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Where am I ? > Journals >April 2004 (NEDERLANDSTALIGE VERSIE BESCHIKBAAR) |
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April 2004
Friday 2nd April Today Espiritu will be lifted from the water. So exciting! Hopefully
everything goes well. At first Winston was not that keen of lifting
her because of her tall mast. He just damaged the wind meter of
another sailing boat when lifting it. Some gentle pressure and our
promise that we would remove the wind meter and bear the risk, convinced
him to go ahead. Early in the morning we motored to Keppel Marina, which is about 45 minutes from the RSYC. Moving at a pleasant speed we discovered that the gear handle was stuck and reducing speed was impossible. Most likely a rusty gas cable. As mentioned earlier, a boat needs to be used regularly. Some time later we entered Keppel Marina almost at full speed. We tried to find the right moment to put the gear handle in neutral but it turned out to be too quick. We found ourselves floating just 20 metres from our berth so we ended up being towed in by a dinghy. Stefan climbed into the mast to take off the wind meter, while I kept the security line tight around the winch. Nice team work, we practiced this a few times already. Next time I’d like to get up into the mast to enjoy the view! Next surprise! We couldn’t get the centreboard up. Despite Stefan’s
freely applied force on the winch, not a single movement. Now especially
the latter is rare, since brute force tends to be the solution to
most irresolvable mechanical problems - what the hell is going on?
The mystery was quickly resolved when the centreboard came out of
the water. Completely destroyed! A complete coral reef had developed
on its remains. We expected some damage as a result of our unsuccessful
approach of Nongsa Marina last year, but didn't think it would be
this serious. Well, another job to add onto the list. Never mind,
it's going to be busy anyway. The tropical shower that started during the lift was still going on when we arrived at Mark and Els. Thanks for offering us poor beggars a warm shower and a comfortable bed for a couple of weeks. We will make it up to you guys when we are in better times. [Natascha] Saturday 3th & Sunday 4th April The deal with Winston was that we would do the paint scraping and sanding of the deck, so time to start working! Keith very kindly offered us a helping hand for a full weekend, which made a big difference. It turned out that the last paint job wasn’t done that properly looking at the paint peeling off like wallpaper after only 4 years. Probably an issue with either the paint or the preparation. We had a reassuring telephone conversation with the Adams Yacht
builder regarding our centreboard. According to him it can be repaired
and he’ll send us the drawings. Keith couldn’t get enough of the paint scraping and joined us again on Sunday, and Mark also came to help. Yesterday we did most of the easier parts, today was much tougher. Els came with the kids to have a look at the boat and their hard working daddy. Julia was impressed by such a big boat. Proudly she waved at her dad, but Mark was entirely occupied by his sanding machine. [Natascha] Tuesday 6th April We both took a day off to continue with the little scraping job. The sooner we are ready, the sooner Winston can start doing the spraying. And in this case, time is money, so keep up the good spirit – it’s for a good cause. Our day rhythm is as interesting as the scraping itself: Wake up, have breakfast, do some scraping, have the same omelette lunch, some more scraping and head home for a shower to wash of the white dust. A good night sleep brings us at the start of the next, rather predictive day. We haven't seen the gym for weeks and the running shoes are collecting as much dust as the boat, which starts having its effect on our fat percentage. [Stefan] 9th, 10th & 11th April (Easter week end) Sorry, but some more scraping. Who said the job would be done in
2 to 3 days; we are getting close to 20 man days! The annoying thing
is that we have to continue scraping. Every once and a while you
suddenly peel off whole sections over which you could not have painted
without creating the same problems in the future. And living the
solid ‘islands’ (we have seen all the country shapes of the world
already…) is not an option, as they would cause differences after
the spraying. The chain plates of the stays were a welcome change of scenery. Stefan unscrewed and lifted them from the deck and kindly asked me to remove the remaining kit from the plates – wouldn’t take long… Right, 3 hours later all the kit was removed. The picture at the right clearly shows the enjoyment. There are some lucky days though. Stefan received a call on my mobile and it stated ‘Stefan’ – what is happening here? He wasn’t too sharp anymore so firstly thought the phone must have gone off in a bag or pocket automatically. Well, it turned out that he got pretty close to loosing his fourth (!) mobile in the back of a cab. A very friendly expat found the phone and started calling the most recently dialled number, which happened to be mine. He is such a good husband-:). So no new phone for Stefan this time around. Finished the day off with spending the ‘saved’ money on a nice dinner at Chijmes. You got to keep morale up.
[Natascha] Wednesday 14th April We were a bit too ambitious – no undercoat yet. Natascha hadn’t realised that all epoxy should also be sanded to totally smoothen the surface. And don’t forget taping all remaining steel – mainly the cap rail and the stantions of the lifelines. We felt it would be a bit too dangerous to take these off with the boat about 5 meters above the ground. Yes, I know, I never needed the life lines when living on the boat for 5 months but this is different. Right? By the way, do you know the similarity between painting a boat and sex? The joy, spraying, takes less than 5% of the effort. [Stefan] Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th April Finally, we could move inside and mess up the boat a bit further. While Natascha started with a nice job – painting the interior of the galley cupboards which kept loosing paint – I was assigned with the worst possible job ever, since Natascha only wishes to do the nice jobs. After removing the toilet bowl and old hoses from the forward head, the place hadn’t really improved. It still smelled and the rusty screw spots weren’t very appealing. So bit the bullet and decided to paint the forward head. And what comes before painting? Right: Sanding. Just imagine being in a place 2 cubic meters large, no ventilation, 35 degrees Celsius, and an air-sander producing enough dust to get miner’s lungs within 5 minutes. And they say smoking kills. Well, I never coughed so much over any cigarette! A mouth piece might have helped a bit, but frankly, only a gas mask would have been good enough to stop polluting your lungs. The only solution was to get out every few minutes and get some fresh air before going under again in snow-man’s world. The result is shown on the left. The deck got its undercoat which looks a lot different. Gosh, do
we have a fancy boat! Finally we start seeing some progress. The
plan was to have the gloss done, but since we were still waiting
for the new hatches and it kept on pissing, it was decided to push
the thing a bit forward. No worries, plenty of jobs left! Despite the tight schedule decided to free up two hours for the Asia Dive Expo – fortunately in Suntec, which is reasonably close to Keppel Marina (this is when you are too long in Singapore – if you find any distance on this island far). Natascha reckoned we’d only see dive schools, travel offers and some equipment, but I had silent hopes for a bargain on a dive compressor. Fairs are often good places to snatch display gear at nice prices and so it turned out. While the guy wasn’t that interested in our sponsor plead, he was offering the piece at a price, we would have been happy with when being sponsored. He was the regional importer who can always do 20 to 30% better prices than any local dealer and as he tried to avoid shipping costs back to Thailand, he was happy to slash off another 15%. Good sports, these guys from Coltri. So: COLTRI HAS THE BEST AFFORDABLE DIVE COMPRESSORS IN THE WORLD !!! Cheers-:). On Sunday we moved to Mike's spacious appartment, just 5 minutes from Keppel Marina. Brilliant! [Stefan] Tuesday 20th April We intended to sand down and paint the wooden cabin boards that were soaked with diesel but after a closer look decided to replace them entirely. Our friend Winston provided us with some nice sheets of multiplex and after one hour of sowing and sanding we were very pleased with our new boards. Some of the good old undercoat and we were ready. It is nice if at least occasionally jobs don’t take 3 times longer as planned! All that's left is putting in the new cushions and these cabinets will be transformed into comfortable sleeping areas instead of “Diesel Smelling Tandoori Dog Ovens” (John came up with this nickname during our journey from Hong Kong). [Natascha] Thursday 22nd April Today the Dutchies in Singapore celebrated Queens Birthday at Harry’s Bar. Although one week early, it seemed nobody had problems with this fact, since it’s never too early to have a good party! Free beer for everybody wearing (visible) orange clothes, ' Bitterballen', ' Nieuwe Haring' and Dutch Cheese. An entire orange bar, full of Dutch…..Perfect evening! Bit of a slow start the next morning though.... [Natascha]
The programme for this weekend: Sanding down the wooden floor boards, putting in new wiring for the sonar, depth – and speedometer and cleaning of the bilge. I couldn’t complain taking on my sanding job outside in the sun. Guess who was burrying his head in the engine room? [Natascha] Winston made good progress over the past few days. He put in the
new ‘through-hulls’ for the sonar, depth – and speedometer.
Even more holes in our hull!! I don’t really like this idea but
in this case there's no way out of it. He is also working on the
teak wooden cockpit floor and table and the repair of our centreboard.
Now, don't take our friend as a superman because he is kindly delegating
the majority of the jobs. He is however the best in seeking compliments
from us-:). Being unfamiliar with our engine, this remains a constant source of concern. Not that it's dodgy, it's just that we feel so helpless and dependent whenever it starts doing what it isn't supposed to. The last one is the gear box that made a strange rumbling noise on our way to Keppel. An, apparently, significant amount of oil had been leaking through the draining nut - that's what caused all the oil in the bilge! Fortunately no serious damage. One bearing needed replacement and while he was at it we had the gas and gearbox cable renewed. Both didn’t work that well anymore, the jammed gear handle in particular. The shaft bearing was considered another specialist job that we happily outsourced to the mechanic. Lastly, we asked him to fit the new relay kit between the start engine and the battery to provide full power on the start engine. Instead of 6 times ‘Click', we now instantly hear the reassuring ‘Vroom’. This especially comes in very handy in emergencies when you need the engine to start IMMEDIATELY! Saturday night: Queens Birthday Celebrations Part II. After a pleasant cocktail at the Ambassador’s residence, we continued our party with hundreds of Dutch Orange Fools at the Orange Ball in the Dutch Club. First time we celebrated Queens Birthday so thoroughly. This time we were smarter than hanging around till late and wasting next morning so we left pretty early. By the way, according to our initial plan the boat would be ready by next week…..To be continued in May! [Stefan] |
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No
eggs for Eastern; work to be done! We spent the day mainly stripping
the boat from all pieces of metal we could see. It’s amazing how
you start carefully, avoiding big hassles to remove cleats and end
up taking out the complete traveller for the main and get rid of
all winches. One week later than planned, John can finally start
patching up all rutted spots with epoxy after which he can apply
the undercoat. Stefan lays comfortable in front of the telly – almost
Al Bundy-style – ready to fly off to Mumbai in 3.5 hours. Poor lad.
Saturday
24th & Sunday 25th April
