it’s very stained and missing in lots of places, also there’s a small bit of rot near the tip, so no harm in looking further. The whole job should be done in a few days max.
2. So I remove the pulpit rail, that’s the steel tubing that you hold onto when working up there, I notice the wiring to the port and starboard lights on the rail is faulty so spend half a day renewing that, during the process the starboard bulb falls apart in my hand.
3. Remove the teak platform, this is the decking you stand on in the pulpit area, and the supporting steel frame. I notice the platform is very weak and split in many places so a lot of gluing and clean up ensues, another day lost.

1. The frame has a crack in it, I decide to ignore, then after refitting I decide to fix, so off to a steel works to get it welded, two half days gone there.

1. 4 days spent cleaning and sanding the varnish on the front of the bow sprit, but the wood is so deeply stained, it’s not the most impressive of sprits, and never will be.
2. Now there seems to be some rot under the anchor windlass, this is the very heavy motor that pulls up the anchor / chain and is installed on top of the bowsprit. I remove the windlass to get a better look, sort of wished I hadn’t, the rot is quite bad, goes all the way into the sprit. I think I’m ok for coastal sailing, but I need to replace that sprit before I contemplate taking on any gales. This will not be an easy job and I have decided to wait until we are in Thailand to do the work, as they have better wood and plenty of skilled carpenters there.
3. I remove all the rot I can see, but suspect there’s more under the sprit, and fill the voids with thickened epoxy, this should be good for a while but it’s hard to know. How do you know how strong it needs to be, and how do you work out how strong it currently is. I do know the sprit behaves as a post under compression, and the damaged area is clamped with a steel plate ( The Windlass and backing plate) on either side of the damaged area, and they wont compress easily. 
4. On trying to put the windlass back in place I notice the cover I put over it, while it was on its side doesn’t seem to have stopped the rain getting in and the inside of the windlass is full of water! This could be really bad, I don’t want to even try to use it if it’s rusting, as a good cleaning will save it. If I leave a spanner on deck here for a couple of days, it’s very brown by the time I find it, the constant rain/heat seems to have a bad affect on metal. A new windlass will cost £2-3000, so I decide to take this one apart and clean/grease it up.
5. Three of the four screws on the windlass cover come off, the fourth has been stripped by a previous gorilla, I also discover after removing the bottom metal plate that half the base of the windlass has rusted away, leaving a huge mass of aluminum oxide, a whitish crumbly powder. Now I’m starting to wonder why I’m bothering, and why did I ever give up stamp collecting as a child.
6. I drill of the head of the fourth screw and voila, we are inside, well nearly. I have access to the motor, and I can see the gears are all encased inside another unit which is sealed and looks ok. A good cleaning followed by a healthy spraying with WD40 has it looking a lot better. When I power it up, it runs very well, seems to be even faster than before. Must dismantle it completely soon and give it a full service.
7. Start to reassemble everything now I have the frame back but find the holes in the teak platform where the screws used to be are massive and this is why the platform was tied down before, so I fill all the holes with thickened epoxy and will try to re-assemble everything again tomorrow.

All in all this job that was meant to take a few days is looking like two weeks, and I still need to build and fit a new bowsprit, build a new platform and service the windlass. The thing is, if you plan to go sailing offshore, especially if you are crossing oceans where you will be bound to be hit by severe weather at some point, I think it’s really important to have full confidence in every inch of the boat, and turning a blind eye to something that might be OK, because it might also be a lot of hassle to check fully, is just not an option.
Also I must say I really enjoy the aspect of finding local skilled people to help out. The trip to the industrial part of town (Batu Maung, behind the airport) was great, a lovely big workshop with laser cutters, giant bending machines and a few dozen guys all working hard. Also Miss Chew, who like many businesses I have dealt with seemed to be showing the men how to do things, was great, she understood the job perfectly, offered advice on options for repair, and did the job on time for just £6. The crack was quite big, and I cant even see where it was now, just shiny steel, very impressive.

This is Inge, a Swede from another yacht here with me at a cafe outside the steel fabricators on Monday. These candles/giant joss sticks were about to be lit as it’s the end of August and the Chinese are crazy about keeping the ghosts happy and away

Today, Thursday, when I collected the frame with Kathy the Jossies were almost out, in fact in a few minutes time the fire brigade arrived and put them out before they were dismantled. The ghosts are quite chilled in September I understand.

During the week we visited a very big temple, more on that in a separate post.

And apologies if you were expecting notifications to be emailed to you of new posts, the system broke, due to the way security works on wordpress, this blog software I’m using. They upgraded the software to make it more secure and broke it, I have made it less secure and it works again, but the notifications may find it harder to traverse some spam filters. For the techies following, it’s all related to domain names of the From; envelope From: and Host needing to match. It’s complicated, too complicated for me.

Paul C.

Saturday lunchtime we jumped into an uber cab and headed off to see the reclining Buddha at the Wat Chayamangkalaram temple in George Town. This 33m long Buddha is known locally as the sleeping buddha and the temple is built over 5 acres of land which our good old Queen Victoria gave to the Thai people. Nice of her to give someone else’s land away so easily.

After a bit of Thai temple visiting we popped over the road to see what the Burmese had to offer, and we weren’t disappointed. A vast array of buddhas are housed within several temples and shrines in the Dhammikarama Burmese Temple. I saw buddhist monks throwing water over people and chanting, not sure what it will achieve, but it seemed to be quite a serious affair.

So we then headed around the corner to the Gurney Drive Plaza, This is just a big upmarket mall, where you can buy western goods at ridiculous prices. I noticed most of the clientele were not Malay but Chinese ethnicity, I suspect this reflects the distribution of wealth here. It’s a great place if you’re a westerner looking for weetabix or Campbell’s soup, or an aspirational local, who thinks it’s cool to buy Leffe lager for £6 a bottle (I actually paid £4 for a bottle of german alcohol free beer, the first I had seen in Malaysia, so I shouldn’t criticise really). Personally I hate this sort of place, it was such a contrast with the basic lifestyle I associate with Buddhism we had just been experiencing.

From  the Mall we headed up the road to a famous hawker food market on Gurney drive. we sat down at a table next to a vegetarian Chinese food stall and had two fine noodle meals, don’t know any more details as my Chinese is rubbish. I do know that as I placed the bag with my zero alcohol beer on the floor, it exploded and sprayed fizzy beer all around the table, rather embarrassing, but I can’t help thinking Karma played a part in this.

So back to my beloved bowsprit, I bolted the platform frame onto the sprit after giving  it a good cleaning, I had noticed a crack in the frame, it’s on the bottom right, and really needed welding. I decided it can wait, and proceeded to fix the 13 bolts that hold it on to the sprit, not so easy when balancing from above. Of course once I had completed I started to consider when I would need to do the welding and where would I be? (probably hundreds of miles from a welder). On consideration, I realised I would never be in a better place or at a better time to get the welding done, so off with the 13 bolts and today I took a taxi ride to the local steel fabricators for them to weld and reinforce the frame.

The actual platform is fabricated from teak and had a lot of splits in it, it also is getting very thin and very grey. I glued it back together over several nights and today I gave the teak a rub down and a deep clean, it looks a bit better now. I will be getting a new one made, might do it myself if I can source some local hardwood, or teak.

I’m hoping to put the boat back together by the end of the week and then head off north again. However it might take another week depending on how much sightseeing we do.

I also got the internal air-con running tonight and the boat is now quite cool, but it’s way too noisy for me, so I think I would like to relocate the air-con to the lazarette or somewhere out of the way before I lose the window unit.

Paul C.

 

 

 

A short post about Friday and a recipe for the blues.

1. First spend days, no weeks, nay, nearly months, cleaning, sanding and polishing your new boat.
2. Stand back and admire.
3. Decide to paint the blue strip on the side now the varnish is looking good.
4. Fill a jug (1/2 pint) with blue gloss paint (Marine and expensive).
5. Stand on the pontoon, brush in one hand, paint in the other.
6. Jump onto the boat holding both items carefully, wouldn’t want an accident 😉
7. Don’t forget before item 6, to make sure you tie a strong piece of rope about 6 inches above the side deck, in the area you are going to jump onto.
8. Jump, trip over said rope, throw, not pour, but throw all of the paint (did I mention it’s gloss) over the boat.
9. Make sure to cover awning, coach roof, power cables, oars, air-con, coachroof side, portlights, deck, grab-rails, cap-rail and yourself in blue paint.
10. Stand back and admire / cry
11. Make matters worse by rubbing paint with cloth and spreading everywhere.

Not my finest moment I have to admit. I would love to have a picture to show the mess, but Kathy rushed to the scene on hearing my screams and we both proceeded to get into the cleaning up task. I’m happy to say, that with the help of a big jug of turpentine, you wouldn’t be able to tell there had been an accident, other than for the canopy, which has a limited life anyway.
Yesterday, I varnished over a spot of blue paint I had missed on the rub rail, I decided to leave that as a permanent reminder to myself to be more careful in future.

A less traumatic post follows of our Saturday excursions to two extremes adjacent to each other, The Buddhist shrines, and the Western modern day equivalent, the Mall

And just so there’s a pic with this post, how about another bowsprit update 😉

Paul C.

 

Yesterday morning started well, a power cut, which caused one of our neighbours to get cross with another boat owner over tripping the power. When there is an electrical fault a circuit breaker kills all the power to all the boats.
Well 30 minutes later Kathy made some toast and as she pushed the toast into the machine the power went off and Kathy screeched a bit saying that there where sparks inside the toaster. I presumed it was probably not a big deal and that the power problem was related to the other boat. however after I had a look at the toaster I found she had been trying to toast a bulldog clip

I popped outside to check, and we had indeed tripped the whole marina, but worse our neighbour was now storming over to the other boat to give them hell for tripping again, I tired to stop him, but he was convinced it was their fault, so off he went.
Kathy doesn’t keep the clips on a hook just above the toaster anymore 🙂

The rest of the day was spent sanding and filling holes, I scraped out all of the dead black wood in the cap rail, and made up some teak coloured epoxy filler, however, the colour went black at the last minute, I don’t know why, but I had had enough so I filled the holes with the black filler, It doesn’t look as bad as it was, but I’m going to cut it all out at a later date and put teak in, probably when I get to Thailand and can get some good quality teak for a decent price. I might replace the whole rail then. For now I wanted to get on with the varnishing and get the rail watertight. After I had got a ‘primer’ coat of varnish on, I put my brush in a jar of turps in the cockpit and jumped ashore to get a shower with the pontoon hose, after the shower I threw my shoes back onto the boat and was very pleased that I was able to get them into the cockpit from about 5 metres, I expect you have guessed the rest, a perfect hit, turps everywhere!

Today I was up early, we had a massive squall in the night and a huge amount of rain. I dried the woodwork with a towel, had a coffee, then got the second coat of varnish down. It’s looking good now, I had hoped to get 4 coats of varnish on the cap rail and bow sprit by Saturday, and I’m on target for that.
Kathy and I got off into town at lunch time, we have found out that we can summon an Uber taxi that takes us from the marina into Georgetown for about 9MYR, which is under £2, it costs four times as much for a regular taxi, and they cant find us.

I found a source for a water pump for the air-con, so I’m hoping to fit that in the next few days and if it works, I can lose the window mounted unit and get the deck clear. I also found some very long 5mm wood drills for a £1 each which I’m going to use to drill a few inspection holes in the bowsprit, I need to know how bad the rot is there.

After the hardware shopping we joined the backpackers and walked the streets looking at the street art and took in an exhibition of art/photography where the artist had chopped the pictures up a reassembled them in an interesting way.

We ended the day with a meal in our favourite Indian restaurant, I made a classic mistake of ordering a tandoori chicken and saying I didn’t want it too hot, so he went off with order, “Tandoori chicken, no hot”, It took a while, I presumed because they were cooking it without the spices just for me, but instead I realised when I bit into a cold lump of chicken, that blew my head off with spices, that the delay must have been while they shoved my chicken in the freezer. Note to self, use the word spicy, not hot. A bas ride home was quick, and an early night, hoping to get coat 3 of the varnish on tomorrow early and then more boat jobs.

Some pics from the day:

Paul C