04/10/10 The month so far has brought nothing but rain! Each and every day we have torrential rain for some part of the day or night......or both! Sometimes the rain is accompanied by winds of varying strengths, measured by my degree of worry. I have phoned Zainol and tried to explain the urgency of having a workable engine whilst in this exposed anchorage but I continue to wait for him to return with my new or modified mountings.
07/10/10 More of the same weather but at least Zainol has admitted defeat and re-fitted the old mounting, which at least allows me to run the engine for battery charging and to use as propulsion in an emergency. In the meanwhile, I have ordered four new mountings to be delivered from the UK (cheaper than I can get them in Australia). I have looked at new programmes for the design and publishing of this website but quite frankly, I am at a complete loss - the instructions given are vague and may as well be written in Arabic or Japanese, as they make no sense to me at all. I obviously need a 10 year old kid to show me how to build a website!
10/10/10 Noted the passing second of 10.10.10 this morning.....no great strikes of luck, or crashing of Worldwide Internet.
12/10/10 Life goes on at anchor. We've had a few days of complete calm but are presently (1500hrs) experiencing an F6 from the West, which is making the boat buck quite a bit. Sleeping is still a big problem because of the humidity and I spend most nights trying to sleep in the cockpit in order to catch whatever little breeze there is. I think we know our way around Kuah now and also have a mental map of the island after driving around in the hire car the other week. I was first here in the early sixties and again in 1969 with the 'Hermes', but I have to say that I remember nothing of the island, no 'deja-vu' or flashbacks. Of course, there was very little here in those days whereas there have been building programmes since, and the advent of tourism. Little trace remains of the tsunami that the island experienced a few years ago. This evening we received the bad news that Graham of eeyore, has been badly injured in a motorcycle accident in Phuket and Storm Dodger, Full Flight and myself discussed what we could most effectively do from here in order to help him.
13/10/10 Tony and Pat put Full Flight into Royal Langkawi Yacht Club at 0800 this morning and caught the 1100 ferry to Satun before travelling overland to Phuket, arriving around 2300. Here in the anchorage, we had winds of 45 knots with absolutely torrential rain whilst I was on Storm Dodger during the evening - I dreaded what I would find on returning to Rhumb Do some hours later, but all was OK.
14/10/10 The good news today is that my engine mountings arrived from the UK - seven days from order to delivery is pretty good. News from Pat and Tony that Graham's injuries are bad, but not quite so bad as we were first led to believe; he has smashed his cheekbone and jaw - the surgeons have rebuild his palate and inserted a metal plate; he has a broken leg (below the knee) and some stitching above his eye. It will obviously be some time before he is able to sail, or even get onboard again. We all wish him a speedy recovery.
21/10/10 Happy Birthday Sandra on this Trafalgar Day. So, what's been happening? Not a lot really; the weather is still unsettled but appears to be calming a little, my engine mounts are still sitting in the box as Zainol is busy on another boat at the moment. From the UK, news of defence cuts astound me.....two aircraft carriers to be built, one will be a £3 Billion pound white elephant with no fighter aircraft onboard for it's intended life of just three years whilst the other will have no aircraft until 2020......just what is the point of building them? The Ark Royal is to be scrapped, along with the entire Harrier vertical takeoff squadrons of aircraft. Nelson must be turning in his grave.
30/10/10 More settled weather - but with a building storm to the southeast of us, due to strike on Tuesday (the 2nd Nov.) or thereabouts, both Roger and I decided to take the safer option of moving into the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club marina. By late afternoon Rhumb Do was berthed next to Shelter, on a finger pontoon inside the marina breakwater and we were bringing in Storm Dodger. Both boats are heavily fouled by barnacle growth and are difficult to propel through the water; they will need a thorough cleaning before the next voyage! We knew this to be the case as we had taken the dinghies up onto the beach some days ago and scraped the bottoms but they too were now covered in barnacles again.
31/10/10 Settling into life connected to shore again! My battery charger is not working for some reason - just what else can go wrong? I still haven't had the engine mounts replaced....Zainol isn't interested. It seems he only wants to do jobs which are easy money, and is reluctant to touch anything that has a modicum of difficulty attached. He has been called back to Roger's boat on more than one occasion, to fix things that he hasn't done properly, so the message is.....if you can avoid using him, then do so! My wheel pilot, or lack of it, is also a major concern at the moment.
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