Had a bad night again, so took it easy today, Eric came over, we strolled along the local shops, more like roadside shacks looking for some rope to tie my new tarps down with, could only find very basic cheap polyprop stuff, but I expect it will last till April when I get back. Zainol, my taxi driver who offered to be my driver for a week, if I paid him up front, a discounted price, took us down to the boat. The discounted price is actually about 30% more than I was paying him, but it’s all peanuts anyway, and he he practically destroyed his car getting me through the building site twice a day.
The really rough road we used to travel along has been replaced overnight with an adjacent road they carved out of the hill. the old road now has a crane some several hundred metres long, in sections, lying on it, waiting to be hoisted into place. They really don’t waste time in construction. Zainol tells me the Bangladeshi workers got 80 MYR a day, about £13, which he thinks is way too much for an unskilled person. I think the boatyard workers get less, perhaps you can see why I’m getting the work done here, rather than pay artisan prices back in Barcelona.
This is the works canteen in the yard, pretty basic, but Erik tells me the food is really nice, I buy him lunch each time he comes over to help me, usually comes to just under £2 with lots of ice tea and coffee.
And this is one of the canteen cats
I managed to get all the sails down and stowed below deck, so they wont rot in the sun, but may get destroyed by mildew. Saturday will be all about wrapping the boat up so it has ventilation and is dry.
Tonight I’m having dinner with Erik and Chang, the Chinese man, in Georgetown, they have promised to take me to a top notch eatery, then up at 6:30 am to get the ferry to the next island north, Langkawi, where I will probably keep the boat for the rest of the year, when the hull is done. I can get the rigging work done there. They have chandleries, surveyors, beaches and all the things I need, that aren’t available in Penang.
Nice blog, Paul. I’m a friend of Tim’s and you’re keeping us entertained and we are sailing vicariously via your blog.
Hi Dermot, glad you’re enjoying it, hopefully I can start putting some real sailing on it one day soon.
All in due time, my friend, you’ll be out sailing. Good to get to know the boat first. I spent several months off-and-on before we set sail from Florida for Lake Superior. It’s well worth the time. Keep the faith, bro.