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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.

Wednesday 31st August was Malaysia’s Independence Day, known as Merdeka Day, when Malaysia gained independence from British colonisation in 1957.  The whole of August builds up to this day, with the Malaysian flag proudly displayed in shops, in windows and on balconies, and celebratory processions and performances are advertised on billboards for the day itself. It’s a national holiday, but not for shops, supermarkets and restaurants where it’s business as usual only busier.  In the spirit of joining in with the holiday, we took things a bit easier for most of the day (me a little more than Paul if I’m honest), and headed to the Queensbay Mall early in the evening. It had rained for most of the day and was still falling when we left but it was warm and not unpleasant to walk in for half an hour, though our friendly gate guard produced an umbrella when he spotted us leaving and insisted that Paul take it.  It kept collapsing on him all the way there and he pondered on how to fix it for most of the way.  We heard music coming from the entrance as we got near the mall and discovered a keep fit dance event taking place in the foyer in celebration of Merdeka Day. It was really entertaining to watch – Paul filmed a bit of it and will hopefully put it on his blog at some point.

Each time we’ve visited the mall in the three weeks we’ve been here we have looked with interest at the stalls selling moon cakes.  They look delicious and it was clear that they were food linked to a sense of occasion, like mince pies or easter eggs.  It was also clear they were very popular. I’d read it was a Chinese tradition to do with the Mid-Autumn festival but from the queues at the stalls, and the amount of money changing hands we wondered if there was a connection to Merdeka Day.  Deciding it was time to see what the fuss was all about we chose a stall and agreed to buy a tin with four moon cakes.  There are lots of different flavoured-fillings which turned out to be quite glutinous in texture, and are encased in a thick pastry (they look a little like pork pies).  We spent some time choosing four flavours for 50 ringitt (£10), (durian, fruit and nut, pumpkin, and red bean paste).  All I can say is, they look a lot better than they taste, we have three going spare if anyone’s interested – nice tin though!

On Thursday, Paul was out most of the morning sorting out parts for the bowsprit, so later on, when it was time to go to Batu Maung to collect the frame from the welder I went with him. This small town is quite a run-down looking place, a dusty industrial area with the main street creating the impression of streets seen in Western movies.  Once we’d collected the frame from the industrial estate, we went for a drink in one of the roadside cafes.  We got more outright stares in this town than anywhere else we’ve been, but we must have looked odd – a Western couple walking around with a cumbersome metal frame…and then we sat right next to the smouldering giant joss sticks that had been part of the recent ‘Hungry Ghost Festival’ so the wind blew thick smoke into our eyes and throats.

Friday, and a good deal of Saturday were spent doing the final bits of work on getting the bowsprit polished, cleaned and put back together, as well as ticking off other jobs from the large ‘to do’ list.  Early in the evening on Saturday we took a taxi to George Town to eat out, having looked up some vegetarian places beforehand.  We had a look around The Times Square Mall when we arrived. It was one of the few places Paul hadn’t been to before. The Chinese design and decoration of the place was spectacular! Artificial, but elegant and stylish trees adorned the floors, with flowers and bridges in the middle. Most of the lavish, ‘airport style’ shops were empty, some not even open, yet quite a few were advertising for staff.  It’s hard to see how they make any money, but again, building was going on to create more shops.

It was twilight when we came out of the mall and such a lovely, atmospheric light. This, and the breeze coming off the sea made ideal walking conditions so we took the long way round to the restaurant area, taking in George Town’s back streets.  The quiet, residential streets have a unique charm in that there is no uniformity in the architecture of the small shops and houses.  Places we’d walked before in the searing heat of day looked entirely different in the evening.  Little India was our destination, but not for Indian food this time. We’d picked out half a dozen options from a google search and the one I favoured was the second one we came upon (the first being closed), called The Leaf Healthy Recipes.  Inside, it looked like an English tea room but the smells were mouthwateringly Asian.  The waiter left us a couple of menus with pictures and descriptions of the dishes, and a pad to fill out our choices on (a great way to get over communication difficulties). I loved the fact that the drinks menu boasted no added sugar or ice – my main problem with most non-alcoholic drinks on offer has been their sickly sweetness and the fact they contain enough ice to make it a sweet ‘slush’. We opted for a tapas-like array of different dishes to try and share as many as possible of the delicious range. The Tom Yam soup was a bit spicy but the Pumpkin Mee and the side orders were wonderful.

We intended to go straight back afterwards but as we approached the promenade to find a taxi, we noticed the park lit up, with clusters of people gathered to look at something, so crossed over to take a look.  It turned out to be the Buddy Bear Tour (details in a pic below).  149 bear statues arranged in a circle, standing shoulder to shoulder, arms up, representing various countries of the world to promote world peace and harmony. Each bear is decorated with a different design and in the middle of them all stands a huge wire bear lit up with light that changes colour. It was a lovely atmosphere: lots of families, vendors selling night toys for the children, food and drink but no alcohol, so no loud, drunk people and hardly anyone smokes outdoors in Malaysia. I found it to be so much more enjoyable than some of the crowded events and festivals I’ve attended in other places. A great way to end a night out, and I had a glass of wine or two to look forward to when we got back to the boat 🙂

Kathy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The title is what Buddhist temple Kek Lok Si translates as. It’s also said to be the biggest one in Malaysia, so on Tuesday we got up early to pay it a visit.  The temple sits on a hilltop and the ascent to reach it is a gradual one.  The steps of the stairway are typically dilapidated, and on either side the whole way up, a multitude of shops and stalls provide a welcome distraction from the climb.  The vendors pounce on you as you approach, to urge you to ‘buy something’ from the various souvenirs, clothes, food and drink on offer.  A polite ‘just looking’ doesn’t deter them as they are determined to tell you how good the cloth of a certain T shirt is, or about the good value/bargain/handmade quality of their wares.  They are very friendly though and it wasn’t in the least bit annoying.  Paul did actually want to get a small wooden buddha for Sister Midnight but the ones shown to him were in a set of six. We figured we’d probably see more buddhas before the day ended.  We hadn’t gone far when we came to ‘The Liberation Pond’, a sacred pond for tortoises. There were loads of them, all shapes and sizes and it’s possible to buy food to drop in the water for them. Apparently people will buy a captive turtle in order to release it into the pond for good luck.

The walk up was a pleasant one. It wasn’t crowded, it was bearably hot, as opposed to debilitatingly so, with plenty to look at on the way.  Each level of the complex has something to recommend it. The flower gardens and fish ponds are beautiful and of course, there is a plethora of stately statues, buddhas and incense-fragrant shrines.  Several of the temples sell religious paraphernalia to raise money for ongoing construction and maintenance.  This was obvious from the scaffolding and building materials on show: apparently the largest temple in Malaysia is still growing!  The view from the top of the seven-tier pagoda was wonderful, and luckily it was a clear day so it was possible to see it at its best.

 

After resting for a while, we moved on to the second part of the visit.  The bronze Kuan Yin Statue is reached by taking a funicular lift up to its location on a hillside opposite Kek Lok Si. The ticket office was at the back of a large shop, packed with all the usual gifts and trinkets, but it also had an array of more interesting and unusual ‘stuff’: ornately-carved wooden table decorations, chinese boxes, tibetan jewellery, cloths etc.  A great place to browse.  It was a very short ride but again, a great view of Penang on the way up.  Kuan Yin (The Goddess of Mercy) is housed in an octagon-shaped pavilion and there were other shrines and pagodas in the area as well as a lovely garden with a bridge and waterfall (ideal as a resting place before the descent).

The walk down was hard on legs already tired from walking and standing for such a long period in the heat. I kept thinking a beer would be very welcome once we got to Air Itam, the town at the bottom of the hill. In Anthony Burgess’s book ‘The Long Day Wanes’ Tiger Beer seems to be plentiful in Malaysia – not so here.  Even cafes with signs outside advertising Carlsberg or Tiger don’t have it, so I made do with a coke while we waited for the taxi to pick us up.

Kathy

 

 

 

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.

On Saturday 27th we marked two weeks of being here in Batu Uban. It’s gone really quickly and we may well be here another week or two, so as we’d spent the previous couple of days on the boat we decided to get out and see some more of what Penang has to offer.  It had been dull and overcast most of the day but when we set off at around 4, it was cool and a few spots of rain were falling. It’s difficult to predict the frequency and heaviness of the rain on days like that so for the first time since arriving, I got my raincoat out.

As we approached the marina entrance to wait for the taxi, we heard bird noises that were very much like the sound cuckoos make.  I spotted two beautiful yellow birds in the tree opposite the hut and we stopped to get a closer look at them.  Our friendly gate guard noticed us and smilingly informed us we’d need a licence to catch those birds.  I don’t think he was joking 🙂 We told him we just wanted to look at them and a few minutes later he came out to present us with a mango! It seems if he can’t persuade us to have a kitten or a bird he can at least make us a gift of a mango. When we told the taxi driver our destination, I had the feeling he was mildly amused.  I wondered if The Reclining Buddha at Wat Chayamangkalaram Temple is one of the places schoolchildren get taken to as a matter of course.  He said it had been many years since he’d seen it.  Without fail, the taxi drivers have been genuinely interested in us, our boat, where we come from, where we’re going etc. One of them even asked if he could have a look at it when he dropped us off. He was so thrilled to be invited on board and he asked Paul lots of questions about the boat before politely asking if he could take pictures and then got me to take one of him with Paul.  Not the usual run of the mill taxi experience – and the fares are cheap too.

The rain that had begun when we set off had stopped by the time we got there, and it was deliciously cool and bright (ideal conditions for walking around). We only had 20 minutes before the temple closed so we went straight in. I’d read that this Buddha was big but it was still an incredible sight.

I was impressed by the walls of the building, which were lined with square compartments for the ashes of loved ones. The ashes are inside elegantly decorated vases behind perspex covers, with a picture and description of the deceased on the front.

We spent an hour or so looking at a plethora of shrines, statues, and carvings before moving on to the Burmese temple across the road.  This one had ornate gardens, and a corridor with paintings portraying events in the life of the Buddha.

In stark contrast to the historical and reverent atmosphere of Buddhist temples, the plush and upscale Gurney Plaza was our next destination. It’s been put together very well and seems to be popular with visitors – although some of the designer shops were noticeably empty – but like most malls it could be anywhere in the world.  We visited all of its 9 (!!) floors, mainly to get to the top and check out the view. It took quite a while to get up there but the view was worth it.

In my quest to become proficient in Asian cooking I’ve been gathering recommended ‘staple’ ingredients, as listed in a book on the subject.  One product, however, is proving so difficult to get hold of, it’s become something of a mission to find it and has led to puzzled or bemused looks when we’ve asked for it.  It’s ‘black bean paste’ (not to be confused with sauce). It exists, but so far no shop or supermarket has had it in stock, and the likely-looking Waitrose style shop in the mall was no exception. It was nice to browse in it though.  It was also nice to sit in the bar on the ground floor and have a drink listening to live music being played in the square. The seafront promenade is adjacent, giving the place a festive, ‘seaside’ atmosphere.

 

Gurney drive is also well-known for its open air hawker food court and this is where we ended the evening.  It’s a huge area consisting of mostly Chinese street food vendors. The smells emanating from them were mouthwatering and we were both hungry by then so we decided to seek out some veggie options from the wide variety of dishes on offer.  This was easy – lots of the stalls turned out to be vegetarian and it was a great eating out experience.  After double-checking with a stern-faced but very efficient lady about the ingredients (mainly that there was no fish because some places have deemed fish to be vegetarian) we settled on Tom Yam and then had to choose our noodle sizes. If she could have said ‘hurry up’ she would have, but her manner wasn’t rude, she was just ‘busy’. We sat at a table in the middle of a very lively and crowded street and Paul got us drinks from a separate stall. The man cooking the food had such a tiny area to work in, and considering how busy it was we didn’t have too long to wait before our absolutely gorgeous meals were brought to us.

The search for black bean paste continues.

Kathy

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

The past week has been all about tasks and chores relating to ongoing maintenance, and cosmetic jobs which have been neglected due to time and situation constraints.  Paul has been up early most mornings when it’s cooler working on the bowsprit, as well as doing more sanding and varnishing, while I’ve worked on the interior of the cabin and polishing the steel from the cap rails with Brasso.  It’s got a lot cooler during the course of the week and there has been a lot of rain. The preceding nightly storms consisted of distant rumbles of thunder and hours of flickering lightning.  For the first time, last Saturday afternoon, it was possible to sit in the cockpit and enjoy the fresh breeze while watching the raindrops bounce off the water before it got heavier and forced us inside.  The slight drop in temperature made it a lot more comfortable to work in, both above and below deck.  Here are some shots of the interior (still a work in progress).

There is quite a community spirit in this marina. Paul got to know a few of the permanent residents when he was here earlier in the year. They have been very helpful, providing Paul with useful local information and driving him to places, while he’s been able to help them with some technical and boat-related issues.  The marina entrance has a little hut for the guard on duty (it’s manned 24 hours a day) and all of them get to know the boat owners because we’re passing in and out daily. There is a family of cats in residence by the hut (a mum and her kittens) but I’m not sure if they belong anyone in particular or anyone at all. I look for them each time we pass and one guard has got to know this – he always laughs and says ‘you want one, you take’.  Paul always answers for me and declines the offer, but they are so gorgeous, it’s hard to resist.

Most evenings we walk to one of the nearby supermarkets so that we’re not on the boat all day and as they are both a mile or two away it’s a chance to get some exercise.  The only difficult part on these walks is crossing the roads. The main roads are very busy with no facilities for pedestrians apart from a few faded zebras which are largely ignored unless you happen to catch an approaching driver’s eye and look appealingly at them to slow down.  Otherwise you take your chance with the rare gaps and run for it – like a game of ‘chicken’! Before we get to that part, though, the walks are scenic and pleasant. We hear cicadas in the undergrowth, frogs on the water and pass beaches and leafy lanes.

 

I’m going to be learning a lot about the food on offer in the supermarkets. So far, I’ve managed to keep to my mainly vegan diet and I’m keen to try some of the exotic-looking fruit and veg on display.  I also need to get to grips with cooking tofu. We’ve had some nice dishes in restaurants where it is one of the main ingredients but whenever I’ve tried to cook it, it’s been bland and the texture hasn’t been right. I thought there was  a lot of different types in the UK (silken, firm, soft etc) but here there are lots more variations!  I made a stir fry dish with it the other night using mirin, ginger and soy sauce as a marinade and that was ok but I’ve got a lot to learn.  I’ll need to start by identifying the veg, herbs and other unheard of ingredients that are listed in recipes in the book of Vegetarian Chinese Cooking I’ve bought (‘wood ear fungus’, ‘dried lily buds’, and ‘wolfberries’ make it sound more like a spell from Harry Potter than a meal). It’s already been a fun ‘treasure hunt’ tracking down the list of suggested basics on the shelves.

I haven’t missed television at all. I would probably have watched the Bake Off and some of the crime dramas, but at home I mainly watch Netflix or Amazon Prime programmes anyway.  We’ve discovered that we can access Netflix here but it uses a lot of bandwidth – it was like having to ‘put a shilling in the meter’ every half an hour to continue watching :). The radio is good entertainment and I can listen to the book and film programmes I enjoy and ‘Johnnie Walker’s Sounds of the Seventies’ to my heart’s content (usually while Paul’s busy on deck).  Reading remains my favourite leisure activity and I’m adding to the small library of books onboard each time we go out and I spot a second hand book shop. This marina doesn’t have a laundry service like the one in Langkawi so I washed a few things by hand the other day, rinsing them with the hose on the pontoon. Needless to say they didn’t take long to dry, and nothing needs ironing, which is nice ;).

On Wednesday we went back into George Town, making the most of a break from the rain and to have a change of scene.  We didn’t have a strict itinerary apart from my desire to see the Beach Street area where the focus is on animal welfare.  It was nice to just slowly walk the streets, going wherever looked interesting to check out the architecture, the shops and exhibitions. It was a very humid day and after a couple of hours of this I began to feel weak and dizzy. I didn’t know if I was hungry, thirsty or overcome with heat but I had to sit down and wait for Paul who was further down the street buying a pump for the air conditioner.  He suggested we head to the Black Kettle for a rest and refreshment. One glass of wine, a sit down and some pricey bread later, I felt fine again. Later, we came to the area near Beach Street purely by accident.  Too tired to visit the actual cat sanctuary which was further on (I’ll save that for another day), we spent some time looking at the street art and browsing in the ‘hippy-themed’ shops.  It’s a picturesque and fascinating hotchpotch of streets and alleys that reminded me a little of Brighton’s Lanes.

That evening we had the heaviest downpour of rain yet, but the day in George Town had so exhausted me I was asleep on the bunk while Paul went up above to watch it.  He said it was so heavy, the paths and boat decks looked white and shimmering like they were covered in snow.  I’m sure there will be more opportunities to see that while we’re here.

Kathy

 

 

 

 

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

I started on the bowsprit early because the epoxy was taking to long to get hard and sandable on the cap rail repairs, so rather than finish that I jumped into the stripping the bowsprit. This required removing the anchor, then it’s chain, as I thought this would be a good time to inspect it all and check out what the little cable ties signified. The PO used an interesting system. After the first ten metres of chain goes out there are 5 cable ties over a few chain links, or at least there would be if one hadn’t broken off at some point. These 5 mean that there are another 50 metres of chain available. Then after another 10 metres has gone out there are 4 cable ties, indicating that there are 40 metres of chain left. This continues to near the end of the chain, where there is one cable tie on the chain, indicating 10 metres left, which in fact is more like 5. I like to work out how much chain I need to put out, so say I’m anchoring in 4 metres of water, I want 5 times as much chain, that’s called a scope of 5:1, so I put 20 metres out, I think that is the same as saying I have 40 metres left, not the most intuitive system.   I have some lovely bright Day-Glo fluorescent cable ties I will add to the chain, 1 for 10 metres out, 2, for 20 etc etc.

So today and yesterday was all about preparing the bowsprit for varnish, Kathy stayed indoors mostly enjoying the cooler climate, and helping with jobs below. There was fun last night when the power went to the pontoons, and when we yachties tried to reset it the master trip kept blowing, so we ended up disconnecting boats to find the offender, which we did in the end, but not before we had upset one of the residents here, but that’s another story.

Tomorrow I hope to get the first coat of varnish on the rail and bowsprit, but first we have to clean out the chain locker while the chain and rope are out. That should be fun, I believe it contains several inches of sea bed samples (mud) from everywhere between Hawaii and Penang, and who knows what might be in that mud. You can take it as read that Kathy wont be digging through the mud 😉

Hoping to do some more sightseeing on Tuesday, perhaps a trip to the big park / funicular railway up the hill.

Paul C.