Today Erik and I took the boat out for a quick spin and to move her to a new pontoon.
Basically the marina needs dredging, there is only about 0.5 metres of water there, so you need a tide of 1.5 meters to be sure of getting out, 2.0m is more practical (Wanderlust draws about 6ft), so this means leaving on a high tide. Unfortunately, we want to be at the haul-out two hours before HW so we can haul-out, power wash, check the hull, and relaunch. So today we moved to an outside pontoon at the end of the marina that always has enough water for us to float.
Before we left Erik wanted help to change the flap valve on the head (Toilet for non-yachties),
I pointed out that I had a rule of only fixing heads on my own boat normally, but the the opportunity to be doing this on the other side of the world was too much to resist, I was reminded of the saying that owning a yacht is really only a way to spend your life repairing boats, but in nice places.
Getting out was fun, we basically had to get a few neighbours to guide us out using ropes attached to our bow and stern, it was very tight, but fortunately we were at slack water and the wind had dropped to a gentle breeze.
Once out we soon realised there was very little power going into propulsion, mostly going out the exhaust as black smoke. Erik couldn’t understand how the rudder worked in reverse, I had explained how it could be used as a random number generator for the lottery when in reverse, but even so, he was surprised. I suspect it was even worse than normal due to all the fouling.
We had a little motor around and then back to our new home where we tied up. We were only able to make about 3 knots in fwd, so it’s going to take a couple of hours to cover the 6 mile trip to the yard on Monday.
An experiment with video and wordpress.
Finally as sunset approached, we cleaned up the boat a bit and headed home, me to a fifteen minute taxi ride into George town, and Erik, a 10 second walk to his home, a Benateau 40 something just along the pontoon. I took a last picture of the old bridge from this island of Penang over to the mainland town of Butterworth. On Monday we have to pass through the arches at the centre of the new bridge, further south, which isn’t on any of our charts.
Last night I braved the backstreet restaurant scene with a little trepidation, but given that this is considered to be one of the greatest culinary destinations of Asia, I felt I had to get stuck in at the deep end.
Everyone seems to speak english to a certain level here, so how I picked a Malaysian only speaking resaurant for my choice is beyond me.
I think the word Seafood tricked me, however I resorted to the universal sign language, I waved my arms in the air and looked confused, lots of strange words were shouted out by the staff, and two Malay ladies came to my rescue from the next table, not only did they help me work out an order, they joined me at my table and extracted my life story over the next half hour. They were here on holiday from Kuala Lumpa. One of the women was at university studying avionics engineering, we discussed the level of maths on such a course, and why so few women studied engineering. Their takeaway arrived and I stayed for a fantastic dish of Fish, mixed vegtables rice, and a sauce that looked innocuous, but however had hidden chilies that must be the strongest I have ever had. Bye bye taste buds.