Day 8, Year 5: Things Never Go As Planned
Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Weather: Hot and Sunny, Late Afternoon Deluge
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
Before I get to the real story of today, I must explain why I have titled this log Year 5, Day 7. All of the logs from last year’s season were titled Year 3, but just about the time we reached Singapore, we really started Year 4 of the Voyage of Windbird. As I have explained before, cruising seasons and calendar years really don’t match up, but I have decided to go back and rename all of the logs from the time we left Singapore as Year 4 and that now brings us to the beginning of our fifth year of cruising. So that’s the quick explanation if I’ve confused you with the Year 5 title.
Now to today’s story. We did the Dash from our slip on Dock E to the slipway to be hauled out. Gerry of Scot Free II was back to help us and he took our dinghy to be able to push us if we had trouble backing into the slipway. Sailboats just don’t back easily, so it is always nice to have a little help. But when we tried to drive forward out of our slip, we even had trouble doing that. Obviously the prop was so covered with barnacles that it was having trouble driving us forward. But slowly we made our way to slipway and with Gerry’s help backed right in. By 11:30 am we were on the hard and ready to replace the through-hull. Mazrizal, the marina manager, said we could have until 4 pm before we had to Splash, so we figured we would have time to clean the prop as well as replace the through-hull. When Mazrizal asked if we would be done by 4:00 pm, Mark immediately replied by saying that of course we would be done by that time, no problem. Mazrizal immediately stopped him and said it was never a good idea to be so sure, and Mazrizal was right on this one. Mark and Gerry worked on getting the old through-hull out. We had to use Gerry’s grinder to actually cut the old valve off and then knock out the through-hull so we could replace the whole unit. Our old through-hull was beveled, but the new one is straight, so I was concerned about filling the gap. We used 5200 caulk which should have filled the gap and dried quickly never to be removed, but that didn’t happen. The 5200 was very soft, probably because of the heat, and really didn’t dry at all. It is supposed to be able to cure underwater, but when we did the Splash, there was a leak, so we were out of the water immediately. Mark tried a quick fix with epoxy, but on the second Splash, there was still a trickle leak and the decision was made that we would spend the night on the hard, fix the problem in the morning, and go back in the water late tomorrow afternoon. And of course, just as we were being brought back into the hard stand area by the travel lift, the heavens opened up and we had a tropical deluge for about half an hour. And that revealed another problem. We have water coming into the main cabin from the mast. It is probably coming from the top of the mast, which we thought we had caulked completed, but obviously not. Once we are back in the water, we’ll have to check that out. So goes the cruising life. There is a definite cost to living on your boat in paradise, but it is manageable and doable as long as you are a patient.
The highlight of today was talking on the phone to Heather, Sam and Jonah. It was almost bedtime for Sam and Jed was at a meeting so we didn’t get to talk to him, but we got hellos and goodbyes from Sam and we got to hear Jonah in the background. We’ll try to call Justin and Jo tomorrow and see if can hear Ziggy. He always squeals and giggles and that is such a delight to our ears. But now we will call it a night and start again fresh tomorrow. Hopefully things will work better than today and by this time tomorrow night we will be tucked into our slip with no leaks. That is the hope.
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| 091104 Day 9 Malaysia–Thru Hull Saga |
