by Judy Handley | Mar 3, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 132, Year 4: A Bump in the Road
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Weather: Back to Normal-Beautiful Day, No Dark Afternoon Clouds
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
When I reread last night’s log, it was obvious that it was late when I wrote it and the usual detail was not included. I mentioned that the heavens opened up and poured rain but I didn’t mention that we were walking to Royal Phuket Marina when that happened. Luckily there was a temporary tin shed (contractor’s outhouse) where we could get out of the torrential downpour. I also didn’t mention anything about boatwork, but that was intentional. We had our first disappointment yesterday with the paint job and I just wasn’t sure what to say. Now that we’ve had twenty-four hours to think about it, I can write about it.
Yesterday when we went to the boat, Luck was wet sanding the green waterline stripe on the starboard side with 2000 grit sandpaper. I was mortified. What was wrong? He explained that while they were spraying a big wind came and there were dust particles in the green stripe. Mark and I had not noticed this. But now for the second time a little part of the new paint was being sanded and then rubbed out with 3-M Perfect It III Extra Cut Rubbing Compound. Before I had a panic attack, Oh arrived and we expressed our fears about degradation in the area where Luck was sanding. Oh really believes that there will not be early degradation. Since we have three coats of AwlGrip instead of the usual two coats, he says this is no problem. All of the contractors here say the same thing, but naturally they would as they all have to do the same thing when a paint job is not perfect. We went back to the apartment and researched as much as we could. We’re still not sure what to do about this, but for now we are just leaving it as is. If more problems arise, then we might have to be more aggressive in our dealings, but for now we continue to trust what Oh is saying and are going along with his “fixes.” Mark and I never even saw the dust specks so we obviously need to put on our magnifying glasses. I cannot tell where Luck did the little fix, so I guess the good thing coming out of this is that we are learning what to do when we hit the dock and get our first ding in the paint. I will most certainly carry 2000 grit sandpaper and the 3M product for future fixes because you sure can’t see where the work has been done..
My goal today was to finally, really finish cleaning and polishing all stainless and every screw, bolt, nut, and washer from Windbird. Well, I didn’t quite make it. By mid-afternoon I was going crazy with boredom of doing the same thing all day, so I switched gears and went back to editing and naming photos. Maybe I’ll make the goal tomorrow and maybe I won’t, but I will certainly be glad when that work is done. At the end of this log, I have outlined my process for cleaning stainless, aluminum, and screws, bolts, nuts, and washers covered in caulk and rust. If anyone has a better way, please let us know!
I started this log earlier and it is now about 9 pm. I just heard thunder, so our rainy weather must be back. Windbird’s cabin top and cockpit are to be painted tomorrow or the next day, depending on weather. Even though we are under a tent, you don’t paint when it is raining. Rain usually comes in the afternoon and a morning painting would be fine, but tonight’s thunder show is different. I guess we’ll find out in the morning what is to happen about painting.
Stainless
I have been using a product from New Zealand called Grunt which you paint on, let sit for fifteen minutes, and then wash off. It is a gel, like Vaseline, and probably contains phosphoric acid although it does not say. But the rust really does go away. But we have found that things cleaned with Grunt rust more readily even though the product says that it leaves a protective coating. After every piece of stainless has been cleaned with Grunt, we then apply a product called Mirage. It is a polish that you can buy at boat shows in the US and we really think it extends the life of the stainless cleaning. Since I am just about out of Grunt, I have purchased a product here called Permatex Rust Dissolving Gel which does contain phosphoric acid. It is more like a liquid than a gel and does not work quite as well as Grunt, but it is what we can find here.
Aluminum
We have a lot of anodized aluminum on the boat and I have no idea how to clean that. But for the aluminum that is not anodized, I found a product here called Duro Aluminum Jelly Cleaner and Brightener. It does an adequate job, but I have had to apply it three or four times to get a decent result.
Cleaning Screws, Bolts, Nuts, and Washers
These little guys are a challenge. We removed hundreds from Windbird and all were heavily covered with black caulk and some were rusted badly. We have worked hard to find replacements for most, but I am still cleaning the old ones for future use. We first soak them in paint thinner, scrub them with a wire brush, then coat them with Grunt or the Permatex Jelly. After they are rinsed and dried, we then apply Mirage to each and every little piece. That is what is so painstaking.
by Judy Handley | Mar 2, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 131, Year 4: The Day That the Rains Came Down
Date: Monday, March 2, 2009
Weather: Mixed Sunshine with Clouds; Then Rain
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
Our day began as usual, but then things went a little crazy. We left Boat Lagoon in our rental jeep with a hefty agenda. We knew we needed to return the jeep by 2 pm, so we went on a hunt and kill mission to get as many things as we could think of. In Old Phuket town we went from hardware store to chandlery and found little of what we were looking for, but we did manage to lock ourselves out of our jeep. It took us a bit to find someone to break into our jeep, but for very little money we were
off and running again. We bought the food and drink supplies that we knew we could fit into our little apartment and returned the jeep by the 2 pm deadline. When we returned home, we had an email from Rendezvous Cay saying they were leaving Royal Phuket tomorrow morning, but at the same time we learned that Patti and David of This Way Up were hoping to have dinner with us and Sea Bunny and Amoenitis. Despite the fact that the heavens decided to open and pour down on us late today, we did manage
to get together with everyone for dinner.
by Judy Handley | Mar 1, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 130, Year 4: A Month in Boat Lagoon
Date: Sunday, March 1, 2009
Weather: Back to Normal-Sunny and Beautiful
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
Just after midnight our cell phone rang with a message to tell us our cell phone card had expired. We had plenty of time left, so that seemed weird. Then late this morning Mark was on the computer trying to take another look at flights home and a message came up saying our time on the wireless provider was expired. Then the room phone rang and it was the office wanting to know if we were planning on checking out today or if we wanted to renew our contract. Okay. We got the message. Time slipped up on us. We have been here for a whole month and everything was expiring at once. We then realized that our rental jeep would need to be returned as well. We got out the contract and read that we have until tomorrow at 2 pm to return the car, so we changed our plans to make use of the vehicle while we have it. We will not renew that rental as we will be spending most of the next month putting Windbird back together and won’t have time to go anywhere. So we hopped in the jeep, went to the marina office to buy another month of wireless, went to the hotel office to sign a contract for another month, stopped at the corner Seven Eleven to get a new phone card, and then headed south. We planned to stop at a hardware store to get some paint thinner to soak some of the screws and bolts from Windbird that are heavily laden with old caulk. We then planned to go to the south end of the island just to see it. We haven’t been all the way down to Nai Harn Bay yet and people say it is beautiful.
So we stopped at the hardware store to get the paint thinner and while I was paying for it, Mark was installing the new phone card. Yesterday we got an SMS text message on our cell phone from Tory and Piet Hein of Double Dutch saying they would be coming back to Phuket today (from Bangkok) and suggesting that we get together this week before they take off for South Africa. We messaged back saying any night this week would be great, but now we realized we wouldn’t have a car, so we called them to see if it would be possible to get together this afternoon. They were just arriving in Phuket by bus when we called so we said we’d meet in Ao Chalong in a couple of hours. This would still give us time to do some sight seeing, but once again practicality took over and we stopped to check prices of dehumidifiers at the huge HomeWorks store. They have zillions of air conditioners and air purifiers, but no dehumidifiers. While we were in the area, we drove across the street to Central Festival, the modern mall, to do some clothes shopping. Our sight seeing time was spent shopping, but that’s okay. There will be another opportunity.
We spent a fabulous late afternoon/evening with Piet Hein and Tory of Double Dutch. While we were eating dinner, Donna and Gerry of Scot Free II showed up. You just never know who you are going to see where out here. We really enjoyed the evening in the company of ‘double’ good friends and then came home to enjoy a video Skype call with Heather, Jed, and Sam. This was a great start to a new week.
by Judy Handley | Feb 28, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 129, Year 4: Windbird Gets Her Green Stripes
Date: Saturday, February 28, 2009
Weather: A Bit Overcast with a Few Dark Clouds
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
This is nail biting stuff. Watching your just painted beautiful white hull get covered with plastic and tape is not easy. Oh arrived with a new hair cut. Evidently he could not get the white tips out of his black hair, so he had to have it cut. Today he put on a headwrap before heading into the tent. We watched the first green go on and then came back to clean even more stainless hardware and sort through a year (in my case) or two (in Mark’s case) of paperwork. I have all of the brochures and booklets from every place we visited this year and I just have to get rid of some of it. Mark keeps all bills and important papers in his old computer pack, and it was bursting at the seams. We didn’t get it all done today, but we did get a start.
We returned to Windbird around 4:30 and found that the painting of the waterline and shearline stripes went well. Oh was already gone but they said he didn’t have green hair when he left, so that is good. The rest of the team immediately started taking the plastic off the hull. That’s when it really got tense. The crew is so very careful, but there are a couple of little green marks on the white. As always Luck says no problem and we know he will fix it, but it is nerve wracking. We are learning
to communicate with Luck despite our total lack of Thai and his minimal understanding of English. We think he was telling us that the cabin top will be painted on Wednesday and then we put hardware back on before he does the non-skid. If we understood him correctly, my birthday present next Thursday will be a visit back to the inside of Windbird. I didn’t think we would be this far along by March 5th, but things are looking good.
Tonight we meet Susan and Richard of Sea Bunny and Dave and Di of Amoenitas to go across the highway to one of cheap (but very good) local places for dinner. We’re anxious to hear how their teak deck replacement is going. Our goal for tomorrow is to really, really finish cleaning all of the stainless hardware and finish organizing the paper work. I’m moving along on photos. Today I went all the way back to our New Mexico visit and posted the one last folder from there and then got about six Australia
photo albums posted. I’m working on rounding Cape York and hope to get halfway across Indonesia tomorrow. Ambitious, but maybe I can do it.
by Judy Handley | Feb 27, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 128, Year 4: Teamwork
Date: Friday, February 27, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Hot
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
On the day after the BIG day, I’d like to reflect a bit on the teamwork we have observed with Oh’s crew. Almost everyone we talk to has tales of woe about having work done here in Thailand. We have been told time and again to stay with the boat at all times while work is happening. When the boss is not around, evidently a lot of workers simply don’t work. But we have had the total opposite experience. Oh only visited Windbird once or twice a day for short periods to check on things from the beginning. He has a young site manager named Luck who does a fantastic job and not once have we ever seen any of the crew sitting idle. They start work at 8:30 am, sometimes have a short morning break, an hour lunch break, wind down around 5 pm, clean up, and leave at 5:30. Every single member of the team seems to have amazing attention to detail so that even the Queen of Detail (that’s me) can’t find fault. We feel blessed to have happened upon such a great team. Of course, it will be years before we know if the job holds up under the pressure of time, but from all appearances, the quality of work is topnotch. Somehow Oh, at thirty-three, has put together a fantastic team and we feel blessed to have happened upon them.
We did have one little hitch with yesterday’s paint job. Late last evening we walked over just to take one more look and I found a sag in the paint about a foot above the muffler on the stern of the boat. The rest of the paint job looked so good that we weren’t really upset by this. But we did want to find out what the right thing to do about it might be. There are various opinions from having the paint job done again to leaving it alone or to lightly rubbing it out and polishing over the spot. When we talked to Luck and Pong this morning, they said no problem. They could rub it out easily, but we were worried about compromising the paint in that area. We called Oh and he said he would discuss this with us when he arrived later in the day. But by the time we did our second visit of the day, Luck and Pong had made the sag ‘magically’ disappear. Luck, with a great smile, and his best English, indicated that it just went away. He and Pong were obviously proud of the disappearing act and we are fine with what they did. The crew spent all of today taking tape off and masking off for the painting of the green stripes. The taping took longer than expected due to their absolute attention to detail. They measured, they eyed up close and from afar, they applied tape, and then took it off and reapplied. Windbird now sits ready for the green stripe painting which will happen tomorrow. So we are still one more day away from Windbird looking like her old self again.
Tonight we went to Neil and Ley’s rental home just up the highway from the Boat Lagoon. They also invited Bud and Nita of Passage, a boat from Honolulu that has been on the hard here since long before we arrived. We only met this couple yesterday as Nita has been out of commission having a knee operation, but she is mending quickly and we had a wonderful time tonight getting to know one another. It is always fun to talk to other cruisers having the same experiences, so we shared experiences about having our boats painted and refit here at the Boat Lagoon. Ley and Neil took us to one of their favorite restaurants. The food was fantastic and Ley had fun holding the resident bunny that she has come to know. We hope to spend more time getting to know Bud and Nita of Passage and Ley and Neil of Crystal Blues.
by Judy Handley | Feb 26, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 127, Year 4: Suey, Suey (pronounced ‘soy’) meaning Beautiful
Date: Thursday, February 26, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Hot; 90 degrees F, 61 percent relative humidity
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
The short story is that at 2:30 pm this afternoon, after three hours of continuous painting, Windbird’s hull is Vestal White and she looks beautiful (suey in Thai).
The long story follows . . .
7:15 am-First trip to Windbird to assure ourselves that the waterline is really where we want it. We had talked about this before now, but all of a sudden we were just unsure about lowering the waterline as Oh had suggested. We definitely had too much bottom paint showing since we raised the waterline seven inches in New Zealand. When Oh watched Windbird come it to be hauled out, he had marked the waterline the way he thought it should be. The hassle if the waterline is too close to the water is that you get a yellow scum line that is hard to clean. After our trip to the boat this morning, we decided that he is right so the way he had it taped off was right.
8:15 am-Second trip to Windbird to see if the crew had arrived so we could tell them we found a paint run under one of the fittings on the hull that needed to be sanded out. As soon as we got back to the room, we got a Skype call from Alan Kanegsberg. Alan is our good friend and fellow sailor back in Concord, New Hampshire. He has been following the logs and just wanted to wish us luck on this big day.
9:30 am-Mark made trip number three without me while I stayed in the apartment cleaning stainless. Oh had arrived and Mark talked to him about the waterline, asking if there would be a white stripe above the bottom paint and then the green boot stripe. We have not had a white waterline stripe since New Zealand and Mark didn’t remember the conversation we had with Oh when he recommended putting the white stripe back. Oh recommended a one-inch white stripe right above the waterline and then a three-inch green waterline stripe. Mark then walked around the yard to check the width of other boat waterline stripes.
10:30 am-Fourth trip to Windbird to watch the preparation for painting. By the time we got there all of the taping off had been completed, the concrete under the boat had been flooded with water to get rid of the last source of dust, even more temporary plastic covering had gone up to protect the hull from anything that might fall out of the air. While testing the paint guns and hose with the air compressor, Oh decided he wanted new hose and new hose fittings, so he sent Eu to get that. Mark hung around longer that I did as I needed to get back and rinse the rust dissolving gel off some stainless, and took some last minute preparation photos. Pong was suited up and ready to paint and the tent was being closed. Mark returned to the apartment and we sat and waited with butterflies in our stomachs.
11:45 am-Mark made the fifth trip alone, got a couple of pictures through a hole in the tent, but couldn’t tell much about what was happening.
12:45 pm-Ley called to say she drove by Windbird and saw some guys sitting out front. So we made trip number six over to see what was happening. When we arrived there was a young man standing at the tent corner watching what was happening inside, but the air was thick with paint so that it looked very foggy inside. We hung around and then Luck came out to mix more paint under the temporary tarp that was hung to protect the paint from the sun. He said they were on coat number two and things were going well. Oh was spraying on the port side with Lok holding the tank.
2:15 pm-As we arrived for our seventh visit of the day, Luck came out of the tent and said, “Three.” We assumed he meant the three coats were on. Oh was still spraying but almost done. When he emerged from the tent his curly black hair had white tips and even his eyelashes were white. We took a peak but didn’t go in yet. We ran to the store to get beer and juice, and some Snickers bars, for the crew and then we went in to see Windbird. The water was still running flooding the floor so no dust
could be kicked into the air to mar her beautiful sheen. And she does shine. The paint job looks perfect. I’m sure we’ll find little imperfections, but right now we are super happy and greatly relieved.
Oh is proud of the job and anxious to get the tent off so others can see. But first, the green shear line (top of the hull) and the green waterline must be painted. AwlGrip and Oh say that masking tape can be applied to the hull in twelve hours, so tomorrow morning the tape will go on and the green will be added. We then hope to let her sit until Monday before a heavy plastic is put on covering the hull while the cabin top is painted. Oh does the hull first so it has a longer time to cure before
going back in the water, but this requires that it be meticulously covered while other work goes on. While all of this is going on, Mark and I are working on photos and we keep cleaning and polishing stainless and searching for the nuts, bolts, and screws we need. We are finding lots of 304 stainless, but not as much 316 which is what we need. Tomorrow we will take a trip into Phuket Town to Bangkok Hardware. Ley and Neil tell us it is fantastic and maybe that hardware store will have more of
what we need. So the search continues.
