A very good nights sleep, I think jet lag has passed now.
So straight out at 9AM to remove some lettering on the bow I forgot about and to remove some hideous fender marks, in fact more like dissolved fender than marks. Now the topsides look reasonable, at some point they will need a good polish but that can wait, perhaps Fiji is good for polishing boats ;-).
The hull painting zoomed along today, they moved the boat supports and applied all the missing layers there, I expect the painting to complete tomorrow. Then it’s just down to fitting the cutless bearing. I also need a seacock replacing, so I’m hoping that will all happen tomorrow as well.
I spent the afternoon inside cleaning the galley, it’s looking good now. The cooker came up well, but to use a software analogy, I only worked on the user interface, the back end and middleware are still full of bugs. (Am I mixing my metaphors and analogies now).
Found some droppings in the cupboards, but old and small, important as that’s the best way to understand infestations. I’m pretty sure whoever was living here ran out of food and left. I haven’t seen or heard anything since I got here, however the huge lizard that ran up the wall as I sat down on the marina loo caused me to jump, to be fair I don’t think he was mad on me either.
Must say the engineers here at the yard know their stuff, the owner of the yard showed me a printout of a power point presentation of the investigation they did on my bubbling epoxy, they think the problem was due to gasification, but I won’t bore you with the details. I think the reason they haven’t done the cutless yet is down to time and how busy the mechanical engineers are. The picture below shows the old bearing, they showed me the replacement, which looks lovely. For those who aren’t experts on cutless bearings, this bit sits in a hole at the back of the boat and the propeller shaft sticks out through this, it supports the shaft, and also lubricates it via the groves with sea water, so the grit in the water doesn’t cut up the rubber, i.e. it cuts less, nothing to do with pirates swords, although I would prefer it if it was, Arghhh.
The yard was very busy today, several boats were launched and several more hauled out. I thought I would try my time lapse on one launch, but sadly they had a leak when they lowered the boat, so the video ends without the boat steaming off into the sunset. Hopefully I can work on this.
Click here for the video launch-1
Found a better access point for the wifi today so can upload more pics now.
I’m writing this after having another great local meal, huge prawns and rice for 7 ringgit with fried egg for an extra ringgit ( 5 ringgits to the £1, Chinese ice tea type drink for 1 ringgit called “flowers” I think, all in a very friendly Chinese restaurant, which looked quite intimidating for me as I’m the only westerner in town, and get a lot of stares, but the owner made me feel very welcome, asking where I was from, apparently Liverpool FC are into the Europa cup final?, they know more about it than me, but they’re very happy to meet someone from the city. I forgot to mention, my taxi driver the other day played for Malaysia, at Wembley, he also played at Old Trafford, he was a football star in his day, strangely Tony, who varnished Stardust in St Lucia, represented his country at the London Marathon.
My Fine Dining destination for the night
I took this picture on the way home, it’s a shrine, Buddhist I think, inside the boatyard.
Maybe tomorrow they will fit the cutless bearing and seacock, then we are ready to launch, still haven’t decided where to go yet, either Batu Uban, or Straits Quay.
Paul C.