New berth for the Sister

I was up late last night, so decided to have a lie in this morning. Once up, I realised it was Friday, and a quiet day in the marina as it’s a holiday here being a muslim country. So I thought I would try to figure out this power issue again. I made up a special cable that made it easy to measure the voltages on the outlets, and headed off to the next pontoon in search of 240V. After a lot of tries, I found a good socket, so I decided to move the boat. Dave from Phoenix, a Brit who has a Halberg Rassey he has renovated after a fire, hence the name, helped take my lines. It was slack water and next to no wind, so seemed perfect for me to practice manoeuvring. In fact all I had to do was reverse in a very straight line about 50 metres, but given the boat walks to port when going astern, I needed to push the stern out a bit. With her in reverse at tick-over revs, she actually went straight back, if anything moving a little to starboard, so a little kick of forward gear followed by astern brought her alongside just perfectly, the bow thruster helped as well.

Now I’m plugged into proper mains, I can use the electric kettle as well as the Air con at the same time, whoopee.
So back to cleaning the main cabin, this is proving difficult, I did the corridor between the cabin and the forward berth, everything is taking so long. Tomorrow I will have been afloat for a week, I was hoping to have everything cleaned by then. Will have to make a big effort tomorrow.

I took a break after the first bash at cleaning as I had a new hose pipe and wanted to test it out, boys never get tired of playing with hose pipes it seems. I decided to clean up the marks on the foredeck, it all came up very well, and I ended up doing more than I planned. It will all need doing properly and to be polished later, but for now it’s looking smart.
Fixed a couple of lamps that were broken, and tried to understand how the boat is wired for shore power, but failed, by then it was too dark to see the cable run, what I did find out is the 240V seems to go straight to a transformer, probably an isolation or step down. The boat was made to run on 110V USA Style, and lots of kit onboard is 110V, however it has spent most of it’s life in the 220-240V world, there are two shore power connectors , one marked 110 and one marked 240, so I need to get my head around that, I also need to decide which one to go with.

Had another dinner of salad, with Patros feta and herb cheese this time, very tasty, followed by a walk along the coast. As you can see from some of the pictures I posted, the marina is almost underneath the Penang to butterworth bridge, this is the old one to the north of the island. Under the bridge are lots of small fishing boats moored, and of an evening the locals use it as a sort of hang out / courting location. Tonight there were loads of young people, mostly arriving on moped, and having barbecues sitting under the flyovers, looking out to sea, many of them with a fishing rod out too.

bridge 2
Penang old bridge to Butterworth
bridge1
Fishing boats under the old Penang bridge

If I can get the boat cleaning finished this weekend, I can get stuck into the main jobs next week, I have some important work to organise like:

  1. Sort out shore power so I can have hot water and other 110V things working
  2. Get the USA Style gas bottles refilled
  3. Fix the engine control panel, lots to do there
  4. Sort out the survey/Insurance and get new standing rigging ordered
  5. Get a liferaft and some flares
  6. Fix the marine Air Con
  7. Get the dinghy and outboard working, then I can go out and do some fishing
  8. Fix instruments, fit masthead wind speed/direction sensor
  9. Tons of varnishing
  10. Fix a couple of minor leaks on the deck

Once that’s done, I can start some proper sailing, the other 100 jobs, like pickling the water-maker and sorting out the filtration systems can wait.

So not too bad really

Paul C