by Judy Handley | Feb 17, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 118, Year 4: Back to Normal
Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Beautiful
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
After yesterday’s frenetic pace, today seemed a little more normal. Of course, there’s not a whole lot that is normal about our lives anyway. Boat work is progressing nicely. Most of the primer put on Sunday is coming off in the sanding process, as it should be. The arch is almost ready to go to the shop to do the final welding. We made our down payment on the canvas work that will be done once the boat is mostly back together. I went food shopping while Mark went to the hospital to get his “all clear” report on the infection he has had for about six weeks now. Hurray! I did laundry, catalogued half of the hardware taken off the cabin top and mast, put the last of cleaned and dried lines away, and with what little time was left in the afternoon, I continued to work on editing and naming photos for the web. I finished and Mark uploaded to the website all photo folders that weren’t already on the site from our time in Thailand and the few days from Bali that weren’t done earlier. Now I’m working my way back through Malaysia to Singapore. Slow, slow process.
I’m hoping most of the on-site stainless work will be finished tomorrow morning so the paint crew can start standing the cabin top. Windbird should be ready for another coat of primer on Thursday and we sure don’t want to slow that process down. On Friday of this week our two-month Thai Visa needs to be extended, so we will have to head to Phuket Town to do that. We like to be here on paint days to watch over the process, so hopefully the timing will work out and painting will be done on Thursday.
We still haven’t made our plane reservations for coming to the US in April, so maybe that will be tonight’s job.
by Judy Handley | Feb 16, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 117, Year 4: Incredible
Date: Monday, February 16, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Beautiful
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
In the last twenty-four hours we have found so many things to be incredible. Last night we talked to my sister-in-law Sue in Florida and she remarked about how incredible it was that we were talking from Thailand to the US on a computer. Then we talked to Heather, Jed, and Sam and enjoyed the incredible video of Sam playing in the tent he was given by his Goldstone grandparents. He would look at us on the screen, play a while, and then come back and look at us again. With Skype, we can take still photos of Sam while we are talking to him. I’ve included one of those in the photos with this log. Sam has been very sick for the past few days, so he started to fade towards the end of our conversation. He was on his daddy’s shoulder when we said goodbye but he heard us and waved his little hand goodbye without even looking at us. Incredible.
And then there was today. We started by talking to Justin and Jo and hearing that things are going well in New Mexico. And then we had to run to the boat to meet Nop, the stainless guy. All of sudden things are moving very fast again. Nop and his crew moved in and set up their shop next to Windbird. They measured the stainless pieces and cut them right on the spot, carried the measured and cut pieces up to the deck of the boat to fit them, bend them, and then spot weld the entire structure.
An engineer stayed on site all day directing the work, and by the end of the day we have the skeleton of an arch and stainless rails from our gate to the back of the boat. By the end of the day tomorrow, the total structure will be spot welded and then removed to the real shop for finishing. We found this pretty incredible. And while this was happening, Oh’s crew was filling in the rough spots on Windbird’s hull, spraying the whole hull with colored spray paint, and then beginning the long board sanding process to smooth everything out to ready it for the next primer coat. The colored spray paint is put on just so they will know where they have sanded. We talked with Oh, chose the color of paint we will be using, and that has been purchased and is ready and waiting. Oh says we could be applying AwlGrip by the end of next week. Incredible! And then there was the appearance of Mazrizal, the manager of Rebak Marina back in Langkawi. Mark was at the boat when Mazrizal stopped by. I was
back in the apartment but had headed over to the boat to get Mark to take him to lunch. When I saw them talking, all I could say is, “You are in the wrong place.” Mazrizal is here for a couple of days just scoping out the various marinas on Phuket Island. He was amazed at the services available here and we talked with him about why we chose to have the boat painted here instead of at Rebak. We will be returning there as soon as we are finished here and we also talked to him about that. He joked
that we will need a slip with a balloon fender all around to protect our new paint job. He was joking, but I thought it sounded like a splendid idea!
So things are moving fast here. In between all of the visits to the boat to approve what is happening, I continue to work on editing and posting photos on the website. I really thought I would have lots of down time to do this, but it is not looking like that will be the case. This is good, as it means we really might make it to New Mexico in time for Wee Gerbil’s birth, and that is the most important thing to us right now. So we aren’t having the down time we thought we would have, but we are finally feeling good enough about work progress to go ahead and book our tickets home. If the work schedule continues as it has, we will headed back to Rebak in Malaysia by the end of the first week in April and be New Mexico bound in mid-April.
by Judy Handley | Feb 15, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 116, Year 4: Hearts in the Pool
Date: Sunday, February 15, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Beautiful
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
What a wonderful Valentine’s dinner we had at Chandara Resort last evening. We have eaten there before and found their food to be unremarkable, but their special holiday dinners are spectacular. After doing our final inspection of Windbird’s first coat of primer, we drove north to Ao Po and met Jean and Ken of Renaissance 2000 at Chandara. The special Valentine’s dinner was being served by the pool, so we walked that way and were immediately in awe at how beautifully they had the pool deck decorated with tables and lights. The pool had beautiful hearts covered with flower petals floating all over. The food was wonderful, the service the best we’ve ever had anywhere, and everything was served in a heart shape. For starters we had seafood terrine with papaya salsa. Then came the lobster consume followed by a main of either pork tenderloin or poached salmon. Again everything was served in a heart shape and decorated with hearts. The sweetheart tiramisu was to die for and the chocolate truffles were decadently rich. It was a lovely meal with lovely friends. Jean and Ken will be leaving for Lankawi in a week or so and from there they will cross the Indian Ocean to South Africa. They are from Hamilton, near Toronto in Canada, so hopefully we will see them once we return home.
Today we worked on our computers in our apartment most of the day. I have hours of photo editing and naming to do and Mark is trying to organize the information on our three computers and the back-up hard drives. It is tedious work but we are enjoying the time to do this. This evening we went up to the rooftop deck and just enjoyed the breeze and the views. We are now sitting in our apartment with the air conditioning off for the first time since moving in and the sliding glass doors on both sides open to the outside. When the mosquitoes arrive, we’ll have to shut up, but for now it is delightful. We will be talking to Heather, Jed, and Sam tonight as well as my sister-in-law Sue and my neice Lynn. In the morning we will talk to Justin and Jo and my sister Patsy, so I’ll have to report on family news in tomorrow night’s log.
by Judy Handley | Feb 14, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 115, Year 4: Fantastic Valentine’s Day Gift
Date: Saturday, February 14, 2009
Weather: Perfect-85 degrees F; 65% Relative Humidity
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
Windbird got her first coat of primer today. She’s white again and looks great! Neither Mark nor I could think of a better Valentine’s Day gift, so we will celebrate our Valentine’s evening out with glee. I am posting photos of the progress from the day the mast was removed to today with this log. We were taken out of the water only seventeen days ago and every single day we feel like there has been phenomenal progress. So far, so good. And the weather today was fantastic for painting–low
humidity and temperatures in the 80’s.
by Judy Handley | Feb 12, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 113, Year 4: Windbird Progress Report
Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009
Weather: Sunny Weather; West Winds Blowing
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
We got an email from Shirena today telling us that strong winds are blowing in from the west. That’s not good news for them as they are headed up the west coast of Phuket Island tomorrow, but hopefully the anchorages won’t be too rough. We started our day with another trip to the hospital where Mark got his third and last antibiotic IV. He is now back on five days of antibiotic pills and then he will go back for another check-up. While he was at the hospital, I went back to the Market Place supermarket
and wrote down what is available there with the price. I will use this when preparing for the Indian Ocean crossing next year. Prices will be slightly different, but I can use the information now to compare one store against another. We returned to the Boat Lagoon and had lunch in our apartment and then headed over to check on Windbird’s progress.
The exciting news is that the first coat of fairing compound will be applied to the entire hull and the cabin top on Saturday. Luck, the young man in charge, told us that we could come to Windbird tomorrow to go inside and check on things and get some items we need, but that after the first coat on Saturday, we are not to go into the boat again until Monday when the crew arrives to check things out. That’s perfect timing for us as the list of things we need has been growing dialy. But we are just
so excited that the first coat of whatever is going on so soon. We were also excited that the crew has started sanding the mast. The sooner that is done, the better. It will take us about a week to put it back together based on what we saw Eric and Robyn of Scorpido do, so it will be wonderful if the mast is finished before the boat and we can work on that while Oh’s crew puts the finishing coats on Windbird. After visiting Windbird, we walked up the steps to the building housing a long row of
yacht services. Just up from Windbird is a small chandlery run by a young woman named Toi. Another young woman that works for Toi, Noo, has spent a couple of afternoons sanding Windbird with Oh’s crew. I had just taken a picture of the crew on break at Windbird, so I showed the photo to Noo and she and Toi were able to name the different crew members for us. That is how we learned that the young man who works as site supervisor is Luck. Oh sometimes calls him “L” and now we know why.
We spent the latter part of the afternoon starting to work on getting photos from the past months organized. We have barely made a dent, but we have started. I continue working on getting all of the lines from Windbird washed and hung to dry and I should complete that job by Saturday. So we are moving along.
We are thinking of Heather (our daughter) tonight. For the first time, she is hosting the Cape and Islands public radio station talk show. It is a special program honoring the 200th birthday of Darwin, so the station asked her, as science reporter, to do the program. Hosting a program is very different from filing science news reports that can be edited. The talk show is live, so we are sending our most positive thoughts your way, Heather. We’ll try to listen to the live broadcast on the internet,
but if the bandwidth is too slow to give us a good signal we will listen later to the podcast. Again, isn’t the internet just amazing?!
by Judy Handley | Feb 10, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand Refit |
Day 111, Year 4: Moving Forward . . . Slowly
Date: Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Weather: Sunny Weather with Moderating Temperatures
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
The pace of life right now is certainly slower than we have been used to this year. Well, maybe slower than we have ever moved. We keep busy, but the pace is slower and we actually have time to read. We are working away at reading the four news magazines we bought yesterday, and as always we read before bedtime . . . just a little longer than usual. I continued soaking and washing the lines from Windbird today. Some of these ropes are 115 feet long and barely fit in a five gallon bucket to be
soaked and then rinsed. I’ve made a lot of progress but probably have two to three more days before I finish that job. Mark went to the hospital for his executive check-up this morning. He was quite impressed with the efficiency of the process, but in the end, he found out what he already knew. He is extremely healthy but has high cholesterol and a urinary track infection. He did find out that he has an enlarged bladder, so we need to watch this. He won’t have the results of some of the tests
until tomorrow, but all looks good. The doctor put him on an IV antibiotic drip once a day for the next few days for his stubborn infection.. He will return to the hospital each morning at 10 am to get his daily dose. Hopefully after a couple of days the infection will have run its course.
In the meantime, progress on Windbird continues. Today the dark green stripe above our rub rail was sanded and work began on the cabin top. The progress this week is much harder to see, but the work is moving forward. I think Mark and I will both feel much better once the first primer coat is applied next week. Eric and Robyn of Scorpido walked over to see Windbird today and when they saw us they said, “Windbird looks naked.” She is stripped right now but the redressing will begin soon. On
the other hand, Scorpido is looking great. The mast is back on and she will go in the water tomorrow.
We had to take our little jeep back today and trade it for a different one. Ours was stalling constantly and the air conditioning was barely working. Luckily they had another one just like ours returned this morning and this new one runs much better. After getting our new jeep we stopped by the chandlery to talk to the rigger. The rigger is David Samuelson and we have a connection. About a week ago, Susan Balabuck emailed us. She and her husband Rick were the previous owners of Windbird. She
read in our log that we had arrived in the Boat Lagoon and she wanted us to track down rigger David Samuelson and mention the name of a mutual friend, Betsy Cox. David is a Brit, but he spent some time in the US and he and his wife became good friends with Betsy. In fact, he taught her how to sail. His face lit up when I mentioned her name and he launched into a description of how they knew one another. It is just such a small world and we love being part of these connections between people around
the globe.
