Boat Drudgery - Rebak Marina, Langkawi, Malaysia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Fri 10 Jun 2011 05:57
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06:17.707N 99:41.852E
May 5, 2011 - June 6, 2011 Boat drudgery for Don anyway. He has done nothing
but boat maintenance and boat projects since we arrived back in Langkawi on
April 14, with the exception of the eight days we spent in Vietnam and two days
we recently spent in Penang. This is something he would almost enjoy
if it weren't for the brutal conditions. Even a nice, cool 87 degree day
turns into an unbearable soggy mess when the humidity kicks in. The water
provided at the marina docks is unpalatable (even after filtering), so we've
taken to buying cases of water in 5 1/2 liter bottles. Sometimes, one
bottle lasts only one day, so we buy several cases at a time in one of
Langkawi's funky supermarkets and bring them back to the boat on
the Rebak Island ferry. Marina residents share the ferry with Rebak
Island Resort guests, and we can only guess what the resort guests
are thinking as they watch us swing eight giant bottles of water on
and off the ferry, and then lug them to our boat without
assistance from the fancy golf carts all the resort guests
get to ride. It's just one more of those things that fall into the 'boat
living oddity' category, like plugging in the toaster in order to get the
microwave to power up, removing the couch cushions to get at the freezer,
and hand pumping the toilet thirty or forty times for a single
flush.
Back to drudgery...
The amount of maintenance the marvelous maintenance man is
doing at the end of this season is more than the usual because we are gearing up
for serious ocean sailing next season. This means all safety
equipment and essential systems must be checked, and fixed or replaced if
necessary. The list is long, but includes things like the engine,
generator, electric winches, electric furlers, rigging, sails, water maker,
autopilots, radios, EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon),
etc. So far he has taken apart, inspected and re-greased all ten winches,
inspected the two working autopilots and the spare, torn apart the
two furling and one outhaul motors (headsail furler and
mainsail furler and outhaul), replaced the gears in the two furler motors,
and last, but not least, rebuilt the propane locker. Rebuilding the
propane locker sounds innocent enough, but it turned into a two-week
sweat-a-thon. Below are
pictures.
 Cutting out the old locker.
Sounds easy, but try doing it while crouching inside the stern
locker in 95F and 95% humidity for several days. It's a guaranteed weight
loss program. The reason Don went through this pain and suffering is
because our old locker was only large enough to house four 5 lb steel propane
bottles. These bottles are rusting, and if a re-fill station wanted to be
picky, they might say the bottles are beyond their certification date (and they
might be right). We decided new bottles were essential, but Don couldn't
find any aluminum or fiberglass 5 lb bottles that would fit in the space.
Also, next season we'll be sailing from the Maldives to Chagos (which is
uninhabited except for a US military base), staying for a month, then sailing on
to Mauritius - all of which will take us about seven weeks. Seven weeks of
100% self-reliance. No markets for fresh produce, no stores, no diesel
supply and no propane refills. Our new improved propane locker fits three
10 lb bottles, giving us an additional ten pounds to bake bread with while
anchored off deserted coral atolls in the middle of the Indian
Ocean.
 Don crouching comfortably in his new found
hidey-hole.
 A none-too-happy dust-covered Don after a day of grinding and
sanding in his hidey-hole.
 The new propane locker before final installation and
painting.
 Our three, new, shiny, 10 lb propane bottles (2 fiberglass, 1
aluminum) next to one of our rapidly decaying 5 lb
bottles.
 The final product complete with sealed door and white paint -
achieved only after several more days of misery. The worst of which
involved a grueling seven hour fiberglass and epoxy marathon under an
unfortunately perfectly blue sky and burning sun. Don finished
fiberglassing the new locker to the hull a little worse for wear with several
bad rashes and bumps all over most of his body. He developed an allergy to
epoxy when building his fiberglass airplane back in the 1990's, and it usually
rears its ugly head whenever he's exposed to epoxy for an extended period
of time (even when covered head to toe in painter's coveralls and
gloves). He has since recovered, but decided his epoxy days might
be over. That particular day was a 5 1/2 liter bottle of
water day.
 Two days in Penang - a good distraction for the
maintenance man and his marina-sitting stir-crazy wife.
Home of the marina from hell with no break wall, Penang
remains one of our favorite Malaysian destinations. This time we didn't
take Harmonie or a ferry, but opted instead for the cheap ($50) 30
minute flight from Langkawi to Penang. We left the day after Don's epoxy
sweat-a-thon, and enjoyed two days wandering around the island of Penang with
Dave and Jan from American boat Baraka. This is a photo of one of the many
Chinese temples in the Penang city of Georgetown.
 We took the inclined train up Penang Hill for the view.
It was a bit hazy, but the air at the top was a refreshing
85F.
 Our new addition.
For some inexplicable reason, we've been craving a hand carved
teak elephant from Thailand. Our favorite shop in Penang had several from
Chiang Mai, Thailand, so we decided this guy would do. The shop owner
happily packaged him up and we checked him as baggage for the flight back to
Langkawi.
 The elephant tromping through security.
At first the Penang airport security guards didn't know what
to make of it, but after cycling the packaged elephant back and forth through
the scanner three or four times, they started laughing. Then they allowed
Dave and Jan to take a picture of the security monitor. Do you think TSA
would have gone for that? Speaking of TSA, we're hoping the
elephant makes it home with us in one piece. He'll go as baggage from
Langkawi to Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam to Detroit to Syracuse. Assuming he
makes it, breaks out of the packaging, and gets his tusks back, he'll
probably brag to all his elephant friends back in Thailand about the
trip and his new home in the land of low humidity and readily
available ice cream.
The rest of the past month has been spent researching sailing
routes from Thailand to South Africa and the countries along the way. We
are already thinking about the various visas and cruising permits we'll need, as
well as the usual pile of guide books for land travel and pilot books for boat
travel. At the same time, we've been winding down our stores of food and
wine so nothing is left to rot while we are away for 4 months. We've
managed to eat two pounds of walnuts in four weeks and are now working our way
through a giant jar of peanut butter and a bag of pine nuts leftover from
Australia. We've been researching food storage tips on the web for those
items we plan to leave aboard in what will be a very warm vessel. Did you
know if you freeze grains like rice, flour and oatmeal, and dried fruits
and seeds for 3 to 10 days, not only will the grain bugs (weevils, etc.) die,
but their larvae and eggs will die as well? This even works for baskets in
which offending grains are sometimes kept - a lesson well learned after I
allowed a bag of rice to sit in a basket on the galley counter long
enough for bugs to hatch in the rice and move into the
basket. The basket went into the freezer and came out good as new a week
later. Cleaning the dead bugs out of the defrosted freezer wasn't
something I'd put on my top ten fun things to do list though. It
wasn't quite as bad as spending two weeks crouched in a stern locker, but at
least I felt like I was sharing some of Don's pain.
Next up: hauling Harmonie
Anne
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