Day 101, Year 4: Life on Land in the Boat Lagoon
Date: Saturday, January 31, 2009
Weather: Still Hot and Beautiful
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
Now we have really done it. Yesterday we acquired our little studio apartment and today we rented a little Suzuki Jeep 4-wheel drive truckling-it is a tiny, tiny little truck. So I guess you could say we have become “land lubbers” for a while. For those of you who read this blog for the sailing adventure, you’ll probably want to check in late next fall/early winter when we get underway again. For those of you who just want to know what world cruisers do on a day to day basis, you can stay tuned.
We spent a lovely night in our little studio apartment with air con. Sleeping was definitely much better than the night before on Windbird in the heat. We spent our day on Windbird trying to keep up with the needs of the crew erecting a huge tent over the boat. It took them most of the day to erect the steel structure. They needed us to take down the wind generator and the canvas bimini and side curtains. And then Oh had told us that removing the wind vane steering mechanism from the stern of
the boat was a priority. In order to do this, we had to remove the wooden slats and white wall board in the aft cabin in order to get to the nuts on the bolts that hold the Monitor wind vane on. Taking off the wind vane steering required working, working at getting the bolts that held the wind vane steering on removed. We lowered the wind generator pole but still have to remove the blades from the pole tomorrow. There are a multitude of jobs to keep us busy and everything we do in this heat takes
twice as long as it should. Tomorrow is Sunday and holiday for the crew, but Mark and I will return in the early morning to continue taking all the paraphernalia off the mast. There are steps that go all the way to the top, a radar antenna and a radar reflector, a television antenna that we have never used, winches, cleats, ropeclutches, lights, and on and on. It is a lot of stuff. Then there are the stays and spreaders have to be removed. We’ll do as much as we can in the early hours tomorrow
and then take a break to go looking for a two-burner electric hot plate so that we can cook in our studio apartment. Tonight we had dinner with our friends Pete and Kathy of Wave Runner from New Zealand. They will go shopping with us, and when we return we think Robert and Tina of Shirena will be here in Boat Lagoon. That probably means a late afternoon get-together with them. So tomorrow will be a mix of work and play.
While I write this log, Mark is using the computer program called “Paint” to draw his vision of the stainless work we want to have done. We are hoping to replace the wire life lines from our gates to the stern with stainless tubing that curves to the match the curve of the boat. We also are hoping to add a stainless arch on the back of Windbird to hold the solar panels, the wind generator, and to add dinghy davits. Adding the dinghy davits on a canoe stern boat with wind vane steering on the back
is almost impossible. But we are contemplating getting rid of the Monitor wind vane. We have hardly used it and once we removed it today for purposes of painting, we really liked the look of Windbird without it. We have a complete replacement for our auto helm steering system, so maybe, just maybe we can do without the third back-up. We’re still thinking about what we really want to do. We got one estimate for this work yesterday, but we have another person coming on Monday morning to do a second
estimate. Mark is hoping his drawing of what we want will help to make sure we really get what we ask for.
Getting Windbird ready to be shut up tight for the sanding and painting process is a big job. For most of the day while Mark worked outside, I worked inside gathering the things we will need for the next two months. So far every thing is fitting into our little apartment. Even though it is small, the floor space is bigger than Windbird. But it doesn’t have the storage space. So it is good thing that I am not bringing everything from Windbird!
