Author: paulcollister

Popped up to the marina office first thing today to extend our stay by another day, so much to do. I haven’t had a chance to relax and think about how to get all the tasks co-ordinated. The focus has been on getting the boat seaworthy, having Tim arriving on a set date, helped me get the work prioritised, then the trip to Langkawi ,so we would have  a pleasant base to cruise from. Also one of the reasons for being in Langkawi is that it’s a duty free island, I suppose a bit like the channel islands. I can buy equipment in the UK, have it shipped here without paying VAT at home, and paying no tax here. That means a 20% saving or more in some cases on boat equipment I need. I have a few ‘big ticket’ items to buy, like a liferaft, and quite a bit of electronic kit, plus lots of chandlery, that can add up, ropes, fenders, anchors, chain etc. It’s expensive shipping stuff here, so that has to be added into the calculation, also some states in the USA have problems with removing the sales tax for exports, I can also get good deals in Hong  Kong, China, Singapore and Australia, with lower shipping costs. If I am smart and get the best deal, I might save myself a few hundred pounds, so it’s worth the effort, but the research required is so boring.
Anyway, I have the survey done, and tomorrow I can post that off to my insurers and see what they will offer me in cover. I’m going to need to get the standing rigging replaced, it’s cheaper to do this in Thailand than here, but more hassle.
I contacted a local dinghy company called Swift, they manufacture dinghy’s and also repair them. They only work with hypalon, a tough kind of material, that looks like normal PVC, but is made quite differently. I don’t know much about it, but I’m pretty sure our leaking dinghy is PVC, and they thought so too, so will repair it, but without warranty. They are collecting the dinghy from the marina in the morning. They told me PVC just cant survive the weather here, makes me wonder if I need to be more thorough with the suncream, Im sure my skin isn’t as tough as PVC 😉

So while Tim popped off to get the laundry and some shopping, I got the boat ready for a day trip along the coast. Tim expertly reversed us out of the berth, and took us out of the marina, we travelled West / south west until we reached the sea, then south, circumnavigating Pulua Dayang Bunting. This large island south of the main island  of Langkawi, feels like it’s part of the main island, but it’s surrounded by lots of smaller islands, all densely covered in vegetation. We saw lots of eagles gracefully sweeping in large circles over them.

Our Route Today, about 5 hours, with a stop for a swim at point 5

 

Not far into this journey we diverted course to look at this old fashioned ship, I thought it looked interesting, however as we went round the stern I saw it was registered in Grimsby, which took some of the romance out of it. I tried to imagine there must be a grimsby in the Caribbean somewhere.

We saw lots of fish jumping out of the water in a frenzy trying to escape their attacker, so I felt I had to join in and got the fishing rod out, I didn’t see any reason to leave Langkawi off my long list of places I have fished in and caught nowt! So that went well, nothing caught and as we were approaching the end of our trip I hauled the line in. Now not having used a fishing rod on a boat before, I tried to look like the guys on the telly when they’re landing a giant tuna and I had the rod high in the air as I wound the line in, unfortunately high in the air meant right by the wind generator. Before I knew anything the wind generator had decided it could haul my line in quicker than me and the nylon line was rapidly wrapping itself around the shaft of the wind generator, so my rod was unravelling into the generator and the fish hook was rapidly approaching the boat heading to the same place. The line snapped off the rod, and the rest of the line jammed the rotor shaft on the the generator and it ground to a halt. this was all very similar to getting a floating bit of rope wrapped around the prop shaft. Bugger.
So I climbed up over the pushpit up to the generator and started to unravel the rope, I had to use some rope to tie the generator away from the wind, as its wind vane was pushing it towards me and at the wrong angle to unwind the line from its rotor axle.
Eventually with Tim tailing, I got all the line removed and recovered the fishing hook and spinner. all that was left to do now was untie the rope and let the windmill get back to making electricity. As I undid the rope, the windmill picked up the wind, start spinning and spun around, it could have been very dangerous, but fortunately, my head was handy to fit in between the rotor blades and stop the rotation dead. Bloody hell did that hurt, it “could have had my eye out”, luckily it just missed my eye and whacked me on the cheekbone, I was sure there was going to be a lot of damage and blood involved, but no, it will only be a bruise I expect. I won’t be doing that again.  That incident has pushed the bag snatch incident down to number two in my chart of bad happenings in Malaysia.

I took her back into the marina a few minutes later, as I’m still getting the feel for her, and did a great job berthing, but messed up at the last minute by jumping ashore to help Tim tie up just when a gust blew the bow down and out of reach before we had a bow line ashore. It was only a minor glitch, just disappointed that I didn’t think it through properly in advance.

Tonight we had rice and chicken in a very local Malaysian restaurant and with a few drinks the whole meal was less than £4 each.

Tomorrow we plan to head over to Rebak Island Marina if we can get everything sorted here.

 

Paul C.

It’s a great spot here in the marina, no passing traffic, and furtherst from the shore. The only ugly bit is the concrete breakwater to our stern, but there’s loads of room to turn.

Today was survey day, John the surveyor actually had a job on the boat next to us, so he did us in the afternoon. Tim and I spent the morning cleaning up and making the boat a bit tidier. The survey went well, a few small items were marked as needing attention, but they will take me an hour to sort out or two to fix. John also provided a lot of useful tips I hadn’t known about, such as a possible way to get double the water out of our watermaker.

Later we had a lazy time around the swimming pool; well it is hard work watching a surveyor all afternoon. I was able to record four monkeys on the balcony above the pool.

Later we went to dinner at wonderland food store, which is well known in these parts as one of the best Chinese restaurants. The food was great, but my sea bass just didn’t seem at all  pleased with the setup.

Tomorrow we are supposed to leave this marina and head off somewhere, but I have so much to organise, that we might stay another day.

I started this entry last night, but all that swimming and eating had me exhausted, so didn’t get around to it until now. Will start todays blogs later.

Nice lazy day today, slept in till 9:30, Tim cooked eggs and toast for breakfast, then we went shopping at the chandlers and had a bit of a walk around. Chandelry isn’t great here, they only stock fast moving items, and stuff for local working boats. Still I got some signal halyard (small rope) which we needed after the courtesy flag halyard fell apart. We ended up in a supermarket / shopping mall and stocked up, diet coke for me, and tiger beer for Tim.

Always good fun looking at the local wares

After shopping, back to the boat for a salad lunch while we let the sun push west, then once it was cool enough I scooted up the mast and replaced the halyard. I took a few pictures while I was up there.

After a swim in the club pool, we headed into town for diner.
more pictures tomorrow

Paul  C

So we left the marina in Batu Uban on Penang at about midday on Saturday and headed south around Jerajak Island, then north and through the centre of the old bridge to the mainland. We had several options for the route, it wasn’t possible to complete the trip in one 12  hour stint of daylight passage, firstly because we didn’t think we could rely on any more than 5 knots for planning purposes, and also because we couldn’t time a 7:30 departure with slack water and not low water, which would put us aground. As it turned out we averaged over 6.5 knots for most of the journey, she is quite a fast boat, however I’m not sure I understand if the prop/gearing is right, as she wont go past 2200RPM in gear, but will happily rev past 3500 in neutral, this doesn’t seem right, but I need to read up on the engine and prop to understand better.
The first option was to motor to Georgetown, just 2 hours away, anchor overnight and pick up fuel there and dinghy ashore for dinner on the old Chinese jetties, the other option which we took was to plough on and do a 7 hour passage to Songsong island, anchor, have a swim and dinner there, overnight, then head of after breakfast. Pulau (Island) Songsong is forbidden for visitors, I think it might be a military place, but just looked like a lovely little forested island with a small beach. I think day trippers go out there, but it’s pretty much deserted overnight.

Pulau Songsong

We had a swim, then Tim cooked up some dinner with the scraps of food we had on board, and had a relaxing evening. It was hot, no aircon, so I lay in bed sweating, but was so tired I passed out about midnight, woken about 3AM by someone screaming out on channel 16, nothing to do with us, but I think I turned the radio off, and went back to bed, did I say it was hot! While we had dinner, a couple of fishermen turned up and lay a net a few hundred meters long around the coast, quite close to us, just before I went to bed they returned, and I watched them haul in quite a few fish, they used headlights strapped to there heads, Im that has a proper name, the result was weird in the darkness, sometimes when the both looked in my direction it was like car headlights coming my way, other times there were two flashing cyclops doing a strange dance with occasional glimpses of a net with fish in it. Once they had hauled the net they then relaid it, even closer to our boat, I was a bit worried they may lay it over our anchor, but all turned out well.

The next morning we headed north west towards our destination of the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club,  where we will have a base for a few days. We chose to go through a group of islands on the way as it was quite direct. The main island is called Pulau Paya and is a nature reserve where anchoring is forbidden, but day tripper boats take people out. There’s lots of snorkelling there due to the very lear waters and lots of Coral.

 

Lots of fishing boats around all the time, much bigger ones as we got further north.

We arrived at the marina around 15:00, but the tidal flow was meant to be at it’s worst at that time, so we motored around the harbour taking in the views for an hour while we leisurely rigged the boat for the marina and tried to see how fast the tide was flowing. being in a marina being dragged one way by a 4 knot current can be quite trying. As it stands we are on Neap tides which are quite gentle, so we decided to pop our bow into the marina and see how it was. We were given a berth with lots of turning room and the whole operation went off very well, didn’t even get to use the bow thruster. The biggest problem was a lack of cleats on the pontoon.

All in all it was a good trip, however the winds were too light to do much sailing, we got the main up for a bit, but realised we dont have a kicking strap. I looked at our documentation for the dutchman gybe preventer, which shows it acting as a kicking strap, and assumed that needed to be set up, but it turns out we have a different model. So the kicking strap is missing, and whats worse I can’t see any attachment points on mast or boom.
The engine performed very well, very quite and quite fuel efficient. Much as I’m grateful to be here in the marina with the Aircon keeping us cool, I hate traveling with one on the coach roof strapped down, make me feel like I’m in an old RV, not a glorious yacht.
Radar and SSB worked well, as did the navtex, the Autopilot did most of the steering, and besides it overcompensating slighty, i.e, it was driving like it had a g&t too many, it was very simple to setup and use.
Realised we don’t have a ball and cone, legal requirements for motor sailing and being at anchor, I’m sure I can pick them up here.

More to follow, need to sleep now in the lovely cool bunk.

 

Paul C.

We put the mainsail up today, I wanted to check it was ok, water seems to collect in it, in the bag, but it was all ok.

We also lost the ugly tarp and put a sun bleached, weakened canopy up, looks better but may shred in the first gust.
Next we headed off into town for a lovely Indian lunch and a walk around some sights.

We had a look at the jetties, trying to spot the fuel barge and a spot to anchor tomorrow night.


Lots of cats around the jetties.


Taxi back to the boat, and a shower on the pontoon, we have water restored to the marina now, then off to supertanker for some lovely Chinese food.

In the morning we will check the tides, if I have things right, I think we can leave soon after low water and either anchor off georgetown, in the Junk anchorage, or motor direct to some islands a few hours further on. We will then anchor overnight and on Sunday push onto Langkawi

Paul C.

Got a taxi into town to collect Tim this morning and we came back to the boat, I also picked up some sikaflex, in particular a tube of 290 for the decks, I hate this stuff, but there are a few bits of planking in the cockpit need touching up.

Tim seemed suitably impressed with the boat. We walked down the coast to the Queensbay mall for some provisions, came back and started to make some plans, Tim had a nap while I investigated the self deflating dinghy, I think it may be a lost cause, air hissing out of several seams.
Later we popped out to the local Malaysian restaurant had a nice dinner.

So a not too busy day really.

Took a few pictures

Paul C

Tim is here and the boats ready to go.

I fixed the last of the leaks this morning, it’s good for now, but will redo it when I have more time. Went to the shops and stocked up on drinking water and booze for Tim. I’m having the odd Shandy (1% alcohol) which is the closest I can get to non alcoholic beer.
Later I gave the boat a thorough tidy up, put all the tools away, now she’s looking finished. There’s still a stack of things to do, like sort out the water maker and the self steering, but these can be done at leisure from a nice spot somewhere else. We have everything we need now to get going.

So off to the airport to get Tim this evening, that all went well with the exception of our taxi driver getting pulled over for infringing some taxi rule. It seems he was able to pay an on the spot fine here, and there was no need for any paperwork, the local police can be very helpful at times.

So Tim and I went for some food in a local Chinese restaurant, fish noodle soup type thing. Very nice, then dropped Tim back at the hotel so he can get a decent nights sleep after a very long journey.

It was great to see Tim here, and I don’t know why I didn’t take any pictures of him arriving, I expect there will be plenty to follow.

Back at the marina, they have been loading up one of the Jabatan Laut ships with new buoys ready to be planted out there somewhere in Malaysian waters.

Paul C.

Woke to find a note that the water was being shut off in the marina because of a leak, but they had already shut it off by then. Im not sure why they did it this way, I think it had been leaking for ages, so a little bit more notice so we could all fill our water tanks would have helped. Still I have enough in the tanks for what I need, just can’t take showers on the pontoon, or hose the deck down, will have to resort to heaving buckets of sea water up.

So on testing my repair from yesterday, I found it was still leaking water, not a lot, but any is too much. I realise now that I just didn’t do the repair very well, I was running low on sealant, and spread it to thin, I did apply a generous amount of optimism, but that didn’t seem to be water resistant, I need to strip it all down again, much harder because the sealant I used will make it very difficult to disassemble. The problem stems from the piece of wood that sits on the cap rail isn’t flat, and it has to deal with the curve of the coaming, so it needs a lot of sealant, far too much actually and it might be best to file and sand down the wood until it is a snugger fit. All of this is a big job, so I very reluctantly did a bit of a bodge repair, I need to wait until the morning to fully tighten up the parts and re-test, I’m hopeful this will work for a while, but it’s staying on my todo list.

I bought 20 litres of fuel for our trip at the weekend (22p / litre), just to have some emergency fuel on board, I have half a tank which should be enough, but we will refuel from a fuel barge on the way anyway.

I re-sprayed the Icom HF SSB case as it was very rusty from the leak dripping onto the case for the last year or more. It  looks quite smart now, but then it is black and kept in a dark corner with the lights low. Under these conditions, my paint jobs are just about acceptable. So the chart table area is looking great now.  We have MF/HF SSB, VHF Radio,  Radar and NAvTex, soon to be joined by iPad chart plotter and AIS Transponder which I have ordered direct from the Chinese manufacturer.

It the start of Ramadan here, which means lots of big bangs going off all night, not really sure how that works, but it’s keeping me alert.

Tim arrives tomorrow, so I have to get the boat back into a presentable form, and buy some supplies.

I took a walk and got some nice pics in the setting sun.

Paul C.

 

At least I hope so. I was able to re-bed the second leaking prism in next to no time. Easier now I understood the way they are fitted, but also it was overcast most of the day, and consequently a lot cooler.
Next onto the final leak in the quarter berth, squirting the hose around the deck soon produced a dribble onto the shelf inside. So down with the headlinings (Ceiling panels) and it didn’t take long to find it was coming in from the double block behind the Genoa winch

What was sad, was that somebody had spent time trying to stop the leak, they had identified that it was the bolts on the block that were letting water in, and had covered the heads of the bolts with sealant, and when that didn’t work, they had put gunk on the inside of the boat on the end of the bolts, all this did was cause the water to build up inside the deck area and cause crevice corrosion on the leaking bolt. I had an idea that the problem might actually be the seal between the wooden backing base and the deck, so by gently pouring water along the cap rail/deck I was able to see it dribbling into the quarter berth. So off with the block, then off with the backing block, lots of clean up and then reverse, but doing it properly this time.

The wooden base pad is back on, and tomorrow I will refit the double block (pulleys) then hopefully that’s the leaks sorted for a while.
That was about it for the day, I have a couple of days to finish off this job, and clean up the boat before Tim arrives. I’m expecting to spend a few days exploring Penang with Tim before we head off to Langkawi, that will be the first test of the boat since I bought her. I’m looking forward to it, however getting out of the marina will probably be the hardest part.

Paul C

 

Sunday, so a little lie in, then onto the leaks, I decided to do the port one first, as this was easy, and I could learn what not to do one this one before I tackle the important one, which had leaked all over the SSB, fortunately only damaging the case. So I first poured water over the prism on the deck to make sure I could see the leak, and sure enough water was dripping below, I had already covered the sofa ready for the work. Sometimes where the water drips out in the boat is nowhere near where it enters, so this was a good result. I removed the fittings below and above then found the prism was very easy to prise out with a sharp blade. The prisms are like free light bulbs, they take the sunlight and retransmit it around the inside of the boat, simple, but very effective.

The hole / recess in the deck was full of sealing compound of some kind, but it hadn’t set very well, and it hadn’t adhered to the glass, or to the fiberglass very well, hence the leak. there’s a ragged lip that the glass sits on, it’s not a very satisfactory arrangement at all, but if the sealant adheres, it should be watertight.

So I cleaned it all up, and de-greased the surfaces and the glass with acetone, filled it all with sikaflex 291, and re-bedded the glass.

I know that in the UK, this would be bullet proof, but I’m a bit worried that the Sikaflex might struggle to set with the high temperatures here. I will test it with the hose pipe in the morning, and if it works, at least it’s better than it was. It looks awful when you look closely, but when I checked the existing prisms around the boat, they are much worse. I think I can do a better job on the next one.

The last job of the day was to sand down the case of the SSB Radio, the leaking prism had caused rust to appear all over it, I hacked the rust off with a file in places, eventually I got a fairly smooth shiny case back. Tomorrow I plan to prime and spray the case black.  It’s only the case that saw any damage, the inside of the SSB looks like new, so it was worth a go to spruce its appearance up.
Then off to the Mall to buy some food for dinner, (Salmon, weird mushrooms, pepper, garlic, onion and spuds) and some tools, masking tape and black paint.

I took the cycle path and noticed it was very busy with people down the beach, chilling or fishing, but mostly taking selfies. I am seriously concerned about the number of pictures being taken around the world 24/7, where can we keep them all, who is going to sort them, It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Low water I guess. Was going to make a joke about Tsunamis, but this area was hit by the 2004 one, not badly, but I think lots of people where affected one way or another

More leak fixing tomorrow, a bit of painting, then I need to start tidying up and getting ready for Tim’s arrival. By the weekend we should be heading out to sea to do what this boat was designed for, can’t wait to try diving off the bow sprit while anchored in a quiet remote spot.

PS, theres a mosquito flying around the cabin, he looks a bit dazed, but I bet that wont stop him having his dinner 🙁

Paul C