Day 129, Year 4: Windbird Gets Her Green Stripes
Date: Saturday, February 28, 2009
Weather: A Bit Overcast with a Few Dark Clouds
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

This is nail biting stuff. Watching your just painted beautiful white hull get covered with plastic and tape is not easy. Oh arrived with a new hair cut. Evidently he could not get the white tips out of his black hair, so he had to have it cut. Today he put on a headwrap before heading into the tent. We watched the first green go on and then came back to clean even more stainless hardware and sort through a year (in my case) or two (in Mark’s case) of paperwork. I have all of the brochures and booklets from every place we visited this year and I just have to get rid of some of it. Mark keeps all bills and important papers in his old computer pack, and it was bursting at the seams. We didn’t get it all done today, but we did get a start.

We returned to Windbird around 4:30 and found that the painting of the waterline and shearline stripes went well. Oh was already gone but they said he didn’t have green hair when he left, so that is good. The rest of the team immediately started taking the plastic off the hull. That’s when it really got tense. The crew is so very careful, but there are a couple of little green marks on the white. As always Luck says no problem and we know he will fix it, but it is nerve wracking. We are learning
to communicate with Luck despite our total lack of Thai and his minimal understanding of English. We think he was telling us that the cabin top will be painted on Wednesday and then we put hardware back on before he does the non-skid. If we understood him correctly, my birthday present next Thursday will be a visit back to the inside of Windbird. I didn’t think we would be this far along by March 5th, but things are looking good.

Tonight we meet Susan and Richard of Sea Bunny and Dave and Di of Amoenitas to go across the highway to one of cheap (but very good) local places for dinner. We’re anxious to hear how their teak deck replacement is going. Our goal for tomorrow is to really, really finish cleaning all of the stainless hardware and finish organizing the paper work. I’m moving along on photos. Today I went all the way back to our New Mexico visit and posted the one last folder from there and then got about six Australia
photo albums posted. I’m working on rounding Cape York and hope to get halfway across Indonesia tomorrow. Ambitious, but maybe I can do it.

090228 Day 129 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Windbird Gets Her Green Stripes

Day 128, Year 4: Teamwork
Date: Friday, February 27, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Hot
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

On the day after the BIG day, I’d like to reflect a bit on the teamwork we have observed with Oh’s crew. Almost everyone we talk to has tales of woe about having work done here in Thailand. We have been told time and again to stay with the boat at all times while work is happening. When the boss is not around, evidently a lot of workers simply don’t work. But we have had the total opposite experience. Oh only visited Windbird once or twice a day for short periods to check on things from the beginning. He has a young site manager named Luck who does a fantastic job and not once have we ever seen any of the crew sitting idle. They start work at 8:30 am, sometimes have a short morning break, an hour lunch break, wind down around 5 pm, clean up, and leave at 5:30. Every single member of the team seems to have amazing attention to detail so that even the Queen of Detail (that’s me) can’t find fault. We feel blessed to have happened upon such a great team. Of course, it will be years before we know if the job holds up under the pressure of time, but from all appearances, the quality of work is topnotch. Somehow Oh, at thirty-three, has put together a fantastic team and we feel blessed to have happened upon them.

We did have one little hitch with yesterday’s paint job. Late last evening we walked over just to take one more look and I found a sag in the paint about a foot above the muffler on the stern of the boat. The rest of the paint job looked so good that we weren’t really upset by this. But we did want to find out what the right thing to do about it might be. There are various opinions from having the paint job done again to leaving it alone or to lightly rubbing it out and polishing over the spot. When we talked to Luck and Pong this morning, they said no problem. They could rub it out easily, but we were worried about compromising the paint in that area. We called Oh and he said he would discuss this with us when he arrived later in the day. But by the time we did our second visit of the day, Luck and Pong had made the sag ‘magically’ disappear. Luck, with a great smile, and his best English, indicated that it just went away. He and Pong were obviously proud of the disappearing act and we are fine with what they did. The crew spent all of today taking tape off and masking off for the painting of the green stripes. The taping took longer than expected due to their absolute attention to detail. They measured, they eyed up close and from afar, they applied tape, and then took it off and reapplied. Windbird now sits ready for the green stripe painting which will happen tomorrow. So we are still one more day away from Windbird looking like her old self again.

Tonight we went to Neil and Ley’s rental home just up the highway from the Boat Lagoon. They also invited Bud and Nita of Passage, a boat from Honolulu that has been on the hard here since long before we arrived. We only met this couple yesterday as Nita has been out of commission having a knee operation, but she is mending quickly and we had a wonderful time tonight getting to know one another. It is always fun to talk to other cruisers having the same experiences, so we shared experiences about having our boats painted and refit here at the Boat Lagoon. Ley and Neil took us to one of their favorite restaurants. The food was fantastic and Ley had fun holding the resident bunny that she has come to know. We hope to spend more time getting to know Bud and Nita of Passage and Ley and Neil of Crystal Blues.

090227 Day 128 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Next Step, Getting Ready for Green Accent Stripes

Day 127, Year 4: Suey, Suey (pronounced ‘soy’) meaning Beautiful
Date: Thursday, February 26, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Hot; 90 degrees F, 61 percent relative humidity
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

The short story is that at 2:30 pm this afternoon, after three hours of continuous painting, Windbird’s hull is Vestal White and she looks beautiful (suey in Thai).

The long story follows . . .

7:15 am-First trip to Windbird to assure ourselves that the waterline is really where we want it. We had talked about this before now, but all of a sudden we were just unsure about lowering the waterline as Oh had suggested. We definitely had too much bottom paint showing since we raised the waterline seven inches in New Zealand. When Oh watched Windbird come it to be hauled out, he had marked the waterline the way he thought it should be. The hassle if the waterline is too close to the water is that you get a yellow scum line that is hard to clean. After our trip to the boat this morning, we decided that he is right so the way he had it taped off was right.

8:15 am-Second trip to Windbird to see if the crew had arrived so we could tell them we found a paint run under one of the fittings on the hull that needed to be sanded out. As soon as we got back to the room, we got a Skype call from Alan Kanegsberg. Alan is our good friend and fellow sailor back in Concord, New Hampshire. He has been following the logs and just wanted to wish us luck on this big day.

9:30 am-Mark made trip number three without me while I stayed in the apartment cleaning stainless. Oh had arrived and Mark talked to him about the waterline, asking if there would be a white stripe above the bottom paint and then the green boot stripe. We have not had a white waterline stripe since New Zealand and Mark didn’t remember the conversation we had with Oh when he recommended putting the white stripe back. Oh recommended a one-inch white stripe right above the waterline and then a three-inch green waterline stripe. Mark then walked around the yard to check the width of other boat waterline stripes.

10:30 am-Fourth trip to Windbird to watch the preparation for painting. By the time we got there all of the taping off had been completed, the concrete under the boat had been flooded with water to get rid of the last source of dust, even more temporary plastic covering had gone up to protect the hull from anything that might fall out of the air. While testing the paint guns and hose with the air compressor, Oh decided he wanted new hose and new hose fittings, so he sent Eu to get that. Mark hung around longer that I did as I needed to get back and rinse the rust dissolving gel off some stainless, and took some last minute preparation photos. Pong was suited up and ready to paint and the tent was being closed. Mark returned to the apartment and we sat and waited with butterflies in our stomachs.

11:45 am-Mark made the fifth trip alone, got a couple of pictures through a hole in the tent, but couldn’t tell much about what was happening.

12:45 pm-Ley called to say she drove by Windbird and saw some guys sitting out front. So we made trip number six over to see what was happening. When we arrived there was a young man standing at the tent corner watching what was happening inside, but the air was thick with paint so that it looked very foggy inside. We hung around and then Luck came out to mix more paint under the temporary tarp that was hung to protect the paint from the sun. He said they were on coat number two and things were going well. Oh was spraying on the port side with Lok holding the tank.

090226 Day 127 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand– Topcoat Goes On Windbird

2:15 pm-As we arrived for our seventh visit of the day, Luck came out of the tent and said, “Three.” We assumed he meant the three coats were on. Oh was still spraying but almost done. When he emerged from the tent his curly black hair had white tips and even his eyelashes were white. We took a peak but didn’t go in yet. We ran to the store to get beer and juice, and some Snickers bars, for the crew and then we went in to see Windbird. The water was still running flooding the floor so no dust
could be kicked into the air to mar her beautiful sheen. And she does shine. The paint job looks perfect. I’m sure we’ll find little imperfections, but right now we are super happy and greatly relieved.

Oh is proud of the job and anxious to get the tent off so others can see. But first, the green shear line (top of the hull) and the green waterline must be painted. AwlGrip and Oh say that masking tape can be applied to the hull in twelve hours, so tomorrow morning the tape will go on and the green will be added. We then hope to let her sit until Monday before a heavy plastic is put on covering the hull while the cabin top is painted. Oh does the hull first so it has a longer time to cure before
going back in the water, but this requires that it be meticulously covered while other work goes on. While all of this is going on, Mark and I are working on photos and we keep cleaning and polishing stainless and searching for the nuts, bolts, and screws we need. We are finding lots of 304 stainless, but not as much 316 which is what we need. Tomorrow we will take a trip into Phuket Town to Bangkok Hardware. Ley and Neil tell us it is fantastic and maybe that hardware store will have more of
what we need. So the search continues.

Day 126, Year 4: Big Day Tomorrow
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Weather: No Changes-Beautiful, Hot, and Sunny
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

We feel a bit like expectant parents on the eve of birth. Why is having a boat painted so very different from having a house painted? I don’t know the answer to the question, but I’ve painted lots of houses and never felt like I feel tonight. The top coats go on Windbird’s hull tomorrow and we are really jittery. We’ll probably sit outside the tent tomorrow as Oh and his crew paint, just like being in the waiting room of a hospital delivery room. Of course, the result will be nothing so wonderful and fantastic as a newborn baby, but it will be our old baby with a new fa�ade. Right now Windbird stands ready. We’re having second thoughts about the location of the waterline and we’re a little apprehensive about the weather as we have had lightening tonight. The last time this happened, we had cloudy weather here and rain a few miles to the south. You really don’t want to apply top coat if there is even a threat of rain, so we could be delayed by a day. And we’ll just have to be at the boat very early in the morning to talk to Oh if we want to move that waterline. So we’ll just have to see what the morning brings.

Equus was launched early this morning with a bang. Thankfully the ‘bang’ was just the lighting of Chinese firecrackers to ward off any evil spirits. The launch went smoothly and Patti and Steve sailed south to Ao Chalong to check out of Thailand. Just after they launched, we walked over to Royal Phuket to say farewell to Robyn and Eric on Scorpido. Their boat looks great and they were just so excited to be off for South Africa. We also stopped by Freebird to say farewell as they will be leaving tomorrow morning. They are sailing in the area for the season, so we will probably see them again before we come home to the US for a few months, but it was great to touch base with them today. We really don’t know any of these people very well, but they feel like family. Out here, friends sail in and out of our lives but there is a very strong bond that ties us together. Even before we meet, we have so many things in common that no one else in the world would even understand. So world cruisers are a special lot and we value each and every friendship we make.

Last night we walked across the highway to the super good, super cheap little ‘restaurant’ that we have gone to a couple of other evenings. The owner/cook is a woman who exudes such powerful, positive vibes and her food is just delicious. We tell her to bring us ‘whatever’ and it is always wonderful and the cost is unbelievably cheap. So we had a great farewell dinner with Steve and Patti and their good friend Larry. Larry is a single-hander who now works here in the East Marine Chandlery at Boat Lagoon. He met Patti and Steve in the Mediterranean and sailed south through the Red Sea with them. So they have all come from the US from west to east and known each other for a long time. On our way to dinner, we saw David and Doreen Samuelson of Swan sitting by the launch area watching their African Gray parrot enjoy the evening sitting in the tree beside them. David is the rigger here at Boat Lagoon and he and Doreen have been cruisers since they were in their early twenties. They know no other life. David is from England and Doreen is from France. They bought a Westsail in the early 1970′s and then bought their current boat, a Swan named Swan, in 1979. They started their trek around the world and have made it this far in thirty years. What amazing people! And they are good friends with a woman who is a good friend of the people from whom we bought Windbird. It is just such a small world.

Today we had lunch with Ley and Neil of Crystal Blues from Melbourne, Australia. They are having their boat painted by a different contractor just a few tents away from Windbird. They left Australia in October of 2005 at the same time that we left the US, but unlike us, they have been in this area of the world since then and they are just a wealth of information. They are living in a rental home not far from here, so they returned tonight and we had dinner at our same favorite place across the highway. We’ll travel up to their neighborhood for dinner on Friday. We really look forward to getting to know them better.

So stay tuned for the progress report on Windbird. And hope with us that all goes well tomorrow.

090225 Day 126 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Ready and Waiting

Day 125, Year 4: Nuts and Bolts . . . and Screws
Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Weather: No Changes-Beautiful, Hot, and Sunny
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

It was truly a shop ’til you drop kind of day. It is amazing how long it can take to find a few nuts and bolts and screws. And after an entire day of shopping, we found only a few that we need. So the search will continue. We did return to Rolly Tasker to buy new sheets for our headsail and a new halyard for our mainsail. For those of you who are not sailors, lines that take sails up and down are halyards and sheets are those lines that attach to the bottom of sails and pull them from one side of the boat to the other. Even though it was our second visit to Rolly Tasker, we were even more amazed by its size. We also drove back out toward Ratanachai to find a welding shop called Luck Steel. We wanted to get a second quote on having new frames made for our currently bronze ports. We can’t afford new ports, but if we can afford new frames they would look a lot better from the outside. Nop, our stainless guy here at the Boat Lagoon is super expensive (although he does excellent work) so we are just checking to see if we can get good work a bit cheaper.

While out shopping we saw Robyn of Scorpido doing the very last of her shopping before they leave Royal Phuket tomorrow morning. They are returning to Langkawi to stock up on duty-free alcohol and then heading across the Indian Ocean to the Chagos, Seychelles, Madagascar, and then South Africa. Their daughter is getting married in October back in the US so they will leave their boat in Richard’s Bay on the west coast of South Africa and head home for the wedding. Their daughter, Erica, was here recently and bought her wedding dress at one of the kicky little shops in the Royal Phuket complex. So Robyn and Eric will have a little Thailand with them for the wedding in Seattle. Equus will splash tomorrow morning and they are also headed to Langkawi. But from there they will be heading south to through Indonesia to the Kumai, the Komodos, Bali, and then across the Indian Ocean to Chagos and South Africa. So tomorrow morning we say farewell to Scorpido and Equus and hope to see them in the US once we return with Windbird. Fair sailing to both of these wonderful couples. We will miss you.

We started our day with a Skype call to our son Justin and his wife Jo and then to my sister Patsy. Skype is really getting a workout from us here and it is just so wonderful that it is free. Jo is looking a little pregnant and is feeling great. And all is well with my family back in the US, so that is a good thing. We also got an email today from our good friend and birder, Patsy Decker. After the posting of photos with yesterday’s log, she was able to positively identify our little bird friend as a young, male Brown-throated Sunbird. The other birds that I thought were finches are Eurasian Tree Sparrows. So Sawatdii Kha, Patsy.

090224 Day 125 Boat Lagoon, Phuket Thailand–Details, Details

Day 124, Year 4: Just Another Day
Date: Monday, February 23, 2009
Weather: No Changes-Beautiful, Hot, and Sunny
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

Life really is starting to be a little more normal around here. But since we have never really cared much for ‘normal’ we are both starting to get a little antsy. There’s plenty to do and we do keep busy, but it is at a snail’s pace compared to our normal speed of life. I worked on photos this morning-nothing new about that. And Mark made treks back and forth to the boat to check with Oh on things. We had arranged to meet Patty and Steve of Equus at noon at food stall alley here in the Boat Lagoon and after lunch, Patty and I took off in the jeep to go shopping. They were planning to launch tomorrow morning and Patti needed to buy the final provisions. She has been cruising in this area for two years now and knows all the best places to shop. So the shopping trip was a learning experience for me. We went to Super Cheap which is like a not-so-well-kept Walmart with twice as much stuff and better prices. This place had every Asian fresh vegetable that I know none of us can name, rows and rows of fresh fish, dried foods of every sort, homewares, flowers, material, more plastic than any of us needs, and then it has rows and rows of canned foods. I even found the large containers of McCormick’s spices that I use on the boat. It is time to throw out what we have and buy new next season, so I will be heading back to Super Cheap when it is time to reprovision for another season. We also went to Homeworks and Central Shopping Center. So it was a good afternoon of shopping. We got a call from Steve while we were out saying that boat repairs were not coming along on schedule and they will not be splashing tomorrow. Yesterday Patti found a crack in their engine water pump and the welding on that is taking longer than expected. So they will be around for one more day and then on their way south to Langkawi.

It was after five when I got back to the apartment and I was delighted to see my little bird friend sitting on the balcony rail. Last week when I posted a picture of this little bird, a good friend and birder emailed and said that the bird is probably a Sunbird, maybe an Olive-backed Sunbird. The friend is Patsy Decker and she said she didn’t have enough markers from the photo to positively identify the bird. I’m posting some more bird photos with this log in hopes that it will help Patsy to more precisely identify our little friend.

Boat work is rolling right along, but after inspecting the final primer coat, Oh found some spots that still needed to be filled. So that happened today and he now thinks the final painting on the hull will take place on Thursday. Tomorrow Mark and I will be making the rounds of Phuket suppliers looking for the small stuff-screws and bolts to replace ones that were bent or had to be drilled out when removing things, and a few other pieces of hardware. We need to replace some of the turning blocks and need more cleats. We are also still searching for a transformer, so tomorrow will probably be a shop ’til you drop kind of day.

090223 Day 124 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Little Birds Out Our Window

Day 123, Year 4: Free and Easy Day
Date: Sunday, February 22, 2009
Weather: No Changes-Beautiful, Hot, and Sunny
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

Sail Indonesia gave the tag “Free and Easy” to days that were not planned with set activities. I picked that up and now use it on the rare occasion that we have a day with little to do. We started our day with our morning walk to Windbird and then Mark did work at Windbird for a couple of hours grinding the bronze shoe on the bottom of the skeg that attaches it to the rudder. He also did some epoxy work. A few days ago when he removed the stern tube from the back of the keel, he found a hole in the back edge of the keel that had never been covered because it was covered by the stern tube. So that was the major work of the day, but we also worked on cleaning more stainless hardware from the boat, named and uploaded more photos from Singapore, and went grocery shopping.

We ended the day with a walk over to the Royal Phuket Marina for a taste of the Blues Festival that took place on Phuket Island this weekend. We walked over with our neighbors, Patti and Steve, and Larry who works in the chandlery here. Larry is from Michigan but lived in New Hampshire just before leaving the US to head around the world. The company was wonderful and the four groups that performed were great. It was also fun to be there with the rich and famous. The developer of the Royal Phuket Marina was sitting at the table next to ours with his guest, tennis star Martina Navratilova. I had no idea who was sitting at the table until they were gone but at least three different people noted separately that they were sure it was her. I should have known that it was someone important with all of the camera crews taking pictures. We listened to the Rich Harper Band from the US, a young woman singer from Australia named Kniki who sounded like a lot like Janis Joplin, The Blues Machine from Bangkok with the Thai equivalent of Tina Turner, and Ll’l Willie from the UK who plays the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. We listened, watched, and danced the night away, and when we got home we had a great Skype call with Heather, Jed, and Sam. Sam has been sick with a stomach virus for the past two weeks, but he is starting to recover and he put on quite a show for us tonight. He brings things to the computer screen for us to look at and took us on a trip up to his bedroom to see his fish tank. For his first birthday, he got three fish-Carmen (named after Carmen Miranda because she has such a fancy headdress), Morley, and Smuttynose. They have doubled in size over the past year and it was fun to see them. He also rode his rocking dragon for us and then took us into his parent’s bedroom where he directed everyone to take a nap. He even went back to his bedroom to get his teddy bears. Heather said that he loves pretending to take naps, he just doesn’t like to really go to sleep. That’s our Sam.

090222 Day 123 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Blues and Rock Night at Royal Phuket Marina

090222 Day 123 Sam on Skype

Day 122, Year 4: The Real Primer Story
Date: Saturday, February 21, 2009
Weather: 84 degrees F (feels like 89); 65 % relative humidity
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

Windbird’s primer coats are completed and no one was more surprised than us. We contracted for four primer coats and thought that meant painting and then sanding four different times. But what it really means is two primer coats on one day, a week of sanding, and then two more primer coats. Windbird is a bit of a needy case and actually got eight coats of primer. We learned today that last Saturday she got four coats top and bottom. Yesterday she got four more on top and today four more on the
bottom. This was necessary because the gelcoat was so degraded that she needed a little more primer than normal. Now, if everything looks good once she is dried, the sanding will begin on Monday and by mid- to late next week the hull could be painted with the final coats. After sanding and before painting, everything will be cleaned, all tape and plastic will come off, and all new will go on. Oh says you can’t afford to have a speck of dust lurking anywhere, so he will be spending more time here
next week making sure everything is done right. They will do all three coats of AwlGrip on the hull all on one day. Oh says you work fast, leaving only twenty-five minutes between coats, so no one gets a break, not even to eat, until the job is done. Someone is spraying paint continuously until the job is done. Today was a perfect day for painting, albeit a little hot, but when I look at the weather for the week, precipitation is predicted. We are under a tent, but I’m hoping it is a dry day when the painting happens.

We had time to talk to Oh late this afternoon and learn something about his business and his life. He is the same age as our daughter Heather and has had Oh Services for seven years. For five years prior to that he worked for other people, starting out as a boat boy on one of the motor boats that take tourists out to the islands. He worked on bigger boats and had to do things like wear an oxygen mask while going down in huge diesel fuel tanks to clean them. While doing this, he watched other
people painting boats and decided that he would rather be doing that. He learned by reading the Jotun (the major paint company in this part of the world) and AwlGrip pamphlets on painting, asking questions, watching others work, and experimenting on his own. He says he is still learning and hopes that will continue learning until the day he dies. He proudly showed us his newest piece of equipment, an attachment to the air compressor. The air compressor is huge and looks brand new, but Oh said
he was having trouble getting some water and sometimes oil in the air even with the very expensive filtering system. He called the company and they said the newest technology to avoid this is a new air dryer. So Oh bought one and anytime the air compressor is running, the air dryer is working as well. Oh lives up near Yacht Haven and right now he has four different jobs going. He’s a painter but offers all kinds of yacht services. He has one other paint job going right now but says he will be
spending most of next week with Windbird when the final painting begins. We have full confidence in his crew but Oh is the one with most paint experience and it will be nice to have him here on the final coat paint days. The hull will be painted, then the cabin top and cockpit, and finally the last-certainly not all next week. But things are moving along quickly.

We spent time this afternoon trying to book a flight back to the US. Mark got so frustrated trying to do this online that we decided to walk over to a booking agency here in the Boat Lagoon. We found a woman who was very helpful and helped us figure out why we had not been able to do this online. We were trying to book a flight home in April with a return the end of November. This is more than six months and the tickets from Asian Air and China Air are only issued for six months. We also discovered
that Asiana Air tickets are a set price for a period of time and then they are readjusted. We cannot find out the actual cost of a flight in mid-April until mid-March. So we booked one flight with China Airlines on their one year plan and another with Asiana. This costs us nothing but assures that we have some way to get home. In mid-March when we find out the cost of the Asiana flight, we can decide whether to take that or go with China Air. Thank goodness there are agents who can help us
figure this out.

Our small tasks today started by taking the seized turnbuckles from our rigging over to one of the shops to get them freed up. We then worked on cleaning the turnbuckles for the standing rigging. Tomorrow Mark will work on cleaning the metal parts of Windbird below the waterline. He borrowed Oh’s grinder so he can clean the bronze shoe on the bottom of the skeg. We will also shine up the prop. Tomorrow night we will walk over to the Royal Phuket Marina to experience a bit of the Phuket International Blues Festival. We decided not to go to the festival this weekend in order to conserve funds, but there is “mini” version right next door tomorrow night so we will definitely migrate in that direction. We walked across the hall tonight and met our neighbors who will be going with us tomorrow night. Steve and Patti of Equis are from Sandusky, Ohio, and have come here by way of the Mediterranean. We look forward to getting to know them.

090221 Day 122 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Hull Gets Final Primer Coats

Day 121, Year 4: Searching for Boat Parts
Date: Friday, February 20, 2009
Weather: What a Scorcher!
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

Windbird’s cabin top and cockpit got a second primer coat today and we watched the welder at Nop’s shop grinding and polishing away on our arch. So work continues to happen, but it is time to talk to Oh again to try and better understand the order in which things are being done on Windbird. Since they did a primer coat on both the hull and the cabin top at once the first time, we aren’t sure why they did only the top today. I trust that they know what they are doing, but we would just like to
have a better handle on the process. We’re not sure what will happen tomorrow, but we think we understood Luck to say that the hull will get a second primer coat on Monday. We shall see.

In the meantime, we are trying to track down pieces of equipment and hardware that need to be replaced. The main chandlery here at the Boat Lagoon, East Marine, was placing an order this afternoon and we needed to let them know exactly what we wanted to order. So that prompted our search this morning of trying to find a new winch for the mainsail halyard that will go on the mast. This is the winch that helps Mark raise the mainsail. Mark has been raising the main sail with an antique Lewmar #10 winch with no self-tailing. This makes getting the last couple of feet of sail up very difficult because he has to tail the line himself while turning the winch handle with the other hand. The current winch is only one-speed and that complicates the process further. We could live with what we have had, but when we removed the three winches on the mast, the base plate that the bolts go through to attach the winch to the mast was cracked on two of them. So we started the day by first checking to see what it would cost to repair these bronze plates. All we were told is that it would be expensive, if even possible. So we hopped in the jeep and went from chandlery to chandlery seeing what is available in a larger, two-speed, self-tailing winch. We found one outside the Boat Lagoon for about $100 US cheaper than they can order one for us here. So Mark went back this afternoon and bought the Lewmar 40 at PhuketSail. We will use the old mainsail winch to replace one of the winches with a cracked base, and then replace the third winch with rope clutches as we really never use the third winch for anything except a place to hang lines. So after half a day of searching, we pinned down one purchase.

Then we called Marine Electronics. This is the outfit from which we just bought coax cable. This time we told them we are looking for a step-down transformer, 240 volts to 110 volts. They recommended a 5-kilowatt transformer and say it should run our air-conditioner. We have not been able to use the AC since we left Boston, but as long as we are getting a transformer we figure we might as well get one that can run the AC. Marine Electronics cost is 15,000 Baht or about $420 US. This is a much better price than the quote we got from Octopus Electronics here at the Boat Lagoon. The transmitter from them would cost $1,100. But we have been through this before and nothing has worked for us. This time we will have the transformer installed for us and make sure it is working before we pay for it. We bought one in Singapore that we could not get to work for us, but many pieces of advice later, we think we might have isolated the problem. So we’ll try again.

While all of this searching, pricing, and decision making is happening, I continue to work on editing and naming photos in any spare moments. Today I got all of the remaining photos from Malaysia on the website, so tomorrow I get to start working on Singapore. Going back in time to name the photos is like traveling to all of these places again. The problem is that I have forgotten many of the names of places and have to spend a lot of time looking through my logs, our sailing resources, and the Lonely Planet to piece things together. Maybe I’ll remember them this time. I also continue to do our laundry by hand and today I cut Mark’s hair. These are the mundane aspects of the cruising life, but necessary nonetheless. Tonight Mark and I both had a craving for a good old American bacon cheeseburger with fries. Phad Thai just wasn’t going to do it tonight. So we went to La Taverna for dinner. They offer a great cheeseburger with fries. It hit the spot and then sunk like lead. Maybe we’ll return to Thai fare tomorrow night.

090220 Day 121 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Cabin Top Gets Final Primer Coats

Day 120, Year 4: Visa Extension Granted-Just Not Long Enough
Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Hotter Than Normal-Absolutely No Breeze
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

The main story of today was the trip to the Immigration Office to get a 30-day Visa extension. We would have loved to have gotten a 60-day extension, but there is no such thing. Our current extension makes us legal until March 23 and then we must drive to Myanmar (Burma) or to Malaysia to get another extension. That extension could be for 30 days or for 15, depending on the mood of the border officer. Either will probably do for us as we really hope to be leaving Thailand by the end of the first week of April, but we do find the changing rules and regulations to be a bit frustrating.

On the way home, we stopped by Ratanachai Slipway. It is one of the three haul-out facilities on Phuket Island and one we had not visited it before. It is a huge, commercial facility where all the fishing boats and other commercial boats haul out. We only saw one sailboat there yesterday and the place looked a mess. We have heard horror stories from different people about getting work done there, but it is certainly a cheaper alternative. It was a coincidence that yesterday afternoon I got online to read the logs of a cruising boat that Jean on Renaissance had recommended. The boat’s name is Sunflower and they hauled out at Ratanachai this time last year and had a mostly positive experience. So looks can be deceiving. They did note that the amount of pollution fall-out from the fish factory next door kept them busy cleaning the deck each day, but otherwise things were fine. The reason I was looking at Sunflower’s log is because they have left their boat in Thailand for six months each of the past three years and had horrible experiences with mold and mildew on everything when they returned. They have learned some tricks to help avoid this so I will carefully note their suggestions and use them when we are readying Windbird for her stay here during the wet season. I think we will be looking for a dehumidifier that we can run while we are gone. That should help with the inside problem, but preventing mold and mildew on the newly painted cabin top and teak deck will be a littler
trickier.

In last night’s log we had asked for help from anyone who knows more than we do about coax cable. We had barely sent the log when we heard back from our son-in-law, Jed. He had great information for us that assured us that we had bought the right cable. This morning we got another email from a man who has been following our logs, and it was in even more detail, still assuring us that we had the right thing. It is at times like these that I am in total awe of the internet. Being able to get feedback from competent people so quickly is just amazing. So thanks to Larry and to Jed.

Today there was more sanding, more fairing, and more sanding on Windbird’s hull. The crew is making sure that every little bump and wrinkle is sanded smooth and this takes time. We’re just not sure when the next coat of primer is going on. We thought tomorrow, but Mark talked to Luck today and thinks he was saying Monday. So we shall see. All of the stainless from the aft end of the boat is now down at Nop’s shop. The shop is just a hole in the wall at the end of the marine services next to the hard stand area. There is a jumble of stainless stacked here and there, but we were able to identify Windbird’s stainless and get some photos. The welder and an assistant were grinding away when we were there, making sure all the welds are as smooth as possible. After the grinding will come polishing. We’re not sure when the completed product will be installed on Windbird, but I’m sure those details will be revealed to us as we roll along.

Tonight we went out to dinner with a number of cruisers from here and from Royal Phuket. It was the same group as last night, Susan and Richard of Sea Bunny and Nanette and Stuart of Truest Passion, with the addition of two boats from Royal Phuket. Heather and Dave of Milliways (who thought seriously about buying our Suzuki outboard at Rebak) and Dave and Di of Amoenitas joined us. All of these folks are from the UK, so we are the only non-Brits in the group. We met out on the highway just outside the Boat Lagoon and risked our lives to cross the highway to get to the good, but very cheap restaurant. We asked that they bring us enough food for ten people and left the choices up to the cook. The food was excellent and the cost was only $7 US for each couple. This included as much beer as we could drink. What a great deal. I’d do this every night if I didn’t have to cross the highway. That little trek makes me super nervous, but we were careful and all was fine.

We started our day by packaging up everything in our apartment in plastic bags. We had a written notice from the hotel office soon after we moved in explaining that they would be doing routine bug spraying and fogging on February 5 and February 19. I assumed this meant they would be spraying and fogging inside our apartment, so on both days, I packaged and covered everything. Silly me. We learned today that the spraying and fogging goes on outside the apartment building. I really, really don’t like chemical bug sprays, so I took the extra precaution. Oh well. Now I know the process and won’t have to take the time to package everything in plastic the next time we get a notice.

Our son Justin and his wife Jo are starting to think about the “paraphernalia” they will need when the baby arrives in April. We have been spending time emailing back and we have been searching the web to see the things they think they want. It is very difficult for parents these days to make choices that are  environmentally friendly and still affordable. We are enjoying the back and forth on baby “essentials” and extras. So there are lots of things keeping us busy and happy.

090219 Day 120 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Boat Work Continues