Day 4, Year 5: Back Home on Windbird
Date: Friday, October 30, 2009
Weather: Hot and Sunny with Evening Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
It was a good day, good to be back on Windbird, but she is still a mess inside with things piled everywhere. We worked all day, but we probably really only worked the equivalent of two-three hours. The heat requires that you stop every few minutes for a rest period, so progress is very slow. But one really good thing happened. After putting our boat back in the water after the two months of refit in Thailand last spring, we discovered that we had a faulty through-hull. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a through-hull is, I’ll do a little explanation. Boats have holes in them that allow salt water to come in for flushing toilets, cooling the engine, draining sinks, etc. But you certainly want to control that flow of salt water or you’ll sink! So you put these special valves in each hole called through-hulls. This allows you to shut off the flow of water when it is not needed. It was our aft sink drain valve that was broken, so when we left the boat last April, Mark dove down and pounded a wooden peg in the hole so we wouldn’t have to worry about a leak while we were gone. We were going to have the boat hauled out of the water next week in order to safely put in the new valve without the threat of salt water flowing in while doing the repair. But this morning Mark got up and easily replaced the valve in a matter of minutes. The only tricky part was when he had to knock out the wooden peg and stem the flow of salt water while shutting off the new valve. He was ecstatic that it worked so smoothly and his half hour of work saved us a few hundred dollars in haul-out fees. I wasn’t quite as successful. I spent my day cleaning the deck of the boat. That’s something that usually takes only an hour or two, but it took me all day in the hot sun and I have a nicely burned back to prove it. We also tried to rent an air-conditioning unit from Noel, the guy who runs the little marina store and boat watches in our absence, but the unit was not working. When our friends on Shirena leave for Australia on Monday, we hope to take over their unit. We don’t mind the heat when we are out on the water, but in the protection of the marina, the air just doesn’t flow and it is stifling. Add to that the daily rains that require you to shut up the boat, and an air conditioner sounds mighty good.
Tim of Rendezvous Cay came over in the morning to welcome us back and invite us over for Happy Hour prior to the Bloody Halloween Eve dinner being put on by the marina and adjoining resort. It was great to catch up with Tim and Rose and Dave and Judy of Freebird on Rendezvous Cay and then we went to enjoy the great dinner and entertainment put on by marina and resort personnel. The couple with the best costume won a free night at the resort and that was Richard and Susan of Sea Bunny. Richard went as an exorcist and Susan as a designer bat. The hotel staffers were dressed as ghouls and put on a Michael Jackson style dance performance. It was great fun.
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| 091030 Day 4 Malaysia–Halloween Party at Rebak |
