Day 67, Year 4: Beautiful Day, Beautiful Problems
Date: Sunday, December 28, 2008
Weather: Beautiful Sunny Day with Afternoon Sprinkles
Latitude: 08 degrees 06.961 minutes N
Longitude: 098 degrees 40.519 minutes E
Location: Koh Pak Bia, Krabi Province, Thailand
We left our beautiful anchorage at Phra Nag North early this morning and headed a whopping seven miles to Koh Hang South. This was another beautiful anchorage where we picked up a mooring ball and headed to shore. We had to share the beauty with many people who had arrived in long tail boats, but sharing is a good thing. We walked the beach and enjoyed the beauty and then Mark and I headed back to Windbird to fix a picnic lunch for all of us to enjoy on the beach. After lunch we got in the dinghy and went around the island to the hong. Hong in Thai refers to a room, and the hongs in the out islands are little lagoons that have a narrow entry way with huge towering walls which make them feel a little like a room. Once inside the lagoon, it widens out and the views are beautiful.
After our explorations, we headed back to Windbird and then the “beautiful” troubles of the day began. I know problems cannot really be beautiful, but when you are in such beautiful territory, you simply don’t want anything to mar the experience, so we’ll just call the problems “beautiful.” Mark’s computer that we use for navigation has been struggling with a power issue. The problem is the connection between the computer and the power cord and this came to a head today. But we decided to let go of the mooring at Koh Hang South and head just a little north to Koh Pak Bia and deal with the computer issue once we got there. But very soon after we left our mooring, we started hearing a terrible noise in the engine room. This is never a good thing, and today was no exception. The coupling that holds our prop shaft to the transmission was the problem. That is same coupling that we recently had so much trouble disconnecting in order to remove our transmission. Evidently one of the new shiny, stainless keys that had been fabricated in Langkawi fell out and the prop shaft was loose. We floated about for a bit while Mark worked on the problem and he finally repaired it temporarily so that we could motor to our next anchorage. Once there, he and Kevin spent an hour or so in the hot engine room repairing the problem. Mark dug out one of the old cast iron keys and hammered it into place. So things are a bit tentative until we get back to Phuket where we can get this checked out more fully, but hopefully things are temporarily repaired. Mark was definitely our hero of the day.
So we started out with a computer problem which then turned into a prop shaft problem, solved that, but then still had the computer issue. And Mark is still working on that one. The main computer we use for navigation is just not going to stay charged, so we have to get our back-up computer up and running with all the necessary software. I have a feeling that is a job that takes a few days, so for now we hope to be able to use the backup and get things fixed once we are back on Phuket Island.
Let’s just hope we can get there without any further issues.
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| 081228 Day 67 Thailand–Railay to Ko Phak Bia |
