Road to Departure - a few small successes

We're now almost through our 'must-do before leaving' task list. There have been a few small successes.

The boat has been registered and renamed. The AIS has been reprogrammed and the epirb serviced.

We examined the rigging and made a few changes. One that felt good was getting rid of a boom extension that looked like it just wouldn't be able to handle any kind of accidental gybe without a potential structural failure. It also caused the main sheet to be angled well away from the traveler which weakened the connection between the two. The extension was originally necessary because the main sheet was unable to clear the bimini frame. Our solution was to chop nine inches off the frame. Sounds simple, but, it was actually a three day job as there was stainless to cut through and we had to shorten the fabric top on the bimini requiring restitching etc..etc...

We removed lots of old wire and aerials. Removing an old, unsealed, GPS aerial from the deck resulted in a rather large hole right through to the interior . Our temporary solution was just to bung a wooden plug in it. We'll have to get it welded properly later and watch our step in the meantime.

We installed new, deck-level navigation lights. The boat actually didn't have any, which was quite surprising. We prefer using deck-level lights inshore and a tricolour at the masthead when offshore. This job also took a few days to complete as we had to run wire from stem-to-stern. The lights are temporarily mounted on wooden panels. This will need to be redone when we can weld some aluminium mounting plates and get drill bits that are up to the job to finish it properly.

We installed an external Iridium antenna and cable. How hard can that be? Well, we measured and ordered a 10m cable (all the way from Seattle). When we installed it, there were so many twists and turns necessary to get around structural items that it ended up about 1m too short. We had to order another one.

We went through every nook and cranny. There were a few surprises, like the intact Hershey chocolate bar with a best-before date of 2003 and a few other long-forgotten food and toiletry items.

The boat came with newer (2015) electronics: two Raymarine chartplotters and a new radar that were networked together with older Raymarine nav instruments and autopilots. This sounds good, but, I knew I would have difficulty with the chartplotters as they were touchscreen-only models. I find touchscreens to be incredibly frustrating to use at the best of times. A lot of our sailing seems to involve cold and wet fingers covered with gloves. They just aren't going to work with a touchscreen. Even in the Raymarine manual, they reference "Erroneous Touchscreen performance" and recommend, in wet weather, "locking the touchscreen and using the physical buttons instead". Our model of chartplotter doesn't have any physical buttons. Locking the touchscreen means making it inoperable! After some research, the solution seemed to be to get a remote keypad, so, we ordered one, at a very large price.

When the keypad arrived, it did do the job and we were pleased with our solution, but, we had created another problem. There are only two 'network' ports on the back of the chartplotters and we now had more devices than ports. The solution, buy more hardware! So, we ordered a high speed network switch (router) and connected everything through that.

We like to keep it simple, but, unfortunately, we have now ended up with our very own local area network (ethernet) to maintain. It seems to be working ok, for the moment, time will tell.

We also ordered a printed paper manual for the Raymarine plotters as I like to have one available for quick reference. The products don't come with one anymore and I can see why. It arrived at 412 pages and was the size and weight of a brick.

The Lighthouse operating system is full of "feature bloat". Documented in the manual is how to operate connected thermal cameras, fishfinders, 3d downvision sonar, wifi, audio and media player and more. Installing and operating all this "stuff" wouldn't leave much time for sailing. In reading through, though, I couldn't help but be seduced by the availability of two features that looked possibly worthwhile: sailing laylines and AIS target interception graphics. Our installed software was an older version of that documented in the manual, so, a dreaded software update was required to get the new features. Actually, surprisingly, it went off without a hitch.

Our last Raymarine purchase was their Voyage Planner software. Inexpensive, but, clunky to use. However, it allows you to quickly create routes and waypoints on your laptop. Then, the laptop can be connected directly to the router to load the information to the chartplotters.

There were, of course, also a few stumbles along the way, one of which, our Aquadrive installation, almost derailed our plans for starting our cruise at the end of July. More on the "stumbles" in the next post.

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The Discovery Phase

We've been on our new boat for a few weeks now. We're at Rebak Island Marina, in Langkawi, Malaysia. Langkawi is also an island just off the mainland peninsula of Malaysia (look for the red 'x' on the map below).

Rebak Island is a private island of 390 acres containing a five-star resort, Vivanta by Taj. Rebak Island Marina is part of the resort, but, is quite separate and feels like another world even though it's only a short walk between the two. The resort is very expensive and probably very nice. It certainly seems popular and is very busy. The marina facilities are not so nice, the toilets and showers are filthy, the hot water is intermittent and only half of the toilets and showers work. You have to watch for frogs, centipedes and small geckos that need to be shooed out before using the facilities. In spite of this, the perfectly protected marina basin is very popular.

There is no swell, or, current and only a small tidal range. The 24 hour security and water access only, from Langkawi, makes it a secure place to leave a boat either in the water, or, on the hard. Langkawi is also a duty-free zone, meaning boat parts can be ordered from abroad without duty to pay. There are lots of Brits and Aussies here, a few Germans, French and some Chinese boat owners.

As marina residents we can use some of the resort facilities, like the restaurants and pool, but, we haven't even been over there yet. This is because we've entered the twilight zone again, not the van conversion one, but, the one known as the 'new boat discovery phase'. All new boatowners are familiar with that one. It's when, after you've discovered a few faults, or, things you didn't see on your pre-purchase visit, that you curse yourself for buying this piece of c...p and paying way too much for the privilege. We've been through this before and we know that after a few weeks things will settle down and we will again appreciate the reasons that we bought this boat in the first place.

We thought the campervan conversion was difficult in the heat of Hervey Bay, Australia. We didn't know how much worse it could get.  Here in Langkawi, we are only about 350 miles north of the equator and living in a very protected basin in which there is very little wind. It just bakes, day in and day out. It's like living in a sauna smothered in a wet blanket. After ten days of no sleep, daytime misery and with thoughts of having to work inside small, hot spaces inside the boat, we couldn't cope and broke down and bought an air conditioner. We've never had a/c before and generally would prefer not to have it, but, it has been a godsend, just a small 9,000 btu 'window' unit is keeping the boat dry and around 25C. We've stuck it in a hatch on deck. It made the thought of working inside the bowels of the boat a little more palatable. It does mean that it will take even longer now to acclimatize because we've become a/c hostages and avoid going outside if we don't have to!

Our 'discovery phase' usually consists of at least the following activities:

• identify required changes (regulatory requirements etc.)
• identify desired changes
• discover and document every item of equipment on board
• locate or obtain user manuals for each item
• determine maintenance requirements for each item and make a maintenance schedule
• decide on what spares should be carried, make a list of what we've got and what we have to get
• determine what consumables are used by each item and determine quantities to be carried
• go through every nook and cranny on the boat determining where the wires and pipes go
• locate and examine all the pumps and through hulls and draw location maps
• exercise all systems and equipment on board through various scenarios
• check all safety items are in place
• make a predeparture checklist
• make a storage contents map and index
• draw plumbing, electrical and electronic schematics (including critical fuse locations)
• organize a ship's library of equipment binders and information
• make standard operating procedure, commission and decommission manuals
• prepare a logbook
• identify and list all charts, electronic and paper

Finally, after getting through the above activities, we make a to-do list, sorted into 'must-do now before leaving', 'do later' and 'nice-to-do in future'. We've given ourselves two months for the discovery phase and completion of the 'must-do now before leaving' items. It may seem a long time, but, we've been working hard at it every day and the days just fly by. We're just about half-way through the 'must-do now before leaving' items. It looks like we'll be on target to be out cruising by the end of July. We'll see...

It's been a slog so far, but, there have been some rewarding results as well. A big job was reconfiguring the electronics and navigation station. We are very happy with the result as we've restored one of the best features of this boat, its 360 degree exterior view while seated at the nav table. Now, we can see over the top again!

As part of this process we removed a lot of old equipment and wire. 'Chasing wire' as I call it, is actually a very satisfying process. It starts out as an omg! moment, when you first open it up and look into a pile of looped spaghetti. After a few days of going through it, wire-by-wire, playing detective, it starts to make some sense. There are always lots of surprises along the way: wires that have been spliced to a different colour half-way through the run, wires that lead to a dead-end, or, connect to dead equipment, wires that aren't connected, or, poorly connected, wires that have been cut-off and left hanging etc.

Generally, though, we were impressed by what we saw. This boat is built like a tank and it definitely showed everywhere we looked.

The insulation all looked extremely well done. Almost too well done, as it was impossible to run any new wire anywhere.

The discovery phase is a lot of detailed work, but, pays off in the long run. When you know your boat, its equipment and systems you start to feel somewhat confident you'll at least know where to start looking when there's a breakdown, or, systems emergency on board.

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Leaving Australia for a while

It was an uneventful drive to Lakes Entrance, about four hours east of Melbourne, where we'd be leaving our van while we headed to Malaysia to take possession of our new boat. Lakes Entrance is the name of the town and that's exactly what it is, an entrance from the sea into Australia's largest series of inland lakes, the Gippsland Lakes,

The entrance (exit?) was originally a natural feature that only flooded from the sea occasionally. It is now open to the sea permanently. This allows direct ocean access for Australia's largest fishing fleet. In the photo above, you can see a dredger parked in the middle of the channel. This work is ongoing as the entrance continually silts up and there are treacherous sandbars reaching outside the entrance to grab unwary mariners without local knowledge of the constantly shifting seabed.

It's a pretty spot and a very popular in-season holiday destination.

The town has a long, somewhat tacky seafront parade, but, there are also some sophisticated and interesting dining spots.

We enjoyed a lovely, but expensive, fresh fish and chip lunch at another over-the-water establishment and soaked up the sunshine of a beautiful day. The outside dining room was upstairs and the fishing boat pulled up and unloaded the fish downstairs, can't get much fresher than that. We followed lunch with a walk on the long, beautiful beach that had sand the consistency of a fine, soft powder. Then, we headed back to the van and our lakefront campsite where we had to start picking through our possessions to decide what was staying and what we'd be taking to Malaysia and the boat, our new home.

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Heading for Melbourne

We were now heading southeast, on our way to the Melbourne area, having just left Adelaide. We'd seen a lot of coastline and there were a few highlights, but, the much-hyped 'Great Ocean Way' (you know, the famous one where they show the collapsing seastacks called the 'Twelve Apostles') was unfortunately, a Great Disappointment.

This picture isn't of the famous view, it's a little further along from here. The famous view was so crowded you couldn't even get into the parking lot for all the tour buses. From the road we could see a huge mob of selfie-taking people on the viewing platform and we just kept driving!

There were other interesting things to look at, like this group of pelicans, which were fascinating to watch as they preened themselves on the seashore.

Having enjoyed ocean views for a while we were looking for a change of scene. We read about an old gold rush town, Walhalla, in our guide book. It sounded interesting, so, we went inland and up into the hills for a look. It was a typical gold rush town, most of the original buildings had been quickly built of wood and haven't endured, but, there was enough left to get a feel for what was once there. The town had done a good job with interesting historical plaques and we spent an enjoyable morning just walking around the town and soaking up the historic ambiance.

Gold was discovered here in 1862 and the town was quickly built in the surrounding, steep valley. The population soared to 5,000 at its peak and there wasn't much room to expand. A lot of the buildings, like this one, which was the original hospital, had to be built higher and higher up the side of the vertical slopes. It would have looked very different during the town's building phase as the hills were stripped totally bare of trees at that time.

The population dwindled to just ten people in 1998. Many of the original founders can be found in the local cemetery, also built on the side of a hill, so steep that the graves seem to be barely hanging on!

Now, a day out just wouldn't be complete without having a look at the local birds we encountered. Here are two we hadn't seen before.

The best part of the day was finally seeing a kookaburra in the flesh. Since arriving in Australia, we'd often heard the kookaburra's maniacal 'laugh' off in the woods and it always brought a smile and spot of brightness to the day. However, we'd never seen one. Walhalla seemed the most unlikely place to get a closeup view, but, this one just sat and seemed to pose for us. What a charmer. Surprisingly, it looks rather like a fluffy kingfisher with a brushcut. Although I don't think this is a particularly good example, you can listen to a kookaburra's 'laugh' at  laughing-kookaburra (click on the audio file at the bottom of the page) or, you can listen and learn about many other birds at the same website, Birdlife Australia):

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