Day 40, Year 4: Back Home at Rebak
Date: Monday, November 1, 2008
Weather: Another Beautiful, Partly Sunny Day
Location: Rebak Marina on Pulau Rebak Besar, Langkawi, Malaysia
We had the greatest Skype conversation with Heather, Jed, and Sam late last night in Pantai Cenang. After a bit of a rough start on our computer, we switched to one of the house computers after we noticed they had webcams hooked up and Skype online. Finally the video from Cape Cod was coming in as clear as we have ever had and the delay in sound was not bad. It was early morning and Sam is quickly recovering from a cold and double ear infection. Jed played with Sam while we talked with Heather and we got to see all the silly antics Sam could cook up. First he put his sock on his hand like a glove and brought that over to the camera for us to see. He and his granddad played sock games everyday while we were home last year, so we’ll pretend he was trying to show us he remembers that. While we talked about a book he has where a turkey puts clothes on the wrong body parts, Sam ran into the other room to get that book. He is a smart little cookie and a busy one. Jed must have been totally worn out when the call was over, but we so appreciate his patience. We really got to watch the “updated” Sam in action. He is growing up fast and we are so anxious to have him on the boat in Thailand in January.
We took a nice long walk on the beach this in Pantai Cenang before returning to Rebak. I mentioned yesterday that it is school vacation here, and there were so many families on the beach early this morning. The Muslim women and young girls go in the water in their clothes with their head scarves on, but the little boys wear bathing suits. But all with squealing with delight when they ran into the water. The beach looked much like Fort Myers Beach, Florida looked before the days of high rises. There is just one beach resort after another with tiki huts on the beach and funky little rental shops here and there. We stopped for a quick breakfast and then drove back to the ferry to return to Rebak.
Once home things started unraveling a bit. The dinghy motor that we thought we had sold was returned. The folks on Milliways wanted it because they thought it would make their dinghy plane, but the old Suzuki needs a carburetor clean out and until that is done, it just doesn’t have full power. So we are glad that we decided not to buy the Yamaha yesterday. We’ll just have to work harder at selling the motors we have and buy the new one later. But the story doesn’t end here. The Suzuki engine was returned to us on Milliway’s dinghy. They just left it tied to our dock so that we could raise it onto Windbird when we returned. I raised the motor and when I was done, I was coiling the line. I didn’t see that Mark had put the twisted piece of aluminum toe rail on the deck just where the line was, and as I coiled the line flipped the piece of toe rail overboard. Having the piece to take into a shop that might be able to refashion it is almost a requirement, so Mark spent the next two hours getting out the dive gear and trying to find the piece. We don’t have a good underwater flashlight and the water was just too murky. He could see nothing and after feeling around in the muck and mud for about 30 minutes, he gave up. Our young neighbor, Magnus, on Lazy Bones was not home today, but his dad says that when he returns tomorrow he would love to dive and try and find the piece for us in return for using our Snuba gear. So we’ll keep hoping we find the piece. As we found yesterday, having the real item is so important as the stainless and aluminum guys need it in front of them to be able to fashion a new one. Oh well, one way or another we’ll get a new piece of toe rail made eventually.
Then, after that fiasco, we realized that we don’t have the parts we need to repair our leaking forward head. We didn’t buy a new electric flush pump yesterday to replace the one we have with a cracked base as a new costs over $500US. We decided to just reinstall the manual pump that used to be in that head. But then when we got home, we realized we had used parts of that pump to repair the pump in the aft head. So Mark is back in Kuah late this afternoon trying to get to Peninsular Marine in time to make a West Marine order. Orders have to be made in person before 5 pm on Monday in order to receive the items the following week. We will be leaving here late next week, so the order had to go in today. If that doesn’t work, we will just buy a whole new head which is almost as cheap. It just seems so wasteful to throw something away that is fine with the exception of one little piece, but that might be the answer.
The one really great thing that happened to day is that our friends, Tory and Piet Hein of Double Dutch are here. They came in late night before last, but we left early yesterday morning. They kept coming to the boat all day yesterday to find us, but finally met up with Barbara and Cory on Increscent Moon who told them we wouldn’t be back until today. And they were leaving today. So as soon as we returned this morning, we read their note and went to visit. As it ends up, they are spending another night here and leaving in the morning, so we will also have dinner with them if Mark ever gets back from his late afternoon trip to Kuah. We often talk about the fact that his repairs seem to get done quickly and my more mundane work of cleaning, cooking, and keeping our sailing records by writing logs and naming the photos seem to never end. But this is one time when the repair jobs seem to be taking a huge amount of time and energy just because so much energy has to go into finding the things you need or finding the right people to do the repairs. But late next week, repairs done or not, we will be preparing to leave Malaysia and head to Thailand.
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| 081201 Day 40 Langkawi, Malaysia–Overnight at Pantai Cenang Beach |
