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Where am I ? > Journals >January 2004 (NEDERLANDSTALIGE VERSIE BESCHIKBAAR) |
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January 2004
It's 2004 already, only 6 months to go before we leave. Time flies!
So what kind of boat jobs are we talking about? We won't bore you with the full list, but to give you an idea: Fixing leakages, replacing the compressor of the airconditioning, servicing the main engine and generator, stitching the bemini and the main- and genua UV covers, installing an electrical bilge pump. We also got a used second compressor for the fridge, which runs
on 12 volts. Usually the fridge and freezer run on 220 volts provided
by the generator (during sailing of course, in the Marina we use
shore power), only if it works of course. With two failures in two
trips we reckoned a backup might come in handy at some point of
time... Experience and f-ups learned us more. Our little incident with the rock in front of Nongsa Point (Batam) resulted in a broken steering chain. While fixing that, we had to take the chain out of the pedestal and found that one of the two legs of the tensioner was broken. God knows for how long (it was an old crack) and chances are we would have lost it somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. A very rewarding job was replacing the discharge hose of the aft heads (ships toilet). It always smelled a bit sense each time we came aboard after locking the boat for a day. Initially we blamed the bilge or the engine, but that didn’t really make sense after living on board for a few months. Well, no more uncertainty on this one after dismounting the old hose. Over the years, the hose collected an undefined substance amount to one millimetre thick. Let’s say the boat smells like a rose garden now… These are the kind of things that keeps one occupied in the weekend. It’s a bit like doing up a house, only smaller and strangely enough slower. By the way, did I give you the ideal characteristics for a boatsman? Short, strong hands, thin long fingers, inventive, persistent, loves to get his hands dirty, and not afraid of heights or confined places. Here I am, 6’1 tall, 85 kg so I won’t fit in all these lockers and thick short fingers. Add some respect for heights, read stubbiness for persistence and the picture is complete. April is supposed to be a big step forward. She will be on the hard for the whole month to paint the deck, touch up the hull, redo the antifauling on the underwater ship and repair the damaged centre board. Since the paint guy also does carpentry work, he will do some wood work and mount additional hatches for the peak and the forward heads. While he is at it, he is also going to fit an electrical heads and an electrical flush for the shower. As the boat will be a complete mess when all this is done, we are
very lucky that friends are willing to take us poor homeless in
for a few weeks. Thanks! Needless to say that we will pay up our
debts with some nice cruising on a shiny luxurious sailing yacht
in tropical waters. For those of you who start feeling sorry, if you do in the first
place, it’s not all work. We crewed on a racing yacht (Kent’s Solarmax,
a very nice and complex X-99) during the Singapore Straits Regatta
for 5 days and did the Monsoon Cup for two weekends. Results weren’t
too bad, 5th out of 15 boats in our class. Nice to be sailing again
and a good excuse to have some beers – time to go to the gym again…
The saving scheme doesn’t allow for as many trips in the region as we would like to but we definitely wanted to do Mount Kinabalu before leaving Singapore. Chinese New Year fell on Thursday and Friday, which gave us four days to do the climb. Starting at 1500 meters, climbing the first day to 3200 and the next day to the 4100 peak. You start the second day at 3am so that you can see the promised sunrise at 6am, which is supposed to be astonishing as you can oversee large parts from East-Malaysia up until the Ocean.
[Stefan] |
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Although
weekends are almost exclusively reserved for boat jobs, our to-do
list doesn't seem to get any shorter. For every job done, we add
two new jobs to the list. When does this end? Despite the slow progress,
it feels like we are doing the right things. Step by step we clean,
replace, overhaul and fit new stuff to bring her to the highest
reasonable standard. Now that most primary equipment is done, we've
come to the stage of fitting backups or at least acceptable alternatives
for the most critical items. Remember the main charateristic of
toys, they break. 
Not
for us though… from start to finish it poured and all the peak had
to offer was clouds, rain and a chilling wind. We Dutchies weren’t
as tough as we imagined. Freezing at a lousy four degrees Celsius
– guess warm comfortable Singapore also turned us soft. A bit disappointed
but pleased we did it, we moved down to the mountain cottage at
3200 meters and after some breakfast descended all the way to 1500
meters. The poor knees were ever more protesting and walking down
the stairs the next day was a confronting experience. Who says we’re
fit? We found comfort in the suffering others must have experienced,
sorry for that. 
