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.
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