Day 41, Year 4: Boat Work, Boat Work
Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Weather: Really Sunny Day
Location: Rebak Marina on Pulau Rebak Besar, Langkawi, Malaysia
The big success of the day was that early in the day, our young neighbor Magnus dove and found our mangled piece of toe rail that went overboard yesterday. So Magnus is our hero of the day. Mark spent part of his day working on the shower stall and it is now ready for paint. He spent the other part of his day getting the Suzuki dinghy motor back in decent running condition. We really need to take the carburetor apart and completely clean it, but I think Mark is still hoping to sell and buy the
new Yamaha. We did learn today that there is a guy in Kuah that sells new and used dinghy motors, so one last hope is that he will take the two old motors in partial trade for a new one. We will go to Kuah on Thursday and check that out.
I spent my entire day cleaning everything in, on, and around the deck. I finished all of the stainless, cleaned the non-skid and all of the cabin top and cockpit, cleaned the canvas covering the cockpit, and got part of the teak deck cleaned. It doesn’t sound like much, but it took me all day in the blaring sun. Where did that overcast, sprinkling weather go? The day was absolutely gorgeous, but it was HOT.
Our newest problem is the political situation in Thailand. Late in the day Mark went up to get on the internet and he found out that the Bangkok airport is closed and will probably not reopen for weeks. At least that is what the Bangkok news is saying. Kevin and Claire are slated to arrive in Bangkok in about two weeks, so I think we might have a problem. From what we can tell, the Phuket airport is open and fine, but who knows if the airlines will allow this change. We haven’t heard from Kevin
and Claire in last couple of days, so we need to get in contact and see what can be done to circumvent Bangkok and still get them here. Almost everyone we know has family and friends flying into Thailand, so everyone is going to be doing a bit of scrambling.
Fred and Judy (the couple I mentioned to you) had planned a flight and were unable to travel last weekend due to the protesters shutting down the airport. I was wondering if this affects anybody coming or going in your group?
From Fred: We had tickets to fly to Phuket on Friday night to spend the weekend on the boat but the airport is closed; our flight was cancelled.
Thailand is in the middle of a political mess. There hasn’t been a coup like there was two years ago but there have been thousands of protesters in the streets, some violence has occured and the government is in a real delimma about what to do about it. The government has been trying hard to avoid a confrontation with the anti-government protesters and they have successfully ignored the protests for several months. Now, however, the protesters have escalated by occupying the airports and this is getting everyone’s attention, including ours.