by Judy Handley | Dec 22, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 5, Thailand |
Day 57, Year 5: Check It Out!
Date: Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; E Winds 10-15
Latitude: N 07 degrees 46.473 minutes
Longitude: E 098 degrees 18.031 minutes
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand
Check out the updated website. Our son Justin gave us an early Christmas present and got the new information on the site for us. We were so excited. We find it hard to believe that we didn’t have time in more than two and half years to at least update once a year, but I guess we have been that busy. We still have to update the map of Where We Are Now and add back the sailing itineraries from the first two years that somehow got lost in the transfer. But we are up-to-date and that feels wonderful. Thank you, Justin and Jo, for taking time in this very busy season to get this done for us.
And another thing we absolutely love is this 3G modem that allows us to have internet access anywhere that we have phone service. In Thailand that is almost everywhere. And we should definitely have cell service in Cochin, India. We know there is 3G service in the southern Maldives, but it all stops when we reach the Chagos. But once again when we are in Rodrigues, Mauritius, and Reunion, maaaaaybeee in Madagascar, and definitely in South Africa, we should have cell service, and therefore, internet. I think Windbird has just come into the 21st century.
We waited until the tide was rising to move from Ao Chalong to Nai Harn Bay. It is only about ten miles, but it is a shallow ten miles and we thought it best to do it on the rising tide. Nai Harn is the southern most bay on Phuket Island and it is lovely. It is beautiful in the way that anchorages in Maine are with rocks all along the shore and deciduous trees covering the hills. There are no palm trees here and no dramatic limestone karsts, but the white sand beach is lovely, albeit covered with tourists. We are pretending that the white sand is snow. And speaking of snow, we talked to our daughter Heather last night after we sent the log and found out that New England and much of the northern east coast of the US has been blanketed by snow. What a nice early Christmas present for folks in the northeastern part of the US.
Robert and Tina on Shirena have been in this bay for three days now and Robert came over soon after we arrived to invite us over for Happy Hour. They are planning on leaving Thailand just after the New Year for the northern Maldives and then northwest to Salala, Oman. There has been some recent pirate activity on the route from the Maldives to Salala, so they are going to head almost due north from the Maldives before heading west to Salala. Others are going straight to Cochin, India, and then north to Mumbai (Bombay in times past) and then west to Salala. These Somali pirates are making life most interesting for many people.
Tonight here is early morning in the US and we are planning on making a few phone calls. The CAT international card we bought is unbelievable. It costs less than a 1/3 of a penny per minute to talk to anyone anywhere in the world and our cell is not charged as we dial into an 800 number. We are not sure if we can make Skype calls using the internet on the boat as Thailand is still 2G not 3G. But we are going to try that tonight as well. So we’ll report on that tomorrow night.
by Judy Handley | Dec 21, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 5, Thailand |
Day 56, Year 5: First Christmas
Date: Monday, December 21, 2009
Weather: Overcast Day; ENE Winds 15-20
Location: Ao Chalong, Phuket, Thailand
We started our morning at the Twin Coconuts using their free wireless to connect with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy. It was their Sunday evening and they had chosen Sunday as their Christmas in the US day. It was evening for them and they had had a wonderful day. And at Twin Coconuts we actually had a Christmas tree that was in the background as we talked. So with their cheery moods and our little Christmas tree, we actually got in to the Christmas spirit. Our main present for Ziggy was a Radio Flyer push wagon and Justin and Jo said they got an amazing video of him when he discovered it early on Sunday. He is not walking yet, but he immediately stood up and started pushing it around. So that was a success. We took some Skype pictures of him as we talked and those will be posted with this log when we have high speed internet. He is such a cutie. Justin, Jo, and Ziggy will be flying to England on Wednesday, and we really hope we can have a video Skype call with them there on Christmas Day. We’ll just have to see where we are and whether that is possible. So today was our first day of Christmas and we’ll just keep on celebrating through the next few days.
We had a huge list of things to accomplish today, and we did a lot of them, but not all. We got the rental jeep and headed out to find Him’s shop. We did, but he was not there. In a phone conversation with Him, he told us to call again tomorrow. So obviously the alternator is not yet ready. We dropped off one of our two LP tanks to be filled and then headed toward Phuket Town. We stopped at Rolly Tasker to see if they would replace a hundred feet of line that we bought there last spring. There was one place where it seemed like there had been an internal splice that kept the line from going through the pulley at the top of the mast and the rope clutch on the side of the mast. Without any questions or any receipt, they did replace the line. So score one. From there we went directly to the Boat Lagoon area. We made a stop at each of the two chandleries that are on the way there looking for a few items, but we found nothing. At the Boat Lagoon, we picked up some items from Canvas Creations who made our cockpit enclosure last year and dropped off the board that our aft toilet sits on. It was in dire need of replacement and we were told we could pick up a new one at 4 pm. We stopped to see Larry at East Marine and stopped at the Royal Phuket Marina next door to the Boat Lagoon to see Neil and Ley on Crystal Blues and Judy and Dave on Freebird. Crystal Blues was on the hard when we were here last year in the Boat Lagoon, but because of one thing and then another, they were just launched on December 4. We knew they planned to leave Royal Phuket tomorrow and we just wanted to say hello. What we didn’t know is that Ley had to have an unexpected operation last week in the middle of trying to get the boat up and going, so they are a little behind. Because of tides, they must leave Royal Phuket tomorrow or they can’t leave for another two weeks. So they were scurrying about trying to move out of their apartment and get things ready to leave. They will go to Ao Po Grand Marina and finish their jobs there. Judy on Freebird wasn’t home, but Dave was there and we dropped off some of the Red Sea and Med books that they wanted to buy from us. By this time it was 12:30 and we were just getting ready to shop. How time flies!
We had a list of electronic needs that we attacked first.. We bought a 3G modem for our computer that should allow us to get internet when we are anywhere where there is phone service (Mark just told me that he downloaded emails, so I guess it is working.), a 350 watt inverter to be able to keep our computer running for navigation purposes without using the boat’s inverter which takes way more power, and a barrel connector that will allow Mark to connect cables and move the location of our VHF radio. That all sounds easy, but it was not. It took multiple stops to find these things and by the time we were done it was 3:00 and we hadn’t had lunch. So we made a brief stop to eat and then started our food search. We found a source of rolled oats for our granola that makes it cost 1/3 of any other breakfast alternative, and we found another source that had bulk sunflower seeds, but that was just about it. It was starting to get dark and stores were closing, so we headed back to Ao Chalong. We will continue again next Monday, but for now we are going to stop and relax with friends for Christmas.
We will go into town in the morning to return the rental jeep, pick up our propane tank, check with Him about the alternator, and do some Christmas dinner shopping. By noon we should be on our way to Nai Harn Bay. We are looking forward to the change and the chance to catch up with friends we haven’t seen since last year.
by Judy Handley | Dec 20, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 5, Thailand |
091220 Year 5, Captain’s Ramblings 2-Keeping Windbird Fit
Major Re-fitting Since Leaving Boston
As we have traveled equipment as broken down and needed replacement or repair. At the same time we have discovered new ways to make sailing safer and more comfortable. The result is that we have made many additions and changes to Windbird.
The newly rebuilt engine never performed up to par. It ran hot and leaked every fluid that passed through it. Then the transmission leaked so badly that the bearings and seals were shot. We hadn’t even left the States yet! The upshot was that we replaced the old Perkins 4-108 with a new Yanmar 4JH4 along with a new V-drive transmission while in the Chesapeake Bay.
On the way to the Galapagos we hit a fishing net that broke the bell housing and the buffer (or clutch) plate. We ordered a new one and had it shipped into the Galapagos and a small, young mechanic crawled in on top of the engine to install it. Our main computer also stopped working on our to the Galapagos, so we had our daughter bring us a new one. Before she left for home, the old one miraculously started working again. So we now have a backup to our main navigation and email computer.
By the time we got to French Polynesia we had lost our gas grill overboard due to a loose connection and our water maker stopped working. My sister and her husband met us in Tahiti with both items. Now you can see why we say to visitors that: “To you, this is a vacation. To us, it is a delivery.”
Leaving Tonga our autopilot burned out and we ordered a new one from New Zealand. We later bought a new motor for the old one so that we now have two complete autopilots on board. Backups are good!
While in New Zealand the Windlass stopped working. We found a shop in Opua that discovered the motor shaft to be broken. They ordered and installed a new one with more power than the original.
On the way from New Zealand to Fiji we had some rough weather and a jib sheet got away from us. Before we got it under control we had lost two winch handles overboard, busted a solar panel, broken some of the plastic windows on our cockpit enclosure, and bent a stanchion. The stanchion was straightened in Fiji. We found winch handles in Australia when we got there at the end of the cruising season. And we bought a replacement solar panel from a cruiser at a swap meet in Australia. We also sold our folding bikes there as we had never used them.
In Darwin we bought a used outboard as a backup to ours which was becoming unreliable.
In Singapore we replaced our wet cell batteries, which were about 5 years old, with new group 31 Trojan AGMs. No more taking the bed apart to get to the batteries to check the water level!
In Malaysia we had a small leak from the transmission. We had it removed and new seals installed. We also had a welder reinforce the stanchion that we had straightened in Fiji. We also commissioned a new main-sail cover. Our cover was a Doyle “Stack-Pack” and the new one is essentially a replacement except that the main sail is not sewn into the sail.
Thailand gave us an opportunity to make some major “adjustments” to Windbird. Labor was cheap (relatively speaking) and our gel coat was so bad that there were places where it was chipping away. We had been talking of having her painted since New Zealand but this was the first time that the price seemed right. So the hull, cabin top, cockpit, mast, boom, pedestal, and the metal trim on the hatches all were Awl-Gripped. While that was going on, we cleaned all the hardware we had removed to make way for the painting. Some was so bad we didn’t want to put it back on a “new” boat, so we bought new.
Stainless welding was also relatively cheap and very good quality in Thailand so we had an arch built for the back of the boat and extended the stainless rails around the cockpit to the gate on each side. This gave us a better place to mount our solar panels and wind generator and davits so we could raise our dingy when not in use. (e still put the dingy on the fore-deck when sailing.) The arch and rails make for a much safer boat when getting out of the cockpit and moving around on the aft deck. This meant that we had to remove our Monitor windvane, but we had used it very little and still carry it with us, just in case.
Finally, we had new cockpit canvas made for Windbird. The old enclosure was showing its age and we still had some of the plastic windows taped where they were broken on the way to Fiji. We made a few changes in the bimini frame so that the new canvas would provide more sun protection for the cockpit.
This is a brief summary of all of the major work we have done to keep Windbird going since leaving the United States. Of course, I have not included the almost daily fixing of one thing or another. Where there is a boat, there is always room for improvement. Remember the definition of cruising: working on your boat in exotic locations. We are hoping that the upgrades done to date will get us back home to the US. That is wishful thinking of course, but cruisers are dreamers and we are hoping this dream comes true.
by Judy Handley | Dec 20, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 5, Thailand |
Day 55, Year 5: Last of the Big Spenders
Date: Sunday, December 20, 2009
Weather: Partly Sunny Day; ENE Winds 15-20; Rain in the Evening
Location: Ao Chalong, Phuket, Thailand
For two days we have been sitting here on Windbird watching the water in the bay ruffle in the wind. Windbird bounces up and down, not bad enough to cause us any problems, but being out on the water in the dinghy is another matter. That’s what has kept us sitting still for two days. But rough harbor or not, we are heading in early in the morning to make our Christmas Skype call to Justin, Jo, and Ziggy, and then to get our rental car for the day to do a ton a shopping. We’ll have to take extra precautions to wrap things in plastic as they will surely get wet on the ride back out. I’ll take some black plastic garbage bags and just put each bag of groceries in one of those. And some things we won’t buy tomorrow. We’ll just locate the store with the best price and then rent a car on another day right after Christmas when the anchorage is not so lumpy and bumpy. This means all shopping will not be done before Christmas, but that was just a dream.
Mark spent his morning doing sewing projects. The new stack pack cover for our mainsail that Ben in Langkawi did for us is great, but he got the zippers backwards on the front cover. So this morning, I ripped them out and Mark sewed them back in the right way. Then we worked on a new mattress cover for our bed. It is an odd shape and we made a fitted mattress cover for it in New Zealand that has needed to be replaced for some time now. We had bought this fantastic wide elastic material in NZ that allowed the cover to fit snugly. The elastic was still fine, so we cut it off the old one and sewed it on a new pad that we cut to fit the odd shape. And then I was actually able to save enough of the old pad to make a pad for our starboard settee. It is so hot and we are always perspiring and it is starting to show on the microfiber. Tomorrow I will buy material to cover the pad and we will sit on that and then use it as a mattress pad when we use the starboard settee as our main bed on passages. I’ve been using beach towels, but this will be much better. And while all of this was going on, I also did a laundry. That job is never ending.
Reality set in today. I have shopped in Langkawi and shopped in Phuket, and I thought I was getting close to having most of what we need for the next few months. But that spreadsheet we have developed awakened both of us. For instance, I splurged and bought six small tubes of Ritz crackers. I thought that was a lot. But it takes one tube for each can of salmon to make salmon cakes and I have 20 cans of salmon. Duh! I need 14 more little tubes just to make salmon cakes. And if I find more salmon, I will buy it and will need even more Ritz crackers. Or let’s take pasta sauce. We eat spaghetti about once a week and we have 40 weeks in the next ten months. I bought enough tomato products to make 15 small batches of spaghetti sauce, but I need enough to make 25 more batches. Yikes! And then there is olive oil. I have one 5 liter can and one 4 liter can, plus a 2 liter bottle in the galley cabinet. But when I look at the spreadsheet, the two cans I have are just enough for making granola and bread for ten months. And the 2 liter bottle in the galley cabinet will last us until we are about half-way through our stay in the Chagos. Since there’s no place there to shop, I guess I’ll have to shell out the small fortune that olive oil costs and buy one more 5 liter can. So I thought I was all set with a number of items, but not so. Even though I have felt like I was buying way too much and spending way, way, way too much, we haven’t even made a drop in the bucket. So the last of the big spenders will venture out tomorrow and buy what’s on the spreadsheet. It is really, really hard to buy so much food at one time. But as I’ve said before, we have been told that there are few places in the Indian Ocean to buy the kind of canned goods we are looking for. In fact in the past two days we have received emails from two boats we know and love that are still waiting to round Cape Horn to get to Cape Town. Both have given gentle reminders of just how much food you have to have on board when you leave Phuket So this is the place, and tomorrow is the first of a couple of days of massive shopping.
We are still having a little power struggle. Something is just not right and Mark keeps working on tracking down the problem. Tomorrow morning we will find out if Him has been able to get our big alternator rebuilt. That won’t solve the current problem of the boat not starting when we turn the key, but it will be nice to have it back if he has been successful. Doing all of these little repairs, and watching me work on getting information to Justin to update the website, inspired Mark to write his second Captain’s Ramblings of this season. This one is a summary of all of the major projects we have undertaken to keep Windbird happy since leaving the United States. He didn’t include the price tags for each of the jobs. I don’t think you want to know!
by Judy Handley | Dec 19, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 5, Thailand |
Day 54, Year 5: Power Struggle
Date: Saturday, December 19, 2009
Weather: Partly Sunny and Windy; E Winds 15-20
Location: Ao Chalong, Phuket, Thailand
Our little power struggle has gone on for days now. This started when we were in Ko Lanta on December 10. At first we were just getting erratic readings and then we discovered, while at Phi Phi Don, that our main alternator was not working. We replaced the faulty alternator with a less powerful back-up, and we thought things were fine except that we needed a new starting battery. We bought the new starting battery a couple of days ago and thought we had the problem solved, but today when we tried to start the engine-nothing. We can usually jump start it, but that didn’t even work today. So Mark got out Nigel Calder’s book, Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual, and this helped him trace the problem to the current issue. A side note here-No one should EVER go long-term cruising without this book. We had a short in the starter switch and that was somehow causing the new starting battery not to charge. We’re not sure we are at the end of this saga, but everything is finally charging beautifully. The next test will be whether or not the engine will start in the morning. We’ll report on that in tomorrow’s log.
I feel my first cruising article coming on. It will be about provisioning for the trek across the Indian Ocean. Mark and I worked together today to really figure out just how much food we really do need. We have been using past experience as our guide so far and even when we know we need to buy more, we have been reluctant. It just seems so crazy to buy 40 cans of green beans at one time, so we have been buying a few of this and a few of that each time we go shopping. We decided that this is silly and we needed to do a spreadsheet to help us understand what we really need. Breakfast cereal is the really crazy one. We eat homemade granola six days out of seven. Or we substitute Grapenuts when they are available. But the cost of Grapenuts here is outrageous (but you can get them at the Villa Market) so we decided to figure out just how much we are spending on making our own granola. In this part of the world you buy rolled oats (when you can find them) in 750 gram bags. That is seven cups of oats. Each of us will eat a half cup of granola each morning, so when all of the figuring was done we now know we need to buy 25 more packages of rolled oats plus more honey, oil, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, to make enough granola for the next ten months. That is when we should reach South Africa where we can buy most anything we need. We did this same calculation for all of our other staples and unfortunately the shopping list is growing and growing. But at least we now really know what we need. The days of avoiding reality are over. We know we can buy certain staples in India (rice, vinegar, spices, eggs) and then we can buy cheese, eggs, and fresh fruits and veggies once we reach Mauritius. But there is a three month gap between India and Mauritius, so we need to fill that gap. And then things like canned vegetables and rolled oats are hard to come by anywhere in the Indian Ocean, even southern India, so those things have to be bought here. We are recording everything we have onboard and will be very interested to see what is left when we reach South Africa. I know we won’t starve, but I think we will get very creative.
It is a bit rocky and rolly here with the Northeast monsoon winds blowing, but we have had no rain and the anchor seems to be securely in place. We will spend another day onboard tomorrow and then head to town early on Monday morning for our first Christmas call with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy. We actually put up our Christmas tree today. Now ‘Christmas tree’ is a bit of a stretch, but we wound artificial garland around our compression post and we will now start to decorate it. At this point it only has the enameled elephant we bought in Singapore last year. We gave that same ornament to our kids and grandkids and to Kevin and Claire. So at this point, we all have one thing in common. Tomorrow I’ll tie red bows all around the ‘tree’ and on Monday when we go shopping we will see what else we can find. I have some tiny red and green hot peppers, and I think I will string those as a garland around the garland.
by Judy Handley | Dec 18, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 5, Thailand |
Day 53, Year 5: Alone in a Crowd
Date: Friday, December 18, 2009
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Hot; E Winds 15-20
Location: Ao Chalong, Phuket, Thailand
Our early morning was spent on the boat. I was working to get more photos named and organized so they can be put on the website and Mark was working to get our BIOT Permit for the Chagos filled out and ready to send. He was also doing some route planning for the upcoming season and somehow the whole morning was almost gone before we realized it. So before noon, we headed to town. We saw Ed and Lynne of Constance on the jetty and then ran into Robert and Tina of Shirena on the little main street in town Both were headed back to their boats to move across to the eastern side of this bay. High winds have been predicted and it will be much more protected over there. But we have decided to stay put unless it gets really untenable. We want to be back here early on Monday morning to make a Skype call to Justin and Jo. It will be our Christmas call to them as they are leaving on Wednesday for England. We might get to talk to them again once they are there, but we want to see Ziggy opening presents from us and that will happen on their Sunday night.
We also stopped and bought a CAT international calling card on Ed and Lynne’s recommendation. We paid $10 US for this card and evidently it will give us upwards of ten hours of long distance calling time to anywhere in the world. We call an 800 number on our little cell and then enter our card number and the number we are calling. And BINGO, we are connected. So watch out, you might be getting Christmas telephone calls from us. Since we plan on being down in Nai Harn Bay for Christmas and we are not sure about the internet situation there, we figured we should buy this card just in case. We are also renting a jeep on Monday and headed back to Phuket to look for a 3G phone. Many of our friends connect to the internet right from their boat as long as they have a cell signal. And in Thailand, you have a cell signal almost everywhere. But you have to have a way to connect your cell to your computer and right now, we don’t. So that will require a new phone. I’m not sure how Skype works with this system, but we’re going to give it a try.
It was time for lunch and we headed to the Twin Coconuts. We both thanked the young waitress for her help yesterday, had a great lunch, and connected to the internet. I’m still doing research on the possible destinations for this coming year and Mark uploaded photos and did a variety of other things. But we didn’t stay for five hours this time. We wrapped things up fairly quickly and headed to the new Villa Supermarket. We went there on the first day in town, but I just had to return to absorb all that is there. It is really unbelievable. There were Butterball turkeys of all sizes, fresh salmon from Tasmania, from Scotland, and from Norway, prime beef from Australia, Grapenuts, pecans, sage (couldn’t find this anywhere in Malaysia), safflower oil, grape seed oil, every Old El Pasa product you can think of, Carnation evaporated milk, Paul Newman’s Balsamic Vinaigrette salad dressing, Kraft and Hellman’s mayonnaise, canned artichoke hearts from Spain, whole wheat flour, spelt flour, and on and on and on. You pay US prices, but it is all there. We’ll buy most things at other places where it is cheaper, but for Christmas we will definitely give the fresh Tasmanian salmon a try.
We pulled our little cart back through the traffic and back down the little main street in Ao Chalong to the jetty. And then we started the half mile walk down the jetty. It must be the longest jetty in the world. The next time I am on the internet, I’m going to research that one. We got back to Windbird, weaving through a multitude boats, but no one we know. Barbara and Cory on Increscent Moon are still here, but every one else we know has either escaped to the other side of the bay or have moved down to Nai Harn. We will stay here until Tuesday and then we will move to Nai Harn, hoping to connect with some of the folks we know that will be there for Christmas. But in the meantime, it is strange to be so alone amidst so many boats.
