1 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I pottered around on the boat in the morning, getting ready to start work. Nai came by and we agreed that the creaking deck is caused by the slight flexing in the deck, which is then rubbing against the cupboard uprights in the galley. Not a problem, I think.
I asked Nai to block off two of the large holes in the foredeck, which used to be for dorade ventilators that we never use. I put blanking plates on them years ago because they were letting in water when we bash to windward. Nai is going to block them off with marine plywood and then fibreglass over.
The rest of the deck looks very good, so Nai is now going to get her chaps to countersink the thousands of screw holes from the old teak deck fastenings and then fair the deck with epoxy filler. They can then start the process of laying the new deck.
I pointed out that the paint job wasn't perfect, but Nai said that they still need to polish it and the orange peel and dust spots would be removed. At the same time, they will fill and polish and small scratches in the original gel-coat, so I’m expecting to have gleaming topsides when she’s finished.
An engineer from the nearby Volvo agent come to have a look at our water leak and after removing the timing belt cover, he agreed that the fresh water pump is leaking. Apparently, it’s not possible to repair these pumps, so I await a quote for a replacement with some trepidation.
After lunch in our air-conditioned apartment, it was tough to go back out to the humid heat, so we had a short two hour trip back to the boat to do a few jobs and gather some more personal belongings before we escaped back to our haven.
Glenys has found a dentist, a gym (which doesn't have air conditioning, so I’m not too keen) and a place that does a Visa Run to Malaysia. When we came back to Thailand, we only received a 30 day visa, so at some point, we need to get our visa renewed because we need to be here for two months.
The Visa Run entails boarding a mini-bus in the evening and then travelling for eight hours overnight to Georgetown in Malaysia. We book into a hotel the following morning and our passports are taken off to the Thai Embassy. The next morning our passports arrive back and we endure another eight hour trip on the mini-bus arriving back at Phuket late at night. It doesn't sound fun at all, but seems to be the cheapest way of getting a 2 month visa.
We had a quiet night with a nice Chicken Pasta and a bottle of red wine - Glenys is feeling much better.
2 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I went for a run this morning, which nearly killed me. I then did half an hour of stretching and exercises including press-ups, the Plank and sit-ups. I have to lose some weight after my indulgences in Myanmar. After a healthy breakfast, I spent most of the morning on the internet researching anti-fouling paint and stern glands - riveting stuff. Glenys went off for a haircut and some shopping.
I managed to get to the boat by eleven o'clock, where I found Nai’s team applying the epoxy filler to the screw holes. However, I couldn't bring myself to do any actual work, so I sloped off to check out the local area. There’s a very busy main road outside the Boat Lagoon compound, but not much else.
There’s a Jotun distributor that sells the Seaforce 90 anti-fouling paint that has worked so well since we left New Zealand, but for some bizarre reason, Thailand only has red and we want blue. We can get blue paint from International, but it’s very expensive and, in my experience, it’s very soft and doesn’t last as long, so we’ll probably just do a quick, essential paint job and haul out in November in Malaysia where we can apply a couple of coats of Jotun in blue - this will give us good protection all the way across the Indian Ocean in 2017.
I picked up a quote for a replacement fresh water pump for the engine - at £415, it’s twice the cost of one in the UK, but I’m just going to have to go ahead and order it. Apparently, it’s a nightmare to try to personally import boat parts - the customs are extremely bureaucratic imposing huge import duties.
As I wandered past the local Food Court, I spotted Phil and Sandy from “Southern Wing”. They’ve had an unpleasant two weeks, with one of their engine compartments flooding; and then they were struck by lightning causing thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. They’re slowly sorting it out, but they’re in survival mode at the moment with no refrigeration and half of their lights not working yet.
We had a quiet night in - Glenys has recovered from the virus now.
3 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
We picked up a car at midday and went off on a mega-shopping trip. Our first stop was at the Bangkok Hospital where we both saw a dermatologist. Living in the tropics is very hard on our skin and living on a boat we’re hit by double the amount sunlight because of the reflections from the water. Both of us had spots of sun-damaged skin (Solar Lentigo), so the doctor used a laser to remove them. It was a good, very quick process and only cost £100 for both of us.
We then wandered to various shopping malls, looking for things like a printer cartridge and a replacement seal for Glenys’s pressure cooker, but had no luck. The malls are all full of designer clothes, wide screen TVs and mobile phones, but nothing useful. The hardware stores don’t have the few technical tools that I want, so we need to find more specialised shops, which is challenging because of the difficulty in reading Thai shop signs.
At the end of the day, we visited a couple of the big supermarkets and had more success, so we’re well stocked up on drinking water, beer and food now.
4 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
We still had a car this morning, so we went to Immigration to reclaim my 20,000 Baht (£400) bond that I had to post before I flew to Myanmar. The process went okay until they had to issue a cheque to us. After keeping us waiting for 25 minutes, they fessed up that their boss was out of the office at a long meeting (probably on the golf course) and they couldn't get the cheque signed. Could we come back tomorrow?
We explained that we didn't have a car and said that we’d come back next week because we wanted to extend our visas. At this point, the conversation became very strange with the officer saying that he might be able to bring the cheque to Boat Lagoon for us or even cash it for us. He took our telephone number and address and we left the office without any documentation apart from the officer’s name and telephone number.
We drove about ¼ mile before we decided that this was all very dodgy, did a u-turn, went back to the immigration office and told the officer that we’d be back tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have to hire a motorbike tomorrow and waste another day, but I want to get my £400 back.
After dropping the car off at noon, we met Tom & Suzie from “Adina” for lunch at the local Food Court. It was great to catch up with them. They are in Thailand for another two weeks then head off to Sri Lanka and across the Indian Ocean.
Did a few errands like paying for the engine water pump. I called in at Octopus Electrical and they have tested our wind transducer. As I suspected the PCB has failed, so I've given them permission to replace it, which will cost £70. It’s a bit annoying because the transducer is only 2½ years old, but I've got more chance of getting pregnant than Raymarine accepting liability.
At the boat, I found a couple of Nai’s guys filling the scratches in the gel-coat and polishing it up. I chatted to Nai about the orange-peel on the new painting, but again she said that it will be alright, and pointed it out to one of her supervisors - all I can do is trust that they know what they’re doing.
After four days of messing about, I finally did some work on the boat. I cleared the back cabin and removed the steering cables and autopilot from the rudder quadrant to check the bearings. The rudder can be turned with a fingertip and is as smooth as silk, so I’m happy that the bearings are fine. However, the phosphor bronze shoe on the bottom of the skeg is loose, so I’m going to remove it and get Nai’s people to re-bed it with polyester resin.
Glenys went for a run this evening and it nearly killed her. I had a rest day, aching after two days of running and exercises, but it’s got to be done.
5 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I woke up at four o’clock in the morning and then lay awake for the rest of the night worrying about the £400 bond. There’s a huge amount of corruption in government departments in Thailand and I convinced myself that I was being scammed. I used to have a receipt that proved that I’d paid the bond, but that was taken from me yesterday and I was kicking myself for not scanning it into my laptop before I handed it over.
As I worried, it became clear that they had taken all my documentation away, I had signed various forms (all in Thai) and when I go back to collect my cheque, there would be no trace of it. They could deny that I’d ever paid a bond and pocket the £400 - I’m unable to speak any Thai, so what could I do about it?
At dawn, I wearily climbed out of bed and went for a run to work off my frustration. After breakfast, I did some internet browsing and I wound myself up even more as I discovered that there have been many recent reports of corruption in the Thailand Immigration department.
At ten o’clock, we hired a motorbike and scooted over to the Immigration office. They were all smiles, greeted us warmly and quickly rushed to get my cheque, which had already been signed and was waiting for me. Perhaps I should trust people more? In retrospect, I still think that I need to keep a healthy amount of paranoia when dealing with Asian officials - it could have been a very different story.
The Immigration rules are bizarre. When we arrived by boat, there HAD to be at least one person as Crew on the boat (Glenys was documented as a passenger and received a tourist visa). When I paid my bond and left the country, I effectively signed off the boat as crew. Having returned, we’ve both been given tourist visas and I do not have to sign back on to the boat as crew, so the boat no longer has any crew. It’s all very strange.
The Immigration officer in the marine office told us that we could now extend our tourist visas by 30 days, which would allow us to stay until the end of March, without having to do an expensive and time consuming “Visa Run”. This only works because we’d flown out of the country for a few weeks and when we arrived back we were given standard “Visa on Arrival” visas.
We headed off to the Visa extension office, which was jam-packed full of tourists. We queued to get a form, then queued to get our passports photocopied, then queued to get our documentation checked. At 11:30, we were right at the front of the queue about get a ticket number, when they closed the desk and told us that we had to come back at one o’clock. Bummer!
We decided to use the time to get our £400 bond cheque cashed. The cheque was on a Krung Thai Bank account and only that particular bank would cash it, so we drove around for 40 minutes trying to find a branch. We eventually found one about two miles away and soon had 20,000 Baht in our sticky little hands.
Back at the Immigration Office, we obtained our numbered ticket and then had to spend an hour waiting for our number to be called. The process was automatic - we handed over our documentation, paid £40 each and were given extensions until the 29th March - a nice little money earner for the government.
We did a few more errands, then headed back to the apartment to chill out for the evening. We hope to do some work on the boat tomorrow instead of all this running around.
6 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Glenys went to the boat and started to polish the multitudinous stainless steel fittings on the rigging, which are easy to get to now that the mast is on the ground. I had a lazy morning, browsing the internet to get technical information on some of the jobs I have planned.
After lunch, we headed off to the boat and found that Nai’s team have finished repairing and polishing the gelcoat on the topsides. The gelcoat looks great, but there’s still some slight orange peel in the blue and some worrying defects including small runs on the white stripe near the water line.
I talked to Nai about the defects in the white paint and she’s told me that her guys can polish them out. Ten minutes later, a couple of guys were sanding the surface of the white with 2000 grit emery cloth and polishing it. After half an hour, they showed me the white stripe again and I can still see the defects. I was worried about them ruining the surface of the paint by too much polishing, so I told Nai to stop working on it while I do more research and think about it.
The carpenters have started laying the teak deck and already we have two planks on the port side and four on the starboard side. The teak is machined with a 2mm rebate on each side of the 35mm wide planks, which gives a 4mm gap for caulking. I had a look at some of the planks and they’re all quarter-sawn and look good. There’s still some wide grain in the wood, but to my novice eyes, it looks better than the teak originally used by Hallberg Rassy.
They have stuck pieces of 2 by 1 inch pine down onto the glass fibre deck and are using small wedges to clamp the planks both horizontally and vertically. The deck is being carefully vacuumed free of dust; a Sika flex primer is being painted on the fibre glass and the underside of the planks; Sikaflex 298 is smoothed onto the deck and the plank placed on top. The plank is carefully bent to shape and then held in place by the wedges.
At the moment they are just laying long stretches of planking and where there are deck fittings, they are leaving the rough ends of the planks nearly touching the fitting. I guess that a final job will be to carefully chisel this wood away to fit nicely curved border pieces around the obstructions.
I removed the sprayhood because Glenys is going to make a new one - the old one is looking very tired and has had many repairs and patches over the past five years. I then started to tackle the broken window in the windscreen. When the window broke in November, we held the shattered glass in place with duct tape, which has lasted remarkably well.
It was a very messy job, pulling off the duct tape and then picking the individual ¼” cubes of glass from the frame. Glass went everywhere, so I had to keep sweeping it up because the carpenters are walking around with bare feet. I just managed to lever all the glass out of the frame before it went dark.
As I walked back to our room, there was a big rain storm with torrential rain. It’s supposed to be the dry season, goodness knows what it’ll be like later in the year when the south-west monsoon arrives.
7 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Glenys went off to the boat to do some more polishing of the rigging, while I did some reading up about paint. Awlgrip a very technical paint and it’s really important that the surface is prepared well and the paint is applied correctly. As the paint dries a thin, highly glossy clear layer comes to the surface, which should not be polished because it will lose its shine. So really, Nai’s team should not have been trying to rub out the defects in the white stripe.
I asked Mike from “Shakti” to have a look at our paint job and he was most helpful. He had all of the topsides of his previous boat sprayed in dark blue and said that it’s a notoriously hard colour to spray. He thinks that ideally there shouldn't be any orange peel effect, but it’s only noticeable close up and even if I get them to respray, it might not be any better.
He agrees with me that the white line is not very good and they shouldn't be trying to fix the problem by polishing - this could cause problems later. I need to decide if I can live with the slight orange peel and the white line defects. From six feet away, it all looks fabulous and 1000 times better than it was, so am I being too fussy? I decided to sleep on it.
When we started to do the teak deck, one of my main worries was the mast foot plate which holds the bottom of the mast. One school of thought is to leave the mast foot plate in place because the wood beneath it has already compressed and stabilised. After a lot of agonising, I decided to remove it and replace the plate on top of the new teak deck, but I’m paranoid about the mast going back in exactly the same place.
One of the jobs on my list today was to screw the mast foot plate back into the existing holes in the deck to make sure that the carpenter doesn't mistakenly cover it with teak. I collected the deck plate and screws and walked onto the coach-roof, to find that some bloody idiot had put epoxy filler into the holes. I nearly cried in frustration - the holes had a screw thread tapped into the fibre glass and were blank-ended with no access from below.
I spent an hour measuring and working out where I should drill the holes again. I had the correct M10 tap, so I could re-thread the holes, but I wanted to be sure that the holes were in the correct position. After some deep breaths, I drilled a small hole in the first screw hole and slowly opened it out. I found that the epoxy was only ½ inch deep and I could see the original tapped hole. The new hole was offset from the original hole, but I managed to carefully open it up and found that I could use the original thread.
Twenty minutes later, I’d opened up the four holes, re-tapped them and fitted the mast foot plate in position. I’m missing 10mm of thread at the top of the hole, but the deck is 35 mm of solid fibreglass, so I’ll buy some longer screws and I’ll still have 20-25mm of thread holding the screws in place - that’s stronger than the original.
To finish off the day, I spent three hours scraping the old sealant from the windscreen - a very tedious job. I've done two of the three sides and will have to finish it off another day. I've measured the size of the window, which has a curve on two of the sides, so I’m going to get Nai to make me a template in 4mm plywood, so that I can check it, before buying the Perspex.
8 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I had another lazy start to the day, catching up on some admin, checking my task lists to make sure that I’ve not missing anything. When I finally got to the boat, I had a chat with Nai about the paint and, after a lot of agonising, I’ve decided that the slight orange peel is acceptable and Nai has agreed to rub down and respray three coats of the white. I said that I was worried about the long term effects of polishing the paint, but she said that she guarantees her work and it will last over five years - I have to trust her.
Up on deck, I found that the holes for the genoa track had also been filled with epoxy by the same Numpty who filled the mast foot plate holes. Again, the position of the track is critical, so, when the teak deck has been laid, I was planning to drill through the existing holes from inside the boat - the holes that had now been filled with epoxy… I spent three hours drilling the 72 holes out again. Fortunately, I was able to drill them from above and didn’t have to pull down the head linings in the saloon.
Glenys started the tedious job of cleaning up the deck fittings. Each of the screws, nuts and fittings has to be cleaned of the old sealing compound. The sticky Butyl sealing compound is designed to adhere onto any surface and withstand sea, sun and chemicals. She found that White Spirit helped to soften the tenacious stuff, but it’s still going to be a Herculean task - her first job was cleaning the three metre long genoa tracks and the 72 bolts, nuts and washers.
In the afternoon, Nai’s team got on with repainting the white stripes. They sanded down the old paint and then covered the hull with cling film, just leaving the two white stripes exposed. A plastic curtain was attached to the tent frame, enclosing the whole boat. They then sprayed on three more coats of white Awlgrip paint.
The carpenters are beavering away on the teak deck - they are laying two rows of planks on each side of the boat every day. The actual laying of the planks is quite quick, but more than half of their time is spent in preparing the pine clamping strips, which are epoxied to the glass fibre deck. Every day, they remove the wedges from the planks stuck down the previous day; shorten the scores of pine strips by 70mm, which gives them space to fit the next two planks.
I checked the bearings and seals on the windlass and everything looks okay, so I don’t need to do any work before I put it back on deck, which is a relief.
Our automatic bilge pump has been blocking every time that it runs because there is too much sludge and debris in the bottom of the sump. While we were in the water, I tried to clean it, but it’s too deep and narrow to get proper access. For the first time in five years, I opened the sump plug, which is a one inch diameter plug on the outside of the keel. The black sludge that came out stank to high heaven.
9 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Nai’s team removed the cling film from the hull and the white stripe looks great now, so I’m finally happy with the painting. The topsides are gleaming in the sun - let’s hope they stay that way.
Glenys carried on with the Sisyphean task of cleaning the deck fittings, while I removed the two alternators from the engine. They’re wired up in parallel, so if one fails the other automatically takes over. This is great, but it’s hard to know if there’s a problem. We’ve had some galvanic corrosion on the propeller and I want to make sure that there’s no earth leakage problem on the alternators. I dropped them off at Octopus Electrics and while I was there, picked up our repaired wind transducer.
I then turned my attention to the PSS seal, which has been “clattering” when we sail or motor. I really hate working on this area of the boat because I have to lie on top of the engine with my head lower than the rest of me and, even lying on a 1 inch thick closed-cell pad, the engine components give me a bruised chest.
I disassembled the PSS seal (without removing it from the propeller shaft) and found that the faces on the stainless steel disk and the carbon bearing look okay, but the propeller shaft is lying very near at the bottom of the stern tube. This was very puzzling because I realigned the engine while we were hauled out in New Zealand and I made quite sure that the propeller shaft was in the middle of the stern tube.
After pondering this for a while, I’ve convinced myself that the whole boat is sagging because we’re out of the water and we’ve removed the rigging, which removes the tension from the hull. The propeller shaft has effectively drooped by 3.5mm, so I can’t trust any measurements or re-align it until the rigging is re-tensioned and the boat is in the water, which will support the hull again.
So, my plan is to clean up the PSS seal and re-install it. When we’re back in the water, I’ll have to centralise the propeller shaft in the stern tube, re-align the engine and then adjust the PPS seal. This is easier said than done, because to see whether the propeller shaft is centralised, I have to remove the PSS seal and if I do that in the water, then water will rush in through the stern tube.
After more pondering, I’ve come up with a cunning plan, which involves disconnecting the prop-shaft from the gearbox, then measuring the total vertical movement of the shaft with the PSS seal in place. Half of the vertical movement will mean that the prop-shaft is centralised and, because the PSS seal is in place, I can do this once we’re in the water. The only flaw in this plan is that there is no easy way to make this measurement, so I’ll have to build some jigs and set up a fixed datum - a job for another day.
10 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Our main sail has a plastic pulley on the clew, which is used for the outhaul and it’s in a very sad state. I spent over an hour in our aft cabin, grinding off the heads of the riveted shaft, but couldn’t get the stub of the shaft out. I gave up and need to get the sail down on to the ground where I can really hammer it off.
While I was removing the alternators yesterday, I noticed that two water pipes on the engine, which feed the hot water tank, have been rubbing on the heat exchanger and one is close to leaking. I pulled the two 12” pipes off, bought some new hose, but then struggled to get the new, stiff pipes onto the hose tangs. I gave up - another job half done.
Meanwhile, Glenys went to dentist and they discovered that she has an infected cavity in the tooth that she had crowned in New Zealand. They’re not sure if she’ll lose the tooth or whether they can do a root canal and re-crown it. She’s seeing a specialist tomorrow.
It was very hot today and tough to leave the air-conditioning, but I managed to drag myself back to the boat after lunch, while Glenys stayed in the room and started to unpick the old sprayhood getting ready to make a new one.
I tidied up the boat (which had three days of clutter) and told Nai that I want someone to put a layer of fibre-glass in the floor of the aft bilge where it has some very, very thin cracks in the polyester-filled floor. It’s constantly wet in this locker and I suspect that water is seeping from the stern tube through the cracks. Hallberg Rassy has said that the best solution is to fill the cracks and then put a layer of fibre glass over the floor.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to remove the bronze rudder shoe at the bottom of the skeg. I dug out the screw holes; cleaned the screw heads; and then carefully removed the 8 eight bolts. I could feel the shoe moving slightly, but the two halves wouldn’t come off. I tried levering it with a screwdriver and smacking it with a mallet, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. This was another job that I had to leave - it’s not been my best day.
11 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I woke up at six o’clock with my subliminal brain telling me that the reason the rudder shoe wasn’t coming off was because there were some more bolts hidden beneath the anti-fouling paint. I sneaked out of bed, turned on my laptop and looked at some photographs of the rudder shoe when I fitted it two years ago. Sure enough, there are a couple of bolts still in there - duhhhh!
After breakfast, David, the rigger from Precision Engineering met me at the boat and we discussed a couple of jobs that need doing - a backing plate to strengthen the rod kicker fitting; bushes in the boom goose neck because it’s getting very loose and a new guard rail wire to replace the one damaged when a boat hit us before Christmas. David’s going to give me a quote.
I looked at the rudder shoe and discovered that there were actually three bolts that I hadn’t removed - no wonder the damn thing wouldn’t come off. After removing the bolts, it took five minutes of “gentle persuasion” with a screwdriver and mallet, to remove the two halves of the shoe.
I chipped the old polyester filler away from the skeg and found patches of black slime indicating that water has been getting in there. The fibreglass core seems dry enough, so the water hasn’t damaged the structure of the skeg. It looks like the polyester filler hasn’t adhered to the rudder shoe or the end of the skeg, so I’ll make sure that the surfaces are primed better this time to stop water getting in.
Nai’s team came to fibreglass the floor of the aft bilge and, when I left them at lunch-time, they had set up a tent of plastic around the bilge locker to protect the back cabin from fibre glass particles when they start grinding. I’d already cleared the cabin, but this was a very professional thing for them to do.
Glenys went to see the dental consultant, who thinks that there’s no point in trying to save the tooth. It needs to be extracted and an implant put in its place. Once the tooth is removed, Glenys will have to wait three months to allow the gum to recover and then the implant can be inserted. It’s not practical for this to be done now because we won’t be in Thailand long enough, so she’s going to leave it until we get to Malaysia. Perhaps get it done in Georgetown or Kuala Lumpur.
After lunch, I stayed in our nice, cool room and did some admin - upgrading our website to a new version of Joomla. It’s two years out of date, so the process wasn’t as smooth as it could have been and it took me over four hours of frustration. I had to download various bits of software and read up on every the technical problems that I encountered - thank goodness for the internet. Anyway, I’ve upgraded a local copy and now need to publish it to our live server, when I have time.
Glenys has booked in to a clinic to have a general health check-up and they want her there at eight o’clock tomorrow, so we have to leave here at quarter past seven tomorrow. We’d booked a motorbike to be picked up at five o’clock this evening, but when I got there, the guy (called Ron) told me that there was a problem. He acts as an agent, and the supplier of the motor-bike (the lady at the Indian café) had let him down. He tried a few other people, but no luck.
Eventually, Ron came up with a cunning plan - he’d lend us his personal motor-bike. The plan was that he’d go to his house five kilometres away, pick up a second helmet and bring the bike back to Boat Lagoon. He’d ring me when he arrived back at seven o’clock and, after giving me the keys, he’d ride his push bike back home. Hmmm.
At quarter to seven, Ron rang me and, not surprising, there was a change of plan. He’d meet us at 07:30 in the morning at the carpark. This meant we’d be a little late arriving at the clinic, but there was nothing I could do, so I agreed.
12 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
At 07:15, just as we were leaving the apartment, I noticed that there was a message on our phone. Our motorbike man, Ron, had to go to a meeting at his office at 07:00, so he was asking if we could pick up the bike at 06:50? Our mobile phone now decided to play-up and was blocking out-going calls, so we couldn’t call him. There was nothing we could do, so we walked to the car park and waited. Ron hadn’t turned up by 07:40 and hadn’t replied to several texts. We’d run out of time, so Glenys decided to get a taxi, while I wandered off to the boat.
Five minutes later, I received a text from Ron telling us that the motorbike was in the carpark and the key was with the gate security waiting for us. I ran back to the carpark and met Glenys rushing back because there were no taxis around. We found the bike, jumped on it and endured 40 minutes of chaotic, rush-hour traffic to arrive at the clinic twenty minutes late and very stressed up.
I’m convinced that the oriental mind works in a different way to our western minds. Ron was obviously going out of his way to keep us happy (all for a paltry £6) and had delivered the bike and the key. But why didn’t he tell us what he had done before our meeting time of 07:30?
While Glenys was having her tests, I shot off on the motor bike to do some errands. I found a fabulous tool shop called Bangkok Tools on Yaowarat Road, which has power tools, hand tools, paint and even stainless steel bolts - a veritable treasure trove.
Back at Ao Chalong, Glenys had passed all her tests with flying colours, so she’s happy. We had lunch in a local eating place, did a few more errands and then retreated back to the room to recover.
I went to the boat and the guys have finished fibre-glassing the bilge locker in the aft cabin, so I need to paint it and then we’ll be able to varnish some of the woodwork in the aft cabin, which is well overdue.
13 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I went for a run this morning and, while doing some exercises, I felt a pain between my shoulder blades. I suspect that I’ve pulled a muscle while lying over the engine, battling the PPS seal and the twisting exercise that I was doing has been the final straw. I’ll have to take it easy.
Glenys continued to clean the big bag of deck fittings, which includes about 100 bolts, washers and nuts that need to be de-gunked. She looked so despondent, that I decided to give her a hand, so we spent all day on the job. Glenys concentrated on using white spirit to clean the fittings, while I wore out two wire brushes, cleaning up the threads on 100 bolts. By the end of the day, we’d broken the back of the job and Glenys can finish of the last bits.
We now have three guys working full time on the teak deck and it’s starting to look good. They’ve almost finished the main side decks and are starting to do some of the fiddly surrounds around the chain plates.
14 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Being a Sunday, we had a day off. Glenys downloaded some music and played her ukulele. I had a go at publishing the upgraded version of my website, but for some reason it wouldn’t work on our live web server. By the end of the day, I’d restored and reinstalled the website three times and still couldn’t get it working.
I haven’t upgraded the Joomla software for two years and it looks like there have been some fundamental changes, so my customised template doesn’t work anymore - this controls the layout, fonts and colours. It’s going to be a long, tedious job to re-write it all again, so I’m a little depressed having wasted a whole day and achieved nothing.
15 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Before breakfast, I went for a 15-minute run, which didn’t go well - I could feel the tightness of the pulled muscle in my back and my chest felt very tight as I breathed. This is not good news.
At the boat, my first “little” job was to remove the boom gooseneck fitting from the mast, so that I can get some bushes installed. All I had to do was to unscrew 16 bolts. Unfortunately, half of them played hard-to-get and one little devil refused to budge. I ended up heating up the bolt; smacking it with an impact driver; grinding a bigger screwdriver slot and finally got it to move after thirty minutes of effort. Half of that time was spent running up and down the ladder to get tools.
Glenys meanwhile, was pressing on with the sprayhood, having cut out the main panels and has just started the sewing.
It was so hot in the afternoon that I stayed in the apartment for a couple of hours after lunch. I eventually ventured out at three o’clock when the sun was a little less severe and spent a couple of hours refitting the rudder shoe to the skeg. I sanded all the surfaces; re-tapped the threaded holes and re-cut the threads on the bolts with a die. I’ve opened up the holes in the skeg a little bit, so that I can centralise the shoe and it’s all ready to pour in the polyester filler to finish the job.
16 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Glenys continued to work on the sprayhood, while I went to the dentist for a check-up. It was a lady dentist and she found that a filling needed replacing, so I had it done straight away. After injecting my gum, the she-devil set to cleaning my teeth. She was very thorough and used various methods including an evil device that was a high pressure, pulsing, salt-solution gun, which she remorselessly worked over each tooth - it wasn’t pleasant, but my teeth are the cleanest that they’ve ever been.
I’ve heard that the dental work in Thailand is very good and low cost, so I asked her for a quote for replacing all of my amalgam fillings with white fillings, which came out at £50 per filling and £400 for a crown. This is much cheaper than the UK, but I think I’ll wait and get a quote in Malaysia and do it later in the year.
With half of my face numb and an aching back, I didn’t feel like working on the boat, so I sloped back to the room and chilled out for rest of the morning.
After lunch, I felt guilty and strolled to the boat. The water pump for the engine has arrived, so I arranged to have it fitted tomorrow morning. This changed my priorities and I had to spend a couple of hours refitting the two alternators. I then had a go at scraping the old sealant out of the top channel in the windscreen frame, but it’s hard to get at and I gave up.
17 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Lucky Glenys spent the day hiding in the air-conditioned room, continuing to sew the new sprayhood. She’s got the main panels done and is now at the tricky part of making sure that the zips are in the correct place, so that the material is correctly tensioned when the spray hood is installed.
Bob from YSE Marine came on board and started to fit the freshwater pump. While he was working on the engine, I lowered the main sail to the ground and, using a modicum of brute force and ignorance, I hammered the sheave off the main sail clew. The clew plate was looking a bit battered by the end of the process, but being aluminium, it was soft enough that I could straighten it all out.
The sheave looked in a terrible state with half of one side completely broken off, but there’s enough for the rigger to measure it and get a new sheave made. I’m going to replace the riveted shaft with a threaded bolt, so the rigger is also going to make a stainless steel bush that will stop the bolt threads damaging the inside of the new sheave.
I went back to the rudder shoe and pulled out each of the bolts, smearing releasing wax onto the threads to prevent polyester resin sticking to the threads, which would make it very difficult to turn the screws when the shoe needs to removed again. I applied thread-lock adhesive to the ends of the threads where the bolt screws into the other half of the rudder shoe and used a centre punch to flare the ends of the bolts a little bit - I don’t want these bolts to work their way loose.
Nai’s guy (Lek) and I then spent an hour or so mixing and pouring in a very runny polyester paste bound with micro-balloons. I’m glad that he had the foresight to mask off the lower part of the rudder with cling film because the polyester went everywhere. We’re letting it harden over night before finishing the job.
I scraped the rest of the sealant from the windscreen frame. The carpenters lent me a couple of hooked tools that they use to get caulking out of the grooves on teak decks. One of the tools was like a hooked chisel that cuts when being pulled, which was very useful, but the job still took me a couple of hours of grunt work.
For the last few days, we’ve been having problems connecting to the boatyards Wi-Fi network and I’ve been cursing the hotel’s IT team. I’ve tried to get help from the hotel a couple of times, but they speak little or no English and not been any use. Strangely, Glenys’ iPad connects without any problem, but neither of our two laptops will connect.
In desperation, I took Glenys’ laptop to the hotel lobby, but still couldn’t get a connection. I was too late to see an IT guy, but I was able to use one of the hotel’s Internet PC’s to do a little research. It seems that Windows 10 has some problems with “losing” network drivers, but I obviously can’t download any test utilities or get on-line help without an internet connection - Arrrrggghhh!
18 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I took both laptops to the boat and found that I could connect to my router on the boat, but still couldn’t connect to the Boat Lagoon Wi-Fi. I spent a couple of hours trying different things, but no joy - it’s now become a “Challenge”.
Lek came to finish off the polyester for the rudder shoe, but the Volvo engineer, Bob, didn’t arrive, so I moseyed over to YSE Marine and found that he needs to get a “special tool” to finish the job which should be here in a few days.
The carpenters are pushing on and have laid most of the main deck and half of the coach roof. They are now fitting shaped pieces of teak at the boundaries of the hatches and chain plates. The edges of the deck next to the coach roof are getting the same treatment with complex teak panels being laid with the ends of the planks carefully shaped in an arc. It’s looking so good that I’ve booked a provisional launch date of the 14th March.
My back has been playing up, so I had a lazy afternoon and then picked up a car to go to see a physiotherapist. I’m a bit dubious about physiotherapy because the ones that I’ve encountered have given me non-invasive exercises and I’d rather get the invasive, quick fix of an osteopath. However, this guy was great.
The first thing he did was to violently realign my neck and spine - I love the sound of joints crunching. I was then subjected to 15 minutes of hard massage, more stretching of my spine and then 30 minutes of ultrasound, electro-massage and heat pads. I was in there for 75 minutes and it only cost me 900 Baht (£18).
19 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
We hired another car to do some running about. A car costs £20 per day to hire and a motorbike costs £6 per day, but it’s a lot easier to hire a car and much more pleasant to drive around. The traffic in Thailand is manic with hundreds of motorbikes constantly weaving in and out of the traffic. Not many people bother to indicate and being undertaken by aggressive drivers is very common, but it’s a challenge and I enjoy it.
We bought a car stereo to replace the one that I’ve broken and then we went to the supermarket. I sloped off to the nearby Bangkok Tools. I’ve been to many hardware stores in our five years of cruising and this place gets my vote for “Best in the World”. I spent a happy hour wandering around, buying hard-to-find things like grub screws for the PSS seal, 3mm thick rubber matting to make spacers for the windscreen and plastic self-adhesive brackets for cable ties (which I’ve had on my list since leaving Panama two years ago). I confess to buying a few things that weren’t on my To-Buy-List.
20 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I had a very lazy morning, but I managed to drag myself out to the boat in the afternoon. I was pleased to see that there were nine carpenters working on our deck, most of them working on their own little section of the deck, fitting edging planks or cleaning the caulking grooves.
I had a more detailed look at the engine and the engineer (now to be known as Bodge-it Bob) has removed the timing belt without locking the camshaft or the injection pump in place. This is extremely worrying because the positioning of the various pulleys on the timing belt is critical. If the belt is out by even a few teeth, the valves can hit the top of the pistons with devastating results. Unfortunately, everyone at YSE Marine is on holiday until the 23rd because Monday is a Public Holiday.
Some of the Thai workers bring caged song birds to work with them. The birds are called Red-whiskered Bulbuls and are held in beautiful wooden cages. The workers carefully space out the birds so they are about 20 metres apart and they are rewarded by the birds calling to each other - it very nice.
I’ve discovered that there are Birdsong competitions, where the bird cages are placed together on a frame, with the owners standing 5 metres away. Each owner calls his bird’s name, encouraging it to sing and to fly around the cage. There are various events which are judged on melody, tone and movement. I’ve heard that there are local events on Sundays, so it would be interesting to go and see a competition.
21 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
Despite it being a Sunday, I woke up feeling all dynamic, so after breakfast, I wandered off to the boat. Nai’s carpenters have tidied up the deck and I could see that the teak is almost fully laid. Most of the edging pieces are in place, with just a few of the central pieces to be fitted. The guys still need to do some fine work to cut 4mm grooves at the edges of some of the planks and then all the grooves will need to be cleaned of adhesive.
I guess they’ll be finished with the woodworking in three days, and then they’ll be ready to squirt black caulking into all the grooves. This has to be left to cure for 5 days and then they’ll sand the deck to finish it off. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and think that we have a fair chance of launching the boat on the 14th March.
I tidied up the saloon, which had tools and spare parts piled up everywhere, then put some bilge cleaner down into the sump with ½ gallon of water. I’m going to let it soak and give it a good scrubbing tomorrow.
We’ve only three weeks before we go back in the water, so with a heavy heart, I started to tackle varnishing the aft cabin. The wood surrounding the hatch was looking particularly tired, so I rubbed that down to the bare wood - an hour of holding a sander above my head…
After lunch, I sanded down the panels and mouldings around the middle of our bed, which gets a lot of traffic and knocks. By four o’clock, I’d finished the tedious preparation and then spent an hour putting on the first coat of varnish. It looks worse than it did before I started - varnishing is not my favourite job.
22 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
It’s a national holiday today called Makhabucha Day which celebrates the Buddha’s first sermon to his disciples. I had a late start to the day, determined to find the reason that we still can’t connect our laptops to the hotel’s internet. After three hours of frustration and no progress, I escaped to the boat to find that Nai’s carpenters were working - they are obviously not devout Buddhists.
Before lunch, I applied the second coat of varnish in the aft cabin and then, in the afternoon, I cleaned and refitted the PSS seal. I’ll not moan again about having to lie across the engine with my head lower than my body; and my back aching; and the engine digging into my chest; and my knuckles being skinned as I struggle to work in the confined space with the sweat running into my eyes for two hours.
The carpenters are making good progress. Most of the teak has been laid and they are now working on the caulking grooves. They’ve laid the central plank on the coach roof and loosely fitted the mast deck plate, which is a great relief - they’ve even chiselled out a Hallberg Rassy logo, which was in the deck near the bow.
23 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
First thing in the morning, I went to YSE Marine and asked to see Phil, the Technical Manager, who is an English guy from York. He didn’t know the details about my engine, but I explained that I was very worried about the timing belt on the engine. Phil soon found out that Bodge-it Bob had removed the timing belt without locking everything in place and Bob has now been taken off the job to be replaced by Chart, their chief engineer.
To correct the problem, Chart is going to remove the camshaft cover to make sure that the camshaft is in the correct position. He’ll be lining up the injection pump as well and then will turn over the engine several times by hand to make sure that everything is correct before we he starts the engine. They’re waiting for a gasket and a seal that will have to be replaced when the camshaft cover is removed.
It’s a lot of extra work just because Bodge-it Bob didn’t insert a locking pin in the camshaft and two locking screws in the injection pump. I made it clear that I wasn’t going to pay for the extra work and they agreed that it was their problem and they would stand the cost of sorting it out. I guess Bob will have a good kicking over this.
I rubbed down and applied the third coat of varnish in the aft cabin - only one more to go.
The carpenters have been reduced to four because it’s all delicate work now. Two are scraping the adhesive out of the 4mm caulking grooves and using chisels to cut small sections of caulking groove where necessary - every single place where two planks touch needs to have a 4mm caulking groove. Two of the guys are using routers to cut long sections of the grooves and they are being very, very careful because a mistake would mean that several planks would have to be removed and replaced.
The routing is a very skilled job because the grooves are often following complex curves. Their technique is to make guide panels for the router out of 3mm plywood - these are held in position by heavy lead weights while they run the router along the edge of the panel. It’s taking them ten minutes to make a template and 3 minutes to do the actual cut.
In the afternoon, I hired another car to do some more running around and to see the physio, who tortured me for 1½ hours again, but I have much more mobility in my back now.
24 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I arrived at the boat to discover that more parts have been removed from the engine - it looks scarily exposed with cam cover off. They’ve also had to remove the sea water pump, which is driven by a pulley at the end of the cam shaft. It’s very worrying that more pieces are coming off every day…
I rubbed down the varnish in the aft cabin and then vacuum-cleaned the whole cabin. After lunch (when the dust had settled), I applied the fourth and final coat of varnish. Meanwhile, four carpenters continued to beaver away, cutting and cleaning out the grooves and, in the late afternoon, they put primer in the grooves and squirted black caulking into half of the starboard deck. They’re still working on cleaning the grooves on the port deck and coach roof, but the end is nigh.
Later in the afternoon, I decided to remove the main sail furling gear. I’ve not been happy with it for a couple of years because it seems to be hard to furl and un-furl, but I’ve been avoiding the job. After reading the manual five times, I checked the tension on the luff extrusion inside the mast, which should “just be touching” the inside of the mast. It seemed to be very loose, so before removing anything, I tightened it up to make sure that the adjustment worked.
This seemed to go okay and I had enough tension with half the adjustment threads remaining, which was good. I then tried to release the tension on the extrusion, but the adjustment became very stiff. I couldn’t see anything jamming, so I assumed (Ass of You and Me) that the threads were binding up and used the “brute force and ignorance” method to move it. Bad Idea - I sheared off a couple of pop rivets and damaged an aluminium extrusion.
Despondently, I removed the furling mechanism and found that the adjustment screw and body were bent and two extrusions were damaged. I now need to order five components of the furling gear, but, in retrospect, I suspect that they were already damaged and would have failed at some time in the future. I’m a little stressed that I have to get the parts delivered quickly, but at least it didn’t happen in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
25 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
The hotel sent a couple of maintenance guys to our room to try to sort out the internet connection. They installed a local wireless router, so that we get a stronger signal, but that didn’t make any difference. They rang their IT guru, who turned up ten minutes later armed with his own laptop, which wouldn’t connect either.
He wandered off and, fifteen minutes later, we had a working internet connection - they had a technical problem on their servers. I was angry that I’ve wasted many hours of my life on trying to sort out their problem, but relieved that I don’t have to rebuild our two laptops.
Having internet, I sent emails off to Precision Shipwrights and Rolly Tasker in Thailand, and Allspars in the UK for the Selden parts. Hopefully they’ll come back quickly and I can get the parts delivered before we put the mast back in the boat.
I picked up the various rigging parts - a new guard rail wire, a new sheave for the main sail, backing plates for the rod kicker bracket and they’ve put bushes in the boom goose neck. It all looks to be excellent work.
The carpenters have now finished all of the wood work on the deck and spent the day squirting in the caulking, which has to be left to set for a few days before they can start sanding.
I spent most of the day, servicing the in-mast furling mechanism. I completely stripped it down, which took a while because all the bearings have loose ball bearings, which I had to store in separate bags. All the gears and bearing surfaces looked to be in good condition, so I cleaned everything, re-greased it and put it all back together. It should be good for another five years.
26 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
The varnishing is complete in the aft cabin, so I dusted everything and moved the cushions and other things out of the front cabin and stowed it all in the aft cabin. I then did some small jobs in the front cabin and front heads before marking all the areas that need filling and varnishing.
After lunch, I spent a couple of hours removing and resealing the engine exhaust skin fitting. There didn’t seem to be much wrong with it, but at least I know that it’s properly sealed now.
I then pottered about doing small jobs on the hull - putting Sikaflex on the screw holes on the rudder foot; greasing the rudder foot bearing; and cleaning the SSB radio earth plate. I also inspected the various anodes and worked out what to do with the bottom of the keel.
The bottom six inches of the keel has not been stripped of old antifouling for years. It’s awkward to get to and the boat is always standing on three or four wooden blocks, so there’s no way to get at those parts. I’ve decided to strip the bottom six inches down to the lead, prime it properly and put on two coats of antifoul paint. Nai says that she can arrange to have the boat lifted in slings on the evening before launch so that her guys can get at the three inaccessible spots.
I’ve had a quote back from Allspars in the UK for the in-mast furling parts - a staggering £400 excluding shipping and import duty. It appears that the parts are only available in two “kits”, so I have to buy some parts I don’t need. Also, they only have one kit in stock, so they have to have the other kit sent to the UK before they can ship to Thailand, which will involve more time delays (Selden won’t ship directly to me because I have to go through an agent). I’ve also had a quote from Rolly Tasker which came out at £660, including shipping and importation into Thailand. I’m going to wait for the third quote from PSS.
27 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
I had a technical morning working on the mast. I removed the broken components from the end of the main luff extrusion and cleaned up the rivet holes ready to install the new parts (whenever I manage to get them). I fitted the boom gooseneck, which has had some bushes installed to take up slack in the rotating parts - it was a simple matter of screwing it back in place.
In the afternoon, I cleared up the cockpit, removing the bimini frame and I tied it to the stern arch out of the way. I then removed all of the fittings on the outside of the cockpit, so that Nai’s team can prepare the gelcoat for spraying the blue stripe.
I then started to prepare the wood work in the front heads and the front cabin. The main areas are around the two deck hatches and around the front heads door, which all have varnish starting to crack and flake. It took me ninety minutes of sweat, curses and grunting to sand one of the hatch surrounds back to the bare wood and mask it up for varnishing. I ran out of time and unfortunately, will have to continue on Monday morning.
After dinner, I was looking at some photos that I took of the mast earlier in the day and the boom gooseneck looked odd with a spring pin at the top. I did some investigation on the internet and discovered that the machine shop, which installed the new bushes, has assembled the goose neck swivel upside down - I’m glad that I spotted it.
28 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
It was Sunday, so we had a day off and lounged about. Glenys focussed on playing her ukulele and looking at music lessons on the internet, while I had a computer day and played the guitar a little.
My main target was to upgrade our website and install a new user interface template. After six hours of frustration, I gave up. Another wasted day - I’d have been better off going to a bar for a boozy lunch.
29 February 2016 Boat Lagoon, Phuket
It’s such chaos on the boat with several teams of people working alongside me that there’s no point in Glenys coming to the boat - we’d just be getting in each other’s way. She’s finished most of her sewing projects, so she’s become a lady of leisure for the next week and is doing research into the anchorages and countries that we’ll visit over the next 18 months.
I trudged off to work and spent morning sanding down varnish. Then, after lunch, finished off the sanding, hoovered up the dust, wiped everything down and put on the first coat of varnish. I’d finished by four o’clock, so I pottered about ticking a few small jobs off the list including flipping the boom goose neck over, which thankfully was only a ten minute job.
The Volvo engineers spent six hours on-board putting the engine back together. We’re going to start the engine on Wednesday. Nai's guys are sanding down the deck, there's only two of them, but the amount of dust being produced is incredible.
I’ve finally received the quote for the Selden parts from Precision Shipwrights and they’ve quoted £440 including shipping and import duty - that’s only £40 more than cost in the UK, so I’ve told them to go ahead and order it. They’re estimating 7-10 working days, which is very tight for our launch date, but I can fit the parts after the mast is installed - it’ll just be a bit more awkward.