by Judy Handley | Nov 16, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 21, Year 5: Trip to Kuah
Date: Monday, November 16, 2009
Weather: Same Pattern–Hot, Sunny Morning with Rains Beginning Midday
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
We stepped onto the Rebak ferry to the main island at 8:45 this morning. Cory and Barbara of Increscent Moon were with us and we shared the cost of renting a car for the day. I always feel like we are spending so much money when we rent a car, but actually it only costs us about $15US plus $3 in fuel for the day, and divided by two that is only $9US. But still you are driven to accomplish as much as you can in the time you have. So we did our comparison shopping for LPG (liquid propane gas) line, went to the wet market to buy fresh fruit and veggies, went to the warehouse to buy the cheapest beer and wine in town, went to get some of our Thailand information copied for Cory and Barbara, got new passport photos taken, did some grocery shopping, and on and on. It is amazing how much you can do in one six hour day. We even had time to stop by Telega Harbor on our way back to the Rebak ferry to show Cory and Barbara the boat cover Bud and Nita of Passage had made in Thailand last year. Cory and Barbara are planning to have a cover made for Increscent Moon and we were most impressed by the Stamoid cover Bud and Nita had made while in the Boat Lagoon last winter. The Stamoid logo is “We’ve got you covered.” But there is a problem. The polyester covered material does not breathe and therefore after only nine months, Bud and Nita’s beautiful cover is covered with mildew on the inside. The Thai workmanship is superb, but Cory and Barbara will have to figure out what material to use.
We arrived back in Rebak marina before 5:00 pm, stored away food we brought home, and went for a walk on the docks. We went to check on Shirena which is something we do every day or two while Robert and Tina are back home in Australia. We went to visit Judy and Dave on Freebird while we were out and checked in with Guy and Annika on Street Legal. Guy is running the radio net for those of us headed across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. We got an email from him when we got today saying that he was in Rebak Marina for a day before heading to Thailand, so we wanted to make sure we caught him. We made arrangements to talk with him in the morning before he leaves and then we came home to Windbird. The afternoon rains come and go, and today they extended on into the evening. So we walked home in the rain. It is now 10:00 pm here and it is still raining. The rain is great for the rice fields, but I’m looking forward to heading north to Thailand were the rains will cease. It is only a short distance away, but there is a definite line of demarcation between Malaysia and Thailand where the weather systems change.
We had a couple of successes today. We found the butane canisters for our little camp stove so I can cook and we found heavy duty fuel hose to replace the copper tubing that currently goes from our outside propane locker to our stove in the galley. Tomorrow we will begin to run the new fuel hose and then figure out how to start testing the system. We can get a new solenoid in Kuah but if the problem is really the sensor, we will have to order that and wait the two to three weeks here to receive it from the US. Our daughter wrote this morning to say that we are probably going to have to fix our Thanksgiving dinner on the grill and she is right about that. BUT at this point we don’t even have a way to use the grill independent of the entire system. I know we can work that out and we’ll do that in the next week. But I don’t think we can bake pumpkin pie on the grill, or is that possible . . .
by Judy Handley | Nov 15, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 20, Year 5: Just a Day in the Life
Date: Sunday, November 15, 2009
Weather: Hot, Sunny Morning with Rains Beginning Midday . . . Again
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
Today was a typical day in a cruiser’s life. Mark did blue jobs and I worked on pink jobs. Pink jobs today were computer based. I spent the day searching through a year’s worth of emails to try and find all of the emails from friends who transited the Indian Ocean last year and I worked on building the new homepage for our website. Blue jobs included getting the staysail sheets run back to the cockpit with new hardware that had to be attached to the cockpit coaming. That included installing pad eyes on the deck that hold the blocks that the lines pass through. Because we have only two winches on each side of the cockpit and more jobs than the two winches can handle, we needed to find a way to lock off the lines on something other than one of the winches while they are being used for something else, so we installed cam cleats on the side of the coaming. This required taking down parts of the ceiling in the main and aft cabins. We are only half way done, so the inside of the boat is once again in disrepair.
We had dinner on Increscent Moon with Cory and Barbara tonight. They have a Tayana 42 one year younger than ours and it was great fun to compare the differences inside. They will be going to town with us tomorrow and they might be headed Thailand at the same time as us. So we have lots of things in common. But for now we will focus on tomorrow’s trip. The main purpose of the trip is to deal with our stove issue. We have to find out what supplies we can buy in Kuah and then order those that are not locally available. And we need to find either butane gas for our current camp stove or find a new camp stove that will allow us to cook until the main stove repairs are completed. Since some parts are probably going to have to be ordered from the US, we might find ourselves without a stove to cook Thanksgiving dinner. That will be an interesting project. So goes the life of a cruiser . . . more problems to solve, more work to be done, and more shopping for the needed parts, all to be done in exotic locations. So no complaints here.
I have to add one addition to last night’s log. After posting the log, we talked to our daughter Heather and got to see Sam in action. Those six stitches in his forehead are certainly not slowing him down. He did a complete performance for us wearing different hats from his dress-up box. He was a fireman, a policeman, Nemo, a pirate, and Superman. He ended his performance by saying, “Oma, Granddad, come home, stay here.” It was very obvious that he knows how to pull our heartstrings.
by Judy Handley | Nov 14, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 19, Year 5: All About Heads
Date: Saturday, November 14, 2009
Weather: Hot, Sunny Morning with Rains Beginning Midday
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
This was a day of mixed emotions for Oma and Granddad. First we did a Skype call with Mark’s family in Florida where our son Justin, his wife Jo, and Ziggy are visiting. We got to see Mark’s family and got to watch Steve’s grandbaby Hayden running around and talking up a storm. He turned two in August and he is a bundle of energy. When Hayden looked at Mark on the computer screen he called him Grandpa. We all had a good laugh at his confusion. Mark and his brother Steve look so much alike that even though Steve was sitting right beside Hayden, the logic of a two year-old allowed him to think Grandpa was also on the computer screen. Ziggy was already asleep when we called which was a disappointment but we did get to talk to Justin and Jo. A little later Mark’s sister Jeanie arrived and Ziggy woke up to meet her, so we did get to see him today. That made us happy, happy even though Ziggy was obviously a little sleepy and not quite as lively as usual. But regardless, those big inquisitive eyes kept searching the computer screen to figure out just who he was looking at. We were bubbling with joy at seeing him. And then Jo asked us if we had heard about Sam’s accident. The emotions swung from elation to fear. What accident? After hearing the story from Jo we understood that Sam, our daughter’s oldest child, had fallen on Thursday and hit his head. He had to be taken to the hospital where they put in six stitches right above his left eye. After ending our conversation with the Florida gang, we called Heather to find out more detail about Sam’s accident. I was a teary-eyed Oma at this point, but after talking to Heather I felt much better. The accident happened at daycare when Sam went running out of the building to go meet his dad who had come to pick him up. Somehow he fell off the porch and his head and a rock collided. Jed took Sam to the Emergency Room where they put in the stitches. And Sam handled all of this very bravely. He didn’t like it when they wrapped his arms in a sheet like a straight jacket so he couldn’t move while they did the stitches, but otherwise he did great. When he got home he said to Heather, “Mama, big bonk.” And bonk it was for sure. But all is well and our emotions are back on track after a morning here of wishing we weren’t so far away.
Now . . . while on the subject of heads, I’ll take this opportunity to address a question posed to us in our blog by Rich. We have never met Rich but he has been reading and responding to our logs since the beginning of our voyage and we feel like good friends. Rich responded to my log of yesterday where I stated that two heads are better then one. Of course, I was talking about getting our heads together to share information, but he used that as an intro to ask the question about whether it is a good idea to have two heads (meaning bathrooms) on a boat. He has been against the idea of a boat with “two heads” but was asking for our input on that. It is a question that many cruisers wrestle with and there is no one answer. A second head definitely takes up precious space, but for us, two heads are definitely better than one. We have a v-berth forward with a head (sink, toilet, and shower head without a separate shower stall) and an aft cabin with a head (sink, toilet, and shower stall). We are a center cockpit boat and because of that, our main cabin is little smaller than most, but we have our aft cabin bedroom and bathroom which is very convenient, especially as you grow older and find you have to go to the bathroom more often during the night. We don’t have to travel out to the main cabin to a shared bathroom, and we like that. The v-berth is used for storage when we don’t have guests, but is transformed into a guest bedroom when people are visiting. The fact that visitors, no matter how seldom we have them, have their own space and bathroom is something we really like. It does mean you have to maintain the plumbing in both heads, but since the forward head is not used most of the year, we just shut off the sink and the toilet and only open those up when guests arrive. That way it is really not like maintaining two heads constantly. Our recent change of removing the thru-hull to the forward head and running water to it from the main thru-hull in the engine room reduces further our maintenance of that part of the boat. So if you are looking for a boat for two people and don’t have a lot of family or friends that will be visiting for extended periods of time, one head is sufficient. But if you have adult children that will be visiting, as well as other friends, I would definitely say that two heads are better than one.
With today’s log, I am posting photos that were taken of our family back in August when Justin, Jo, and Ziggy visited us on the Cape on their return from England. Kathy, a good friend of our daughter Heather, is a photographer and she did the family photo shoot for us. Since I’ve been thinking of kids and grandkids all day, I think this is the perfect place to post these photos.
by Judy Handley | Nov 13, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 18, Year 5: Productive Work Day
Date: Friday, November 13, 2009
Weather: Hot, Sunny Day with Late Evening Rains . . . Again
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
While writing the log date, I realized that it is Friday the 13th. Thankfully we made it through the day with no bad luck and hope you did the same. We started our day by meeting the couple on the boat in the berth closest to us. We actually have no one on either side of us and to our starboard there are a couple of boats with no people onboard at this time. Frank’s boat is to our port and he has just returned from a foray to South Africa. There are many boats here that do the Indian Ocean circuit each year and then return here as a home base.
We then spent our day checking jobs off the TO DO list. I finally got the spice drawer cleaned out. In this extreme heat, spices seem to last only a year. They then solidify and mold. Yuck! So I carefully cleaned out each spice jar so they can be reused. It was painful throwing away the contents, but now that job is done. While I was working on that, Mark was running the new water hose to being water to the forward head from the engine room. This was made necessary by the removal of our forward thru-hull, but now that job is complete. We have a working forward head and one less hole in the boat. In order to do this job, all of the floor boards had to be taken up and that prompted me to cleaning. Every time Mark removed something, I cleaned it. What a great duo!
Next we worked together to take the anchor chain out of the locker, all 300 feet of it, and pay it out on the dock. Then when we brought it back in, Mark applied Lanocote, an Australian sheep lanolin product, to the chain that sits deepest in the anchor locker to try and slow the rusting. The chain really needs to be regalvanized, but for now the lanolin will have to do. Mark also caulked a hole in the compression post that has been leaking right over the table in the main cabin when it rains really hard. After enduring a few too many sprinkles in the main cabin, we remembered that when we removed everything for the paint job in Thailand, that hole in the compression post was caked with caulk. So now that is done once again, and when the rains came this evening, we didn’t get the sprinkles inside. Let’s hope that took are of the problem.
The last job of the day was to start removing the connections on the LPG lines running from the tank outside in a locker to the inside to our stove. We have arranged for travel to town on Monday with Cory and Barbara of Increscent Moon. That will allow us to share the cost of the car and at the same time, get the supplies we need for the reinstallation of the LPG hose. We have only one little canister of butane left for the little campstove we bought in Thailand last year. And people we have checked with say this is not available here. So not a lot of cooking is going to be done here until we can find a gas supply. In honor of that, we went out to dinner at the Hard Dock with Cory and Barbara tonight. Their boat is a sister ship to Windbird, only the second we have met during our voyage. It is so nice to have a sister ship nearby so you can check in when it is time for repairs. When you have the same boat, you probably have had the same problems, and as always, two heads are better than one when thinking through a problem.
by Judy Handley | Nov 12, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 17, Year 5: Continuing Stove Saga
Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Weather: Hot, Sunny Day with Late Evening Rains
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
After our whirlwind trip to Kuah yesterday, today was slated as another work day. I had laundry and cleaning to do and Mark’s big job of the day was to install the piece of toerail that got ripped off on our passage from Bali to Borneo. We had to have the piece made in Thailand but we just didn’t have the chance to put it back in place before leaving there. It was a beautiful sunny day, but you could have fried eggs on the deck it was so hot. That made Mark’s job even more difficult. But he persevered and now I only wish that the rest of the toe rail looked as good as the newly installed piece. While waiting for the laundry to soak itself clean, I worked in the galley doing some much needed deep cleaning. My cleaning took me behind the stove and there I saw something I wasn’t prepared for. Where the copper tubing that delivers propane gas to the stove comes through protective sheet metal behind the stove, it looks very much like the tubing is split. Without removing the stove, we can’t tell for sure, but because a propane leak is so very serious, we have shut off the propane at the tank are going to replace the copper tubing as soon as we can find the appropriate parts. Whether or not we really find a split when we can see the tubing up close, the tubing looks corroded and should be replaced in any case.. We were thinking that we have faulty sensors and that is why every time we try to turn on the propane the sensors start going crazy. Then we got a great email from Bob, one of you wonderful people out there who reads our logs and sends us much needed information, and Bob suggested that it might be a faulty solenoid. And now we have a third possible explanation for our problem. When we were in Kuah yesterday, we found a solenoid and LPG control valve, but no sensor. That would have to be ordered. So we decided to further investigate the problem and return to town on Monday to buy new LPG hose and attachments and to place the order for the sensor and buy the new solenoid if needed. We may have to replace all these parts, but we will start with the installation of the new LPG hose and attachments and see where that takes us. Shopping here on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday is tricky as the Muslim stores are closed on Friday and some on Saturday and the Chinese stores are closed on Sunday and some on Saturday. So we’ll play it safe and wait until Monday. And speaking of safe, after discovering the split tubing, we had to try and find a way to get any possible propane gas out of the bilge. We read what we could find on the web, which wasn’t much except for serious warnings about making sure you don’t let any propane get into the bilge. So we decided to put the shop vac up on the deck and use the hose and extension pieces to get down into the bottom of the bilge. We turned on the vacuum on the deck and let it run for more than half an hour. Our thinking is that by leaving the vacuum on for a long period of time, sucking air out of the bilge, that we have removed any propane gas. Propane sinks and can explode when you start your engine if not dealt with, so we will continue to search for any other safety measures we can take. When we were talking with Bud and Nita of Passage in town yesterday about our problem, Bud asked if we had inspected the copper tubing for possible leaks. We had not and for once I am thankful that I spend so much time cleaning.
by Judy Handley | Nov 11, 2009 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 16, Year 5: Back in the Land of Nasi Goreng
Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Weather: Sunny Morning Turning Stormy in the PM . . . Again
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
What a whirlwind of a day. We left Rebak on the 9:30 ferry with our very heavy mainsail with us. We met Mr. Din at the ferry dock in Langkawi and got our rental car for the day. We pay 40 Malaysian ringgits ($11.85 US) for a car with only a breath of fuel in the tank. There’s no paperwork, no insurance, no guarantees, and never any fuel. You just take the car and hope it will make it back to the ferry dock in the afternoon. So we thanked Mr. Din and took off for the day. We stopped in the little town of Matsirat to get fuel and then headed to Kuah. We drove straight to the sail shop to drop off our mainsail. While waiting for Ben, the expat that will do the canvas work, we shopped in a little Indian store that I was told had the best array of spices in Kuah. It is right downstairs from Ben’s shop, so this was very convenient. All of our spices onboard simply solidified in the heat while we were gone, so it was good to be able to replenish the Indian curry spices. I also walked up to the wet market to get a few fresh veggies. When I returned, Ben had arrived and had our sail in hand. We discussed a few details of sail cover design and then we were off for other shopping adventures in Kuah. Our first stop was at a small computer shop that we had heard does very good work. We needed help getting our new wifi booster installed and working. We parked and walked a few feet when we saw Bud and Nita of Passage. They were on the hard in the Boat Lagoon while we were there getting our boat painted and it was great to see them again. They were going to the same computer shop, so we had a chance to catch up on plans. They are headed to the Red Sea, so we will definitely see them at different points in the next few months. We stopped at an ATM on the way to shop and found that we could not get money there. Oops! So Bud loaned us the money to get our work done with a promise from us that we would stop by Telaga Harbor on our way home in the late afternoon to repay.
We were successful in getting the wifi booster installed and working, so on we went. We had a mile long shopping list but started by stopping for lunch. We went to a food court and were reminded that this is the land of Nasi Goreng. That is simply fried rice with Malaysian hot spices and we added ayam which is chicken. It costs about $1.30 US each and warms you from the inside out. We then went to our favorite hardware store in Kuah and bought epoxy glue and matting to replenish our stores, various engine and transmission oils, and continued on. We went to the Langkawi Yacht Club to see Paul of Nauti Bits who is trying to sell our monitor windvane and a few other items. One thing had sold since we left last spring and we left two more items. Then it was on to grocery shopping, a stop at Peninsular Marine which is the West Marine outlet here, another hardware store, and the bakery. It was late afternoon by this time and the rain was pouring down, so we started our trek back home. We did stop at Telaga to repay Bud and Nita and we were back at the ferry dock in time for the 6:30 pm ferry to Rebak.
We are spending the evening putting away all of the things we bought today and trying to figure out where we will actually store all the food and drink we need for the long trek ahead. We have done this before, but this next season offers fewer opportunities to restock. Always a challenge.6
