by Judy Handley | Nov 22, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 27, Year 5: Never Ending Rain
Date: Sunday, November 22, 2009
Weather: Totally Overcast with Periods of Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
The rain just keeps on coming down. We have not been having the torrential rains that we did a few days ago, but neither are we having just sprinkles. It just dibble dops off and on all day and all night. It will be two weeks tomorrow since we have had a sunny day without rain, but if the reports are correct, it could be another week before we see the sunshine. I guess I couldn’t ask for better weather to sit inside and do computer work, so no complaints here.
I am still working in the past, fixing the logs and the photos on the web to reflect the correct sailing season. Mark worked on the SailRite sewing machine today. It was only sewing a zigzag pattern as some little piece in the workings had broken. But he was able to jerry rig it so it now sews a straight pattern as well. He then made new polar fleece covers for our four fenders. Cory and Barbara of Increscent Moon were coming over for dinner tonight so we also spruced up the inside of the boat and prepared dinner. We had a wonderful evening with Cory and Barbara. It is so much fun to talk with cruisers who have the same boat as yours and compare likenesses and differences. Tomorrow we will go to town with them and then on Tuesday morning, they leave for Kuah. We are here for another week, leaving the marina on Tuesday morning, December 1. If our main sail cover is completed before then, we will leave from here for Thailand. If it is not, then we will sail to Kuah to pick up the mainsail and leave for Thailand from there as soon as the work is completed. So one way or another some time next week we hope to be headed to Thailand.
BUT before we can go, we have to make a trip to the mainland to Penang to get our Thai visas. We are hoping that one of us will do a one day flight to Penang and back to get the visas, and that will probably have to be on this Wednesday. Or we we both go by ferry on Tuesday afternoon and return on Thursday morning. And then that is Thanksgiving. Yikes! It’s a good thing I write these logs to remind us of what we need to do. We had better get busy and figure this one out.
by Judy Handley | Nov 21, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 26, Year 5: Tense Jobs, Tedious Jobs
Date: Saturday, November 21, 2009
Weather: Totally Overcast with Sprinkles
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
This was a day where our different jobs gave us different views of the day. For Mark, this was a tense day. Last year when re-installing the Air-X wind generator he got the wires crossed and blew the circuits in the generator’s control board. While we were home he ordered repair parts that also amounted to an upgrade. We waited for months while the special order was filled. We received it only a few days before we left Massachusetts headed for North Carolina. Today Mark finally found the time (and the courage) to install the upgrade. He checked and re-checked the wiring. He was really tense as we began the tests. The first test went well. The second test required hooking it up to the batteries. When we did the test, the LED didn’t blink like it was supposed to. His heart sank. He decided to test each component in the system and found that the ammeter was not working. We did the test again by-passing the ammeter and the LED blinked! Success! After cleaning the ammeter terminals, it too worked So now the “new” wind generator has passed all the tests except the final and most critical one: Will it generate electricity when the wind blows?
Judy, on the other hand, spent the day re-naming logs in year 3 that really should have been in year 4. This is a long and tedious process. Add to that the fact that for every log that is renamed, the associated pictures also have to be renamed. This was not a banner day for her. And then Mark burned out the motor on the little Kirby DC powered hand vacuum that is almost as good as nothing, but when you have nothing better, something is better than nothing. We have two sets of plugs everywhere in the boat: one for 110 volt AC and one for 12 volt DC. If you plug a DC applicance into an AC plug, it is no more! And we are truly vacuum-less.
We did have a nice surprise this morning. Mark’s nieces and nephews were gathered in Gainsville, Florida to watch the ‘Gators play. They called on Skype and we had great fun talking with them. Go ‘Gators, go.
We got an email from our friends Tina and Robert of Shirena today. They have been visiting family in Australia and were supposed to be back on Tuesday. But Tina’s passport was sent away to get a UK visa and it has not been returned. So Robert will probably return on Tuesday, followed by Tina when her passport is returned. We are anxious for them to return so we can talk about plans for the upcoming cruising season. They are headed our way and we would like to connect with them as we travel. Hopefully Tina will be back before we leave for Thailand, but if not, we will just have to catch up there.
by Judy Handley | Nov 20, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 25, Year 5: Quiet Day with Dinosaur Squeals
Date: Friday, November 20, 2009
Weather: Heavy Rain During the Night; Cloudy Day with Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
We had a quieter day than usual, but mid-day we connected on a Skype video call with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy and got to hear Ziggy’s pterodactyl squeals. Ziggy has two teeth now and is starting to crawl and stand up while holding on to things. And his smiles and squeals are just delightful. He provided the only sunshine on this dreary, cloudy day. Justin and Jo are going to spend the weekend and most of next week moving from Santa Fe back out into the desert to Madrid (pronounced Mad-rid, not like Madrid in Spain). With Ziggy’s new found mobility, we suggested they do a bit of child proofing as they move into the new house. We wish them luck with the move.
Today we organized more STUFF, I spent more time organizing website information, Mark put another coat of paint on the anchor, and then he turned his attention to the Air-X wind generator. When we reinstalled the wind generator after the boat was painted, we reversed some of the wiring and burned out the circuit board for the regulator. So now Mark is VERY carefully following the instructions for the installing the new regulator that is part of an upgrade kit we purchased while home in the US. Supposedly the upgrade allows us to get more amps at lower wind speeds and it should be quieter. It has a new name, theAir-Breeze instead of the Air-X. We’ll install it tomorrow and do some double testing before turning it on this time. We cannot afford to blow another regulator!
It rained so hard last night that it was sometimes hard to sleep because of the noise. It was cloudy again all day, and then started raining in the early evening. I don’t remember it being this rainy here last year at this time, but when I went back and check the logs, there are lots of references to cloudy days and sprinkles. I think the difference that we are getting torrential rain instead of sprinkles. But hopefully we’ll have a few sunny days in the next week.
by Judy Handley | Nov 19, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 24, Year 5: Home for Three Weeks Today
Date: Thursday, November 19, 2009
Weather: Cloudy Day, No Rain
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
It is hard for me to believe that we have been back here on Windbird for three weeks, but the calendar probably doesn’t lie, and it tells me this is so. Slowly, ever so slowly, we are getting things back together and fixing those things that we break in the meantime. Today’s work included painting our main 65 pound spade anchor with an aluminum paint that looks somewhat like new galvanized steel.. I am not sure for what reason we did this, as we are sure as it will disappear after anchoring a few times, but it looks good now and our friends on Increscent Moon gave us he paint. I did more work on the website today and we attended a Bilge Swap where everyone was trying to get rid of unwanted stuff. We gave away some things, but ended up buying an almost new Sanyo Xacti HD1 digital video camera with a fantastic underwater housing. This was bought in Singapore last fall for way more than we paid for it today, but our good friends on Free Bird had decided they really just didn’t need one more camera. And since we have no current way of recording underwater, this seemed to fit the bill. We are truly trying to live within our means this year, but when we thought about not being able to record the Maldives and Red Sea underwater or get good video of a trip down the Nile River, we got soft and weakened when the opportunity knocked. We paid less for the whole package than we would pay for the cheapest underwater camera without underwater housing that we can find in Kuah, so we did it. Merry Christmas to us. And this time, the camera will be tied to Mark in some fashion so he can’t lose this one!
We went for a mid-afternoon walk up on the hard stand area. Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander’s boat, Wild Card, has been on the hard for about a week now, and as we walked past we stopped to say hello. This afternoon they were painting the bottom, but they took a few minutes to talk with us. They are headed for the Red Sea, as are we, and they suggested we get together next week to discuss our future travels when they are back in the water. Our friends Tina and Robert of Shirena will be back from Australia by then and we’re hoping we can all get together. I volunteered Shirena as the hosting boat. Nice of me since they are not here to protest!
Tonight we had a salad onboard and then went over to the Hard Dock Café for a seafood pizza for dinner. We sat with Dave and Di of Alamedas. This is the couple that we often had dinner with across the highway from the Boat Lagoon while Windbird was on the hard there. We celebrated the birth of their fourth grandchild, their first girl, early in March last year at that little restaurant. Dave is an engineer and has offered to help us with the installation of our new wind generator and that help is very welcome. When it comes to things electrical, we are a bit challenged. We discovered that our multi-meter is not working correctly this afternoon, so Dave has offered to help with that as well.
Tomorrow is Friday. We will take time to assess all that we have accomplished and what we yet have to do, and then set a departure date. We don’t want to rush too fast, but it is definitely time to get out of a marina and back out to the islands. Thailand is so beautiful and we don’t want to waste one day here when we could be out there enjoying the white sand, turquoise water, and beautiful limestone karsts rising up out of the sea.
by Judy Handley | Nov 18, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 23, Year 5: Bye-Bye Shop Vac
Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Weather: Rain All Day
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
As Mark’s mother would have said, “Saddness doth prevail.” Our wonderful little wet/dry 2.5 gallon Shop Vac that cleans out our bilge, cleans up the wonderful messes Mark makes when sanding, grinding, or drilling, and keeps the rugs in Windbird clean is no more. Mark plugged it in to clean up yet another mess and nothing happened. He worked on it and found electricity all the way to the last place he could get into in the motor, but it just won’t go. We cannot buy appliances that work on Windbird with her 110 wiring except in the US, so unless someone can fix the motor, we will be without for a very long time. There are lots of shops in Kuah where we see people repairing appliances of all sorts, so maybe we’ll be lucky. Evidently when you transit the Red Sea, there are sand storms that can cause quite a mess inside and outside of your boat, and I was depending on the Shop Vac to help take care of that problem. So hope with us that someone in Kuah can save us. Someday when I get around to writing that list of things you MUST HAVE on a cruising sailboat, a small wet/dry Shop Vac will be high on the list.
This morning we talked to Judy and Howard of Laelia on Skype. They crossed the Indian Ocean last season and now have their boat on the hard in Greece while spending time at home in the US. Howard had no sooner returned home to California than he had to have triple by-pass heart surgery, but he is fine now and ready to return to Laelia in Greece in May to continue their travels. It was so wonderful to talk to people we know and trust and hear all about their travels across the Indian Ocean, through pirate alley, and into the Red Sea. So thank you, Howard and Judy.
Boat work continued today even though the weather was dreary and rainy. I worked inside on website updates and Mark drilled a few more holes in the cockpit coaming and mast to add more hardware. He also got the hole from the aft lazarette caulked where the new LPG hose enters the inside of the boat. So we were able to cook dinner on our stove and everything went smoothly.
Tomorrow there is a cruiser swap at 11 am and then Mark will go out with Cory and Barbara on Increscent Moon to check out a problem they are having with their cutlass bearing. They think it is okay, but they want to take the boat out for test run to make sure. If all is well, they will leave for Thailand this weekend. We’re definitely here until the end of the month, but we hope to be headed north to Thailand by the first of December.
by Judy Handley | Nov 17, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 22, Year 5: Cooking Once Again
Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Weather: Sunny Morning with Off and On Rains All Afternoon and Evening
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
“Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last. Just kicking down the cobble stones (replace that with ‘ocean waves’). Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy!” Okay, I’m showing my age. I have been sitting here at my computer trying to come up with the best photos of our past two cruising seasons to put on our website homepage, and I realized that photos from some of the most fantastic parts of our trip through Indonesia have never been named and uploaded to the website. That made me think that we move too fast, and that made me start singing The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) by Simon and Garfunkel. So as soon as I get the website updated, I’m going to halt all work and get the photos from the past two cruising seasons named and uploaded. I’ve said it before, but this time I am going to get this done.
Mark earned his keep today. He got up and immediately launched into finding a path through the boat for the new LPG fuel line. It starts in the lazarette on the aft deck and then snakes its way under the aft cabin bed, through the engine room, under the galley sink, and then back up to the stove in the galley. Everything under the sink and stove in the galley had to be removed, floor boards had to come out, and the aft cabin mattress and structure that supports it had to come off. So once again the boat was turned inside out and upside down. But this time it was a success. It took Mark all day, but he got the new fuel line run. When he tried the system, it was still not working. So he went to the little chandlery here and found a new sensor for which we paid twice as much as we should have, but it was here which meant we wouldn’t have to wait for two weeks and pay shipping charges on one from the US. Mark hooked the new sensor up and after making a few changes in wiring, he had the system up and running once again. We were happy to find that the solenoid didn’t need to be replaced as that would have cost another $100US. We didn’t use the galley stove for cooking tonight as he still has to fill the space around the new hole he had to drill in the aft lazarette to put the fuel hose through. That’s important because any leak of LPG from the tanks in the lazarette would flow through that hole into the boat. Once that hole is filled tomorrow, we will have a working galley once again. Hopefully that chapter is closed.
We’ve had two great Skype connections since writing last night’s log. We got a Skype message from Heather this morning (her evening) asking if we had 5 minutes to spare. Of course we did, and we got to have a special video Skype session with Jonah without Sam the Man dominating the space. Sam is such an entertainer that we hardly get to see Jonah when Sam is awake for a call, but Sam had gone to bed and we got to watch Jonah smile, and ‘talk’, and try to eat the video camera. It’s our hope that if we continue to make video contact with Jonah and with Ziggy that they will still recognize us when we see them next in person. It worked with Sam, so we’re hoping it will work again. Our other Skype connection was late last night with our sailing friends Ken and Jean of Renaissance 2000. They made it to Richards Bay in South Africa a few weeks ago, have done the safari thing, and are now traveling down the coast by rental car to see areas that they will soon by sailing by on their way to Cape Town. They had a great season in the Indian Ocean and are now really enjoying South Africa.
Our other connection today was person to person with Guy and Annika of Street Legal. Mark was too far down in the bilge running fuel line to come with me, so I went to see Guy and Annika to talk about the Indo Net that Guy will be running. He has a list of about thirty-five boats that are headed to the Red Sea and we will be having daily contact by HAM radio until we Salalah, Oman. Once there, we will follow the Joint Forces recommendations on communication. You aim for a low profile while transiting Pirate Alley which means that you take down your radar reflector, use only handheld VHF radios which do not transmit very far, use no lights, and it might even mean using no HAM email relaying positions as those communications can be intercepted. When leaving Salalah, we will actually be looking for a bad weather window. Pirates don’t work very well in strong winds and heavy seas, so our best shot is to hope for moderately bad weather and go for it. That is certainly a switch.
