Work In Progress

So I thought I called room service the evening after arrival and ordered the "wood fired New York pizza". It never came. Next morning I went to the boat and found these guys hammering the wood decks off my boat! Ouch! The language barrier can be a problem.

Just kidding of course.  I can tell you that when I saw them take those first chunks out of the deck with a razor sharp wood chisel and a hammer I got a very funny sensation. It felt kinda personal. The guy on the right in the photo above is Phon of Phon Carpentering, the contractor I chose to do the deck removal and replacement. I'm very happy with Phon and his crew. They usually have about five people working. The atmosphere is family and light hearted. Lots of laughing and kidding going on but they work hard all day. Phon speaks very little English but understands a lot more and his wife and daughter speak enough to get along. They have done a lot of boats and definitely know what they're doing. I have showed Phon the genoa tracks which are bolted through the deck and glassed over inside with cabinetry covering many of the glassed areas below. He assures me he can get them off and get them back on again. "No problem, many boats," with a laugh and a big smile. I'll observe his methods with great interest.

For you fellow Wauquiez owners I will say the teak deck removal process has been a confirmation of the quality of the original construction. These teak decks are twenty six years old and they are still stuck to the underlying fiberglass very, very securely. Every inch of teak has to be hammered and chiseled off. The adhesive is doing the holding. The screws come out quite easily in most cases and just held the teak down while the original adhesive set. In no place has here been any water intrusion into the glass and the decks are rock solid.  That's all very good but it also means having this work done somewhere where they billed by the hour at western prices would be a very expensive proposition.

There are few more days of work ahead removing teak and things like genoa tracks. Then the decks will be prepped and primed and the installation process of the new teak decks will begin. Supposed to be a very interesting process.

We have had excellent weather. A couple weeks ago it seemed the rainy season had begun early but other than the usual night time isolated thunder bumpers there has been no further rain. I don't have much to do with the deck work now that most of the deck hardware is removed. I've got a list of other boat projects I'll work on during the process. I'll keep  everybody updated.

Love to all,
Bill & Janet

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