Sort of, apologies if you got a notification of a new post and there wasn’t one, I’m losing my powers with computers, I wanted to put a new page on, but accidently put it on as a post, then deleted it and put it back as a page. It now appears as a link at the top of the page to ‘useful SE Asia links’, it’s there to help me find pages I use a lot quickly, or ones I forget I have, but are useful. That’s mostly the weather pages. The synoptic charts are what I will be using a lot for my passage planning.
There’s not a lot to report since we got here, we have both struggled with the jetlag and the heat more than we expected, but it’s been cooler today with a strong wind cooling us down, we also seem to be getting tired in the evening which bodes well.
I forgot to mention that I wired the new VHF Radio into the switchboard panel here, and 10 minutes after I had closed up the panel there was quite a loud bang, it had a very familiar Phut sound, which I recognised right away as the sound you get when you short out the mains supply. Those of you who have done this will know what I mean, usually theres a strong smell and a little puff of smoke rising from the short. However when I opened the panel, I could smell the burning, but I couldnt see anything wrong. After a lot of looking, and checking I had to give up, everything seemed fine, I popped outside to reset the circuit breaker on the pontoon and everything was working again, except for the little light that comes on to show mains is present. I took this out, assuming it had failed, and on closer inspection it was toast, so now Im even more confused, I don’t believe in coincidences, and I know this will come back to haunt me, however the only time it will be a problem is when we are plugged into the shore, so no big deal really.
Last night we walked over to the Sea Horse bit of the breakwater, they had set up a stage, lots of food and drink were being served and lots of joggers were arriving. It turned out at 19:30, when it was dark, there would be a charity run. I was expecting a rock concert as for the previous two days there had been a PA company setting up a huge rig, doing lots of testing, and playing lots of music to check the sound quality. I must say they did a great job. I did that for a living once, and I know how hard it can be. As it turned out, the run lasted for about 2 hours, then they turned the PA off and took it all down! Still it was nice to see hundreds out running to raise money for local good causes.
Today Kathy baked bread, we have a new supply of flour, and Kathy had a new recipe she used back in Liverpool to great affect.
The bread looked great ging into the oven, but came out looking as white as when it went in. However it tasted great, far better than anything we have been able to buy in Sarawak so far
You can see below Kathy has an umbrella type device for keeping the flies off the dough, it works really well, especially as we have a lot of flies right now. However it does make me wonder if I have slipped back in time to some 60s tea room in the country, or maybe I have gone forward in time and I’m in a nursing home of dubious quality! I hate frilly lace / net curtains
While the bread cooled we went for a walk, I had read there was a bike shop not far away, and although I doubted it, we needed some exercise so off we went. We stopped for a drink in a very british style modern bar, however they let the side down a little by selling various Irish brews 😉 .
On the way back to the boat about 10 motorbikes passed us in the opposite direction, nothing unusual, except that just as they passed us there was an awful sound of metal scraping on tarmac, followed by a crash, I watch one bike with the rider under it screech along the road, into another bike, whose passenger flew off, the guy under the bike parted from it and his bike continued along the road. I ran back to see what I could do to help, fully expecting the worst, however within a few seconds the riders where up, the other bikes had turned around and come back to help. The riders recovered their bikes and got them to the side of the road while their friends collected broken bits of mudguards and things. I saw both the riders walking, and wondered just how they weren’t more injured. I expect they will have had very serious grazing and maybe worse. Road safety is appaling here compared with back home. This isnt the first crash I have seen, but the first to happen right next to me. The local internet gossip/news bulletin board reports a road death every few days, just in this town.
On a lighter note, this is what Kathy presented to me for dinner last night!
It’s the remains of a tin of tuna! to be fair there was salad and stuff out.
One of the big jobs I have to do is sort out all the long range communications, one of which is the HF SSB Radio. I suggest if your name is not Peter or Neil, you might want to switch off now as this bit is beyond geeky.
I thought it time to connect up the SWR meter and see how well the ATU Tuner is working with the backstay antenna. This meter came with the boat and looks like it might have taken a swim at some point, but as long as it works, I dont care about looks. First problem was that the path through the meter was O/C. Not a good start, but easy to debug, after all it’s just a rod of metal from one SO239 to another, and sure enough the connection was broken. Next, it didn’t register anything at all, further investigation found a flaky switch and some dry joints. Still it acted like it was dead. I wondered if the Transmitter on the SSB was actually transmitting, I haven’t had any communication with it so far, so I dug out my old roberts SW radio and set it up on a marine frequency, put the transmitter to AM, and with Kathy on the mike, I went for a walk to the other side of the Marina. Kathy was coming through loud and clear.
Back to the Meter, and a test of the actual meter display movement showed it to be open circuit. Now that’s something I wouldn’t try to fix as it’s kind of in the Swiss watch maker department. So that was it, a bin job.
However, I thought, nothing to lose, and I will be well chuffed if I fix this one. So tomorrow, should I find myself with a steady hand and clear eyesight, I’m going to try and solder back the hairspring wire that has become detached from the movement. I’d be happy to bin it and buy another if that was an option, but I doubt if they are available anywhere on Borneo, I could be wrong.
Paul Collister