Plan B!

Lordy, it feels good to be back at sea! Even if back at sea only  means motor sailing one hundred and twenty miles north  to Phuket. "Men and ships rot in port"  is the old saying. There's a lot of figurative and literal truth in that.

After almost a month at Phithak Shipyard we launched yesterday and are now en-route to Phuket and Boat Lagoon yacht basin. It's been a lovely trip so far. We had a nice anchorage last night off Ko Tartanao and the morning is sunny with just enough breeze to add half knot by motor sailing. And I say 'we' because I have Oonn, one of the yard foremen, on board as crew. He's a nice guy with a little English and a lot of local knowledge.

Boat Lagoon wasn't part of the original plan. But we have friends who are having work done there and they are very happy with the situation. The scene at Phithak had changed quite a bit since we visited last fall. The yard contractors, who are separate from the yard itself, have decided they can charge the same prices as Phuket. The yard manager, Oh, quit shortly after I arrived and the yard is in some chaos. I got the transmission out and found a Hurth service center in Phuket and took it up there on the bus, an eight hour ride each way. Our friends Walter and Tiggs from "Marnie" gave me the Phuket tour and introduced me to some contractors.  I expected Phuket to be a more developed Langkawi but found it to be more of a Bangkok wannabe, a very urban and bustling place, certainly not my idea of a tropical paradise, but with a very well developed yacht service industry. So I got my transmission in for repair, enjoyed running around with Walter and Tiggs and took the bus back to Satun.  And thought long and hard about the major project, the deck work. After witnessing a couple more yard screw ups at Phithak and literally chasing my transmission all over Satun when it was being delivered back to me via bus I said the hell with it and decided to have the major project done up at Phuket. The costs will be essentially the same with a lot less aggravation.

I got the transmission installed after some knuckle busting, put in the the new PSS dripless prop shaft seal, installed our shiny new Max Prop, had the bottom painted and the boat polished and launched. Not without some anxiety because all this installation work was done by  unskilled labor, me to be exact, and I was very happy and  a little surprised when the transmission transmitted, the shaft seal sealed  and the prop did it's Max Prop thing. Nothing has fallen off, so far, and the water is staying outside the boat.

The town of Satun was a good experience. My dawn motorcycle ride out through the rubber plantations and through the small Muslim villages to the yard was always a joy.

Satun itself got more interesting as I found my way around. The open market is one of the most interesting and lively markets I've seen, especially in the early morning. On's restaurant was a good hangout with fairly fast free internet and the BBC on the tellie. The bus ride up to Phuket was a kick. Nice bus but big speakers up and down the cabin  so that Thai rock music could be played at high volume during the entire eight hour ride to Phuket. After a few hours I had identified and considered three options to deal with the problem.  One, grin and bear it. Two, bus hijacking!  Dispose of the men and children, take the bus and the women, abscond up into the mountains east of Krabi and set up a private kingdom a la "Heart of Darkness". Three, suicide. Luckily time passes and inaction is sometimes the most practical course.

So now It's been another day and we anchored last night at an island just off Boat Lagoon to wait for the high tides later this morning. This is a lovely place and it's hard to believe the hectic Phuket scene is just a couple miles away. The motor sail up here was uneventful and sometimes really beautiful. Most of the Thai islands in this area are limestone karst formations which emerge vertically  as cliffs directly from the sea. They are like giant teeth hundreds of feet high and often have a closed or nearly closed interior lagoon. They are spectacularly beautiful  "James Bond" islands and we will do a lot of exploring after the boat work is done.

In a few hours the tide will be high enough to get into Boat Lagoon and the process can begin again. With a little luck this will all be done and the boat will one very spiffy machine by the time Janet gets here about the first of June.

Love to all,
Bill & Janet
SV Airstream

Back to The Salt Mines

The boat is on the hard at Phithak Shipyard, Chelibang, Thailand near Satun. Definitely not on the tourist trail across Thailand. The shipyard is up a creek off a river on the Thai coast NE of Langkawi, Malaysia. 

They have traditionally catered to the Thai fishing fleet but over the last several years have moved into doing work on yachts. They have a well earned reputation for doing beautiful work hull painting and interior/exterior carpentry at prices cheaper than Phuket and far, far less expensive than could be found in the western world. The people are very sweet and dedicated and there's a little English spoken. The flip side is that there's no developed yacht service industry around the yard. If the yard doesn't  have something the great easter egg hunt begins.

I got into Langkawi on the 5th and brought the boat over to Phithak and hauled out on the 9th. Cresswell Walker, author, cruiser, statesman, bon vivant helped me bring it over. That made things a lot more fun. Since that time I've settled into the area. The boat will be all ripped apart inside, not habitable. Basic accommodation is available in Satun about 20 km from the yard.  My place has hot water and  television and  I even have two English language channels, the golf channel and the soccer channel. I've rented a motorcycle for transport and bought the very best helmet I could find.

 I buggered the aft transmission seal pulling the prop shaft. That little screw up is going to cause me some grief. The nice new prop I had carried with me half way round world proved to have the wrong shaft taper. What fun. So a ferry trip back to Langkawi was necessary to ship the prop via FedEx back to the company who, this time, knows what prop to send back to me. But that was a chance to see Glen, Marilyn and Jaryd from 'Tin Soldier' and Steve and Linda from 'Linda'. These are dear friends who we've cruised with across the Pacific and we won't see them for quite awhile. It was a fun time but a sad goodbye. Tin Soldier is flying home for a year or so and Linda is headed across the Indian Ocean to South Africa and then home, eventually.

So now the work is progressing. We'll have the teak decks removed, faired, glassed over and painted with non-skid. There will be some interior carpentry done. There will be a bottom job and I'll install the new prop and a new prop shaft seal. Now I may end up rebuilding a transmission.  I've got the rig ready to pull. The bottom job is under way. The interior work is going well. 

The rig will be pulled in a few days and they'll build a shed over the boat to protect from rain. Then the deck work will begin. Every bit of deck hardware will be removed before painting and replaced afterwards. The whole thing should take a couple months. So far I'm pleased with the work I've seen but the organizational pace is slower than in the west. I've been here eight days and we don't yet have a definite schedule for a crane to pull the rig, etc.

There is also a very nice group of dedicated yachties having work done at the yard. These are nice folks from all over the world and if someone doesn't know something it's pretty sure someone else will know and will be available with advice and help. Besides that they're a lot of fun. The Thai and Burmese laborers at the yard are nice and hard working. The skilled people are very skilled. They do have a lot to learn about yacht equipment and hanging around supervising is a very good idea. 

My daily ride out to the yard in the cool of the morning is through miles and miles of rubber plantation. The small villages on the river are very Muslim and oriented towards Malaysia and fishing. Satun is a little more typical of rural Thailand and at the edge of a range of limestone karst hills.  It's very jungly and there are monkeys along the roads. By mid morning the heat has arrived and most days it's in the nineties. By mid afternoon the towering cumulus have built into isolated thunderstorms and when it rains it comes like someone has opened a giant faucet.  There are many, many local places to eat and drink and some who cater to the small western community. Increasingly the yachties from the yard are becoming a factor in the local economy. There are a few foreign expats who are very nice and a few sad old derelicts.

 Every day I learn a little more about this place. Most of the time I'm having fun but I miss Janet a lot. About  0400 any morning the job ahead seems pretty daunting but each day seems to bring some progress. It will be a very big event when the boat goes back in water all rigged up, spiffy and polished. I'll keep you posted.

Love to all,
Bill & Janet

Return from Earth: Southern Cross

Leaving home felt like going to a knife fight.  With a feeling like a big lump of lead in the stomach. Like saddling up to go out on a little walk in the night.  Why? I don't know. Does home seem a little more precious as we get older? Janet is so sweet, if she doesn't make it to the boat any sooner than we plan it will be the longest we've ever been apart. I didn't get to see some friends I wanted to see or spend enough time with some I did. Not enough time with family. My golf game sucks. Depressing. Whatever.

It was 6AM and chilly and rainy and the Horizon Q400 I was on from Arcata to LAX was mildly uncomfortable, too cold, no pillows, no blankets, running a little late. The day before I had finally got around to putting some music on my iPod. Last season I made a disastrous botch of syncing it with the laptop. That  spastic technical spasm cost me about 55 gigs of stored music, gone forever.  I was looking at heading out for months with the only tune I had aboard being Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue". So Janet had a bunch of music on her computer that she got from an Aussie friend in Bundaberg. I didn't even know what was there but I synced up and downloaded about 15 gigs and finally got around to looking at it on the way to LAX. Looked at 'artists', quite a nice list actually, and there was Crosby, Stills, and Nash.  Looked at 'songs' and there was "Southern Cross", every cruisers anthem and high on my list of greatest songs ever.

Ah yes...."Got outa town on a boat for the southern Islands"....yep, we've all done that.."sailing a reach, before a following sea" ..a good start..."she was making for the trades on the outside".....but it's not the tropics yet...."and the downhill run to Papeete"....forget the reality, is there a name which congers up more romance than "Papeete"? ......."off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas"....Fatu Hiva, one of the greatest landfalls ever..." we got eighty feet of waterline, nicely making way"....yeah, probably a big ol' wooden schooner......"in a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you"....wonder which one that was?....."but on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away"....a heartbreak....most of us have been there a time or two.

And the song goes on, if you aren't familiar with it you probably aren't reading this blog. But what a song! Adventure, escape, romance, desire, mystery, heartbreak, renewal and rebirth, with an edge, what more needs to be said?

So now I'm in 'World Business Class'  (read First Class)  on a Delta (old Northwest) 747, a little perk from years of slaving in their service.  At 35000' intense sun is coming in through the windows. I'm warm and cozy  looking down on scattered cumulus and a big sea. There's plenty of wind on the surface and a well organized swell, both from the northwest. It would be a good day to make time towards Papeete. With a little luck I'll be in Malaysia and back on the boat tomorrow and beginning to begin the long planned projects. There are many trade offs in the cruising life style. There is loneliness. There are hassles and frustrations and the usual crap from life. But there is, in abundance, adventure, escape, romance, desire, mystery, rebirth and renewal. Plenty of reason to keep coming back for more and, once in awhile, singing along to "Southern Cross".

Love to all,

Bill & Janet

Up the Straits of Malacca

Leaving One15Marina  in Singapore was cause for many regrets. We parted with friends  we won't see for entirely too long. The marina itself was over-the-top luxurious and very, very comfortable. Easy access to one of the great cities of the world was something we all enjoyed. 

We could have stayed for a long time. But the plan had always been to be home by the middle of November and we weren't willing to forgo the plan. Ergo, time to move on if we wanted to see some of Malaysia this year.

So we left about 0700 the 30th of October, cleared the customs boat and made our way through the incredible anchorages along the western approaches to Singapore. The number of cargo vessels at anchor, on the move to and from the cargo handling facilities or on the docks or the fuel facilities and refineries is hard to believe until it's been encountered. 

The facilities go on for miles and miles and miles. The paper nautical charts cannot keep up with the rate at which the Port of Singapore is filling in land around the port to create more cargo handling area. Our electronic charts seemed reasonably accurate. We really didn't clear the anchored shipping until well up into the Straits of Malacca. Our destination was Admiral Marina, Port Dickson, Malaysia about a hundred and fifty miles north. We had almost no wind and since the enroute shipping was still passing us at a steady stream we were motoring again rather than tack around in the shipping separation zone day and night. 

We stayed at the extreme eastern side or out of the separation zone to the east. Most shipping passed us well to port but there were barges under tow and local vessels with us on the east side as well as the ever present fishing craft. All in all keeping a "proper watch" meant REALLY keeping a proper watch and the radar and binoculars got a good work out day and night. We had one fast car carrier come up from dead astern and swing over to pass us on starboard. The relative speed differential worked out to 18.4 knots which means he was doing 25 knots. That's really moving for a civilian vessel, any large vessel.  Probably the reason he was out of the separation zone. We spoke to him on the way past and he was carrying cars to Port Klang, undoubtably meant for sale in Kuala Lumpur.

So we arrived at Admiral Marina just south of Port Dickson as planned. The marina was very nice although they are doing a lot of dock refurbishing and many slips do not have shore power at the present time. We enjoyed the nice marina facilities and went into Port Dickson to check through customs, etc, into Malaysia. 

Everyone was very sweet and the process was easy. We spent a couple days at the marina eating good Indian food nearby. The first impression of Malaysia is that it's an interesting in-between place. In between the modernity and flash of Singapore and the third world chaos and poverty of much of Indonesia. The population is largely Muslim but didn't seem particularly conservative. People were as friendly as they could be and very welcoming. There does seem to be an element of financial chaos. It's common to see a very elaborate resort or housing complex, obviously built at great expense with grandiose expectations, to be sitting pretty much unoccupied and looking run down after only a few years. I think the Malaysian 'boom' of a decade ago had a little problem. Of course, where else did that happen?

It was another over nighter up to Penang. And conditions were similar. Motored the entire trip. There was less shipping, especially after passing Port Klang, but more fishing activity and we're beginning to see a lot of Thai purse seiner type fishing craft. Penang is a big and modern city and has aspirations of becoming Singapore. It may just do that, it's a busy and happening place. We spent a few nights at the Tanjong City Marina at Georgetown which is the historic old part of the city. The marina is quite nice despite the nearby ferry terminal. 

 

It has a reputation for getting extremely rough during any kind of strong northerly wind but we never had those conditions and were very comfortable. The Georgetown area is fascinating, a combination of a large Little India, Chinatown and old colonial city. We ate, in my opinion, the very best Indian food I've ever eaten and I think Janet agrees. 

That weekend was the end of the Hindu New Year festival and Little India was packed until the actual 'day' itself. Then it was a ghost town. Hard to believe. Another 'hard to believe' was the noise level of the QE II bar near the marina on Friday night. It had not been a problem all week, no sound at all, but at 2300 on Friday they kicked in the disco and blasted the surrounding area until 0200. We were plenty uncomfortable on the boat a couple hundred yards away. How anybody inside the building could survive is beyond me.

The plan was to push off that morning for Langkawi. After that little serenade we left with no regrets on the 6th and, again, motored the sixty miles up to Langkawi in very calm conditions. We spent a night at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club marina. It's a nice enough facility but considerable noise and chop from the ferry terminal nearby and a LOT of current when the tide is on the ebb. 

We checked into Langkawi, hit the Mac Donald's at the mall (yetch, but it had to be done) and were generally surprised by both the physical beauty of the islands and the level of development. There's considerable hustle and bustle around Kuah, the main town, big resorts, malls and the usual tourist support paraphernalia. We moved the boat over to Rebak Island the next day.

And Rebak is truly a lovely place. The island is owned by the Rebak Resort hotel which is part of the Indian Taj Hotel chain and is very much the posh property. The marina itself is sheltered by forested hills to the extent that it can't be seen until inside the entrance passage. 

The slips were destroyed by the big tsunami in 2006 but only one boat was lost and no one was injured. As a result the slips are new and very nice. The whole facility is very yacht friendly. The resort is open to yachts staying at the marina and the lovely pool and pool bar beside the nice beach in the quiet and beautifully landscaped resort makes for the kind of place the average yachtie can stay a long time. And that's exactly our plan.

We took a day trip over to Satun, Thailand to check out the Phithak Shipyard with Carl and Kathleen Cox, fellow Wauquiez sailboat owners. The shipyard was a friendly, busy place full of Thai fishing boats but also about half a dozen foreign yachts having major work done. We left very favorably impressed.

So here's the plan: We have left the boat in the water at Rebak Marina. I'll return in March to take the boat over to Satun and supervise the work we intend to have done. This will be at minimum removing the teak decks and having the deck glassed over and painted. We may have some interior teak work done. We may have salon cushions recovered. We may have galley counter tops replaced, etc, etc. This should take a month or two.

I'll return the boat to Langkawi and may return home for awhile or Janet may come out to travel around SE Asia. We will use the remainder of the year to enjoy SE Asia one way or another. Come January of 2012 we'll catch the monsoon across the Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka and India, then across the Arabian Sea and up the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. That's the long term plan. Stay tuned please.

So now we've been home a couple days. The jet lag is wearing off. We had great flights and a good trip home through Singapore and Tokyo. I spent a night at the Radisson International Hotel at Narita, Tokyo which has always been our layover hotel. Over the years with Northwest I  spent over 700 nights there and it's close to being a  home. Since we have about three hundred crew members there on any given night the chance of running into old friends is pretty good and I was not disappointed. Janet is delighted that our house sitter left the place so nice and clean and spiffy. We're both a little amazed to be back after the adventure over the past eight months.

We had a great season. The sailing up the east coast of Australia was very good. The reinforced trades blew as forecast and all we had to do was keep from hitting anything hard. The voyage across the top to Darwin was rough but fast and safe.

The sail up to Kupang was lovely. Indonesia was a cultural experience which will always influence our thinking and the places and people we got to know were unforgettable. Singapore continues to amaze us with it's capacity for growth and change. The cultural contrast between Indonesia one day and Singapore the next was difficult to comprehend and accept. Malaysia has been beautiful and friendly. We'll be back there and into Thailand and more of SE Asia next year.

So thank you for following the blog this year. We'd love to read your comments. We'll be back on again in a few months. For now Janet is eyeing her next move in the gardens and I'm working on shooting my age at golf. A 63 isn't likely right now. But every year I'm getting closer.

Love to all,
Bill & Janet
SV Airstream