Fish attack, It’s time to leave Miri

November has flown by and in a weeks time we will have left this marina and the joys of Miri, and be in Brunei on our way to Labuan and then Sabah for Christmas. The main thing I’m looking forward to is being able to sit in the cockpit of an evening without being devoured by sandflies.

So the previous week and next week is all about getting the boat seaworthy again. I have put another coat of varnish on the cap rails, which seemed to be popular with the creatures captured below.

One of the jobs I had to do was service the windlass (Anchor Winch) and find out why it wont go in reverse. I suspected the solenoid, and removed the cover to get access. I gave the leads a wiggle on the solenoid to remove them and clean them up, knowing that wasn’t the problem, however very little wiggling was required for the connection to snap off the solenoid, there was a 50% chance that the one I broke was the down connection, which didnt work anyway, but I had just used up my good 50% chance wiring up the remote for my neighbours windlass for him, so I ended up breaking the UP side of the solenoid, so now I had a useless windlass!

I tried to disassemble the rest of the windlass, but it’s held together with the screws/bolts shown below, they are supposed to be hex slots, but they are all mangled, well the two I need to remove next, so I’m going to have to drill them out, a major pain, I’m putting that to one side for now. I have also ground back the plastic on the solenoid and managed to solder a wire onto the snapped connection so the up is working now. In case you are wondering, when I drop the anchor with 50m of chain, it’s not possible to pull it up by hand, it’s  just too heavy, so I would have to resort to manually winching it up using the sheet winches, which would take all day. Just as I was staring at the windlass pondering my problem, a Banded Archer fish took his opportunity to attack. I was kneeling over the windlass on the bowsprit when a powerful jet of water hit me in the eye, I was quite confused, it was like someone had shot me with a water pistol, but I couldn’t work out how, I wondered if it was a weird kind of rain. I remained confused until Ian from next door explained that the fish spurt a jet of water out to knock ants off overhanging branches at the waters edge, they are first rate aimers, and can move to be under the falling creature in milliseconds, which is impressive. Not so impressive is their inability to distinguish between an ant and an aging 59 year old man. Said fish is depicted below

The new canopy arrived and is not a bad fit, but could be another 6 inches longer. At least it’s waterproof and we dont have to jump up and shut the portlights every time the rain starts

Sitting in the marina for 4-5 months is not good for the boat, I sent the GoPro camera down to look and the prop was quite barnacled up. The local yachties all expressed surprise that I hadn’t bagged up the prop when I arrived, a custom I was completely unaware of, apparently I should have wrapped the prop up in a plastic bag when I arrived.

Anyway, I called up a local diver who was happy for RM400 (£70) to dive with his buddy and scrub the whole hull and clean up the prop. They were in the water for nearly 2 hours. I would normally clean the prop myself with my snorkel mask on, but the big ‘Beware of Crocodiles’ sign, and Kathy’s recent sighting of a big Jaw moving through the water has dampened my enthusiasm for this. The divers deliberately waited until after crocodile breakfast time before entering the water, they also believe the bubbles from their mask will scare off the crocs, but I’m not so sure they have actually tried this yet.

A much cleaner prop, the anode is good, but apparently this isnt the case on the bow thruster, so I need to source anodes for that soon.

Much of this week has been spent trying to fix the galley sinks, I tried to re-engineer it all in local PVC pipes, but I just couldn’t get it to work with the weird angles I had, so with the help from Brian, another old-timer here, we set off to find a stainless steel fabricator who could replicate the old rusty fitting. We had to supply the materials to him, but he was optimistic that he could make the piece, part of which involved cutting and drilling a big stainless steel pipe fitting into a retaining nut. A few days later I cycled the few miles to his workshop, alongside the river and cemeteries to see how he got on.

The workshop was a fascinating place, probably somewhere Charles Dickens might have felt at home in.

Despite the primitive state, he managed to make the part as requested, sadly when I got back, it turned out that the welds were not watertight, which is not great for a sink drain. So back for another pleasant trip down cemetery lane

Each time I made this trip, usually about 8AM when it’s still cool, I would pass fish stalls setup alongside the river, The fish is not as cheap as it once was here, there’s such a huge worlwide demand for fish now, and these waters are so heavily fished,  however I managed to find a massive fish for RM20 (£4) which tasted fantastic last night I also got the repaired fitting back, with apologies about the weld, he tested it this time and didn’t charge for another slight mod I needed. Sadly it still leaked when I fitted it. However it’s such a small leak, I might just fix it with a bit of epoxy. That’s tomorrow’s job.

Nothing quite says Christmas like an upside down chess set

We popped into the Main shopping mall here as Kathy wanted to get ingredients for a Vegan curry, we had been invited to join the other cruisers for the regular Friday night get together in the marina, the requirement being that everyone bring a curry along. The guy on the far left of the pic below, is Phil, who amazingly lives here, but I used to see him in my local sailing club in West Kirby when he lived there a few years ago. Small world.

I’m getting up early tomorrow to fit the two headsails, which have been bagged since we got here. I need to do it early, as there’s usually no wind then, by the afternoon we have a bit of an onshore breeze which would make it difficult, given it comes over the stern of the boat. I’m also hoping to get the outboard motor fired up and replace the broken kill cord stop switch. After that there’s not a lot to do, I need to find a gas supplier as we have emptied one bottle and are half way through the other.

The wind is now starting to turn, as it’s officially the start of the NE Monsoon season, which runs through till March/April, however winds are quite light and variable most of the time. I’m hoping we can get up to Labuan next weekend, before the NE winds really get established, as NE is the direction we have to travel.

Paul Collister

 

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