Day 36, Year 5: Getting Ready to Leave Rebak
Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Weather: Overcast Day with Periods of Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia

The ‘thing-a-mee’ around the moon last night did indeed mean that moisture was headed our way. We awoke to a totally overcast sky. I needed to get laundry done before we leave tomorrow, so I put the clothes in the buckets early and had everything out to dry by 11 am. There was a wonderful breeze, but not enough to dry everything before the rains came in early afternoon. So the cockpit looks like a Chinese laundry.

We finished the job of getting the lazy jacks in place to hold up our new sail cover. This meant Mark needed to go up the mast three times. But now it looks like everything is in place and the new cover looks great. What was a Doyle Stackpack is now a Ben Stackpack (Ben is the name of the canvas man who did our work here). We then launched into doing every job we could think of that requires a lot of fresh water. Mark scrubbed the teak decks and I scrubbed the deck top. I’m not sure what is in the air here, but whatever it is, it is very black and yucky. Some say it is gas and oil fumes from all he airplanes that fly overhead. But whatever it is, I will be glad to leave it behind.

In addition to tonight’s log, I am writing a letter to family and friends that will also be posted. We have finally made a decision about our travels for the next year, and that will be outlined in the letter.

Tomorrow we will leave here and sail to Kuah. It is a short distance, but it will give us a chance to check all systems. We will start the watermaker and hope that is working, use the autopilot and hope that is working, and check out the sails to make sure everything is going up and down as it should. I’ll report from Kuah tomorrow night on how things go.