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.
 |
| 091119 Day 24 Malaysia–Working on Boats |
