Day 38, Year 4: Surprisingly Busy Day
Date: Saturday, November 29, 2008
Weather: A Day with No Rain–Yea!
Location: Rebak Marina on Pulau Rebak Besar, Langkawi, Malaysia
We actually made it through an entire day with no rain, and no rain overnight either. Of course, the forecast was for stormy weather, so it seems no one can really predict the weather here right now. We had no major jobs on the list for today, but we have worked hard all day. Mark had to take down the life lines on the port side of the boat in order to get the stanchions on each side of the gate removed. These stanchions were bent in a storm coming from New Zealand to Fiji, and although we had
them straightened once, they have bent again with time. So we need to get them straightened again and get reinforcing bars welded in. I spent part of the day finishing my cleaning of the dinghy and applying the UV protectorant. Once that job was done, I started in on the stainless. It is an easy job when we are at a marina with water. I just brush on the “Grunt”, a product from New Zealand, take a scrubby pad and rub over the stainless, and then use the pressure hose to spray it off. I then
take a towel and wipe done the stainless, and it shines beautifully. In between working on projects outside, I also did a major straightening job on the inside of the boat. I had moved everything from the aft cabin to the v-berth when Mark started his aft shower stall renovation, but the v-berth was a mess and all of the stuff needed to be tidied up. This was precipitated by an early morning visit of a fellow Tayana 42 owner just down the dock from us. I was mortified to think that Barbara might
want to come aboard and see the inside of our boat. So the straightening up process began.
Increscent Moon is a Tayana sailing out of California. Barbara is originally from Poland and Cory is originally from Romania, but both have lived in California for the past twenty years. Barbara came by this morning to say hello to a fellow Tayana owner and she and Cory returned later in the day to visit for a bit. We haven’t visited their boat yet, but it is so much fun to share ideas with people who have the same boat and the same issues as we do. We hope to spend more time with Barbara and
Cory while we are here at Rebak Marina.
As we are learning by being here, Rebak is really a special little place. The beautiful Hornbills fly in to roost in the last afternoon. There are monkeys here, there, and everywhere if you just know where to look. And Brahminy Kites, those majestic eagles that we have chased from Australia all through Indonesia, fly overhead constantly. And although there are no services here, anything you need is no more than a 15-minute free ferry ride and then a 30-minute car ride away. Tomorrow morning
we are leaving on the 8:45 am ferry, renting a car, and taking in stainless in to be worked, going to Kuah to buy a new dinghy engine, new life lines, and who knows what else. If time permits, we will do a bit of the tourist thing, and then return to Pantai Cenang, the touristy beach area close to here, to spend the night. We are doing this so we can go to an internet caf� late tomorrow night to talk with Heather, Jed, and Sam. The wireless internet connection out here on Rebak is just not good
enough for Skype calls, but when we can connect our computer directly to the internet on the main island, we can do a Skype call with video. We talked with Justin and Jo a couple of days ago in Kuah, so we will now hope to make a good connection with Heather, Jed, and Sam. We’ll return to Rebak the next morning and continue our jobs on Windbird.
We got the estimate on painting Windbird today and it was a bit of a shocker. To paint the hull (topsides), the cabin top and cockpit, and the mast and boom will cost $48,000 RM. That’s about $13,000US and way more than we had hoped. The estimate in New Zealand was about $25,000US, and didn’t include the mast and boom, so this is better, but it is certainly more than we have. Yet the job needs to be done, so we will continue to consider this one. I mentioned in the previous paragraph that we
will be buying a new dinghy engine when we go to Kuah tomorrow. The price of a 15-horse Yamaha Enduro here is just hard to pass up, so we are trying to sell the two old dinghy motors we currently have. We think we have our Suzuki sold after only one mention on the local morning net here and we will work harder to sell the other. We really don’t have the room to be toting around two dinghy engines, so it will be nice to have one new one that will hopefully be reliable. We learned when Justin and
Jo were here, that the old motors just don’t move four people very quickly. So with Kevin and Claire, and then Heather, Jed, and Sam coming, the new motor should move us all around easily and quickly.
