02:28.604N 101:50.716E

Thursday 2^nd November 2017

Distance run: 34 nm

Not a great start to this trip – went to get the anchor up, put my foot on the switch to start the windlass pulling up the chain, and nothing happened.  Uh-oh!  Fortunately we were in very shallow, flat water, as this meant we had to winch the chain and anchor up by hand.  It came up slowly and with a lot of effort, but eventually we were on our way, along with about a dozen other rally boats.

We motored most of the way, with just a short spell when the wind picked up enough for the sails to give the engine a bit of help, picking our way through the fishing nets.  Concerned that we might not get one of the few remaining berths at the marina, it being particularly important now with the windlass not working, we gave them a call to explain the situation.  They were extremely unhelpful and said they were working on a first-come-first-served basis with no exceptions.  No amount of explaining our anchoring difficulties would move them from this.  So we called Sazli, the rally coordinator, and he said he would have a chat with them.  He spoke directly to the berthing master who said he would find us a space.

We arrived at the marina at lunchtime and went straight into a berth.  As it happened, several more rally boats arrived after us and also managed to get a berth, so we didn’t feel that we had jumped the queue, but we would not have been safe at anchor without a working windlass.

So as soon as we were safely tied up, Steve began looking for the fault.  After an hour he was still looking perplexed, having tracked it down to a power rather than a mechanical problem, and Tom from Exit Strategy, our neighbours on the dock, came over to lend a hand.  Two heads and pairs of hands were definitely better than one, and after another hour they had identified two possible wiring problems – one a faulty connection problem, which would be an easy fix, the second a broken wire which would mean running a new wire to the front of the boat, not difficult but would mean taking half the boat apart to do it.

Fortunately, it turned out to be the easy fix, so by the end of the afternoon we had a working windlass again, thank goodness.  So now we were all good it was time for a quick tidy up and then hit the swimming pool to cool down.