Bucket overboard

Up early today for a motor around the the island. Langkawi is made up of loads of smaller islands, and just to the SW of Kuah, where we are berthed is the large island of Dayang Bunting. This in itself has scores of smaller islands off it. So we left without event, a calm slightly dull day, but a light breeze to cool us. We went anticlockwise around the island as shown below.Kathy steered us out of Kuah and soon got the hang of it. Notice the freezer bag used to protect the iPad, our main chart plotter right now.

Later Kathy put together a lovely lunch while we lay at anchor on the new Spade Anchor.

We motored up the eastern side of the island, and this time I took the inshore route, the last time with Tim we stayed offshore for safety, I realised why when I noticed a few uncharted rocks had been marked on the chart ( I know this technically makes them charted, but as they were added by users of the charts, not the makers, one has to be careful assuming how accurate they are. Also if there is one uncharted rock, there might be more! ) As it turned out we missed them all and arrived back in the marina about 5pm.
My first attempt at berthing failed, I was just a little to far off the pontoon for Kathy to feel safe stepping ashore, so like a pro I reversed back out the slip, and had another go. This time I over compensated and almost parked the boat on the pontoon finger. All was well, and thanks to the fact these pontoons have nice plastic fender strips all along the edges no harm was done, we just slid along and Kathy stepped ashore and tied us off. I need to work on this, the problem is I just cant see the pontoon finger from the helm once I get close. As Mr Wilde might have said in these circumstances, either that spray hood goes or I do.

Just realised I didn’t explain the title, I lost the bucket overboard while getting water to flush the anchor chain down. The deck wash pump didn’t seem to work, but thinking about it now, I may have turned the seacock off for it (Duh). Anyway, we set about the bucket overboard drill and due to the fact the water was calm and warm, the bucket survived, it only took 3 attempts. I wouldn’t have fancied his chances back home though.

Paul C.