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02/02/21 Tues. I managed to cut the new worktop today and sand it to fit the space we have. Rain stopped play just after midday, still plenty of work to be done before the job will be complete!
03/02/21 Weds. An awful day weatherwise, so no work done today.
04/02/21 Thurs. Sanded the locker lid 'holes' in the worktop today to the size of the trims, not perfect but it will have to do.
06/02/21 Sat. Rented a car and drove out to Kim Chok's hardware to buy plastic tubing, hole saw, tenon saw and a few other bits, did some shopping on the way back. Heavy rain again yesterday and today.
07/02/21 Sun. Another first today! About 5.30am, I felt a draught on my face and then saw a fleeting shadow in the cabin. I thought we had a bird onboard but when I put on the lights, I saw a bat flying around inside, about 9" wingspan, so we were both up then and spent a half hour trying to get it out before it finally switched on it's radar and found it's own way out through the companionway.
08/02/21 Mon. A better day weatherwise - this morning I drilled out the tap holes in the new ply worktop, then gave the top and lower shelf a coating of thinned resin. In the afternoon, we went over to the yard and I removed the head of Brent's engine, stripped out the big end bearings, conn. rods and pistons. Now he has to get the spare parts shipped in before I can rebuild it.
11/02/21 Thurs. Yesterday, I cut the formica to the oversize dimensions in readiness for gluing to the ply. Late afternoon and this morning I was trying to fix the sewing machine which had jammed so that Ana could sew a new bimini for Neil.
12/02/21 Fri. Chinese New Year - and a rainy day! The date is also a palindrome and an ambigram (12/02/2021), another useless bit of information!
14/02/21 Sun. A little more progress today, I got the strips of formica cut to go around the sink edge, cut and glued some more plywood to strengthen the lower shelf which supports the watermaker and changed the lower support battens for new hardwood.
17/02/21 Weds. Continuing to make progress, albeit slowly, with the galley fitting, cutting and gluing formica and making sink cover. Also making good progress with Neil's bimini, tried a fitting today and then Ana made some adjustments, now need to fit almost 200 eyelets to it for lacing up.
18/02/21 Thurs. Spent most of the day fitting eyelets and then lacing up the bimini for a final fitting. Tomorrow we will finish it. I'm having problems with Customs over my MPPT controller, they want to charge me import duties even though it's a ships spare part which is exempt from import duty. On the galley front........I'm going to have to make a new cabinet front, complete with two doors and a drawer as the corners of the old original one have obviously been damp at times and rotted away - another plywood sheet required!
19/02/21 Fri. The parcel courier FedEx have made a complete mess of getting my package through customs - we've exchanged numerous e-mails and they clearly are incompetent in their duties of importing goods into the country. I shall have to pay customs duty now.....but I will never use FedEx again - ever!
20/02/21 Sat. A stressful day putting me off doing anything - even eating! FedEx employ complete idiots who couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. 20+ e-mails this morning going around in circles with no result. Even when I agreed to pay the customs fee which was their mistake (for which they tried to blame first me, and then customs), they still cannot send me their account number or any way of actually paying the customs levy. I am not going to the bank to pay when I only have basic information, the bank will just turn me away. That's the way it's now been left, the ball is in FedEx's court!
22/02/21 Mon. I am in the long queue for the bank this morning after finally getting the information I need from FedEx, when I get a call from them - no need to go to the bank they say, you can pay the courier on delivery! I give up, what have I been telling them for days!! Went home and glued the formica to the worktop, trimmed the edges.
23/02/21 Tues. Working with the galley worktop again - trimmed the apertures for locker lids, the tap holes and the sink aperture (and it's lid).
24/02/21 Weds. A few days ago, the first Covid vaccines arrived in Malaysia and the jab process will start soon - frontliners first of course. We both registered online for our vaccine but have no idea how long that will take to come through. I fitted the locker lid aperture trims today, overhauled and polished the taps and varnished the underside of the sink lid. No sign of my MPPT controller yet.
25/02/21 Thurs. Yay! A phone call from ABX in town this morning - my MPPT controller is here. After fitting the sink and taps to the new worktop, we walked into town and collected it, along with a new palm sander for some future work. During the afternoon, we put the new worktop into place but none of the pipework is yet fitted.
27/02/21 Sat. Connected all the pipework up yesterday and all good. Today we went over to the yard and bought another sheet of plywood to make the cabinet fronts (upper and lower), came back to the boat and cut out the rough shape for the upper cupboard - which has sliding doors.
28/02/21 Sun. I started work on the upper cupboard front this morning at about 0700, and worked until 1600. It is now ready for final sanding and varnish, so at least a little more progress on this marathon job! It would be so much easier if I had a workshop and the proper tools. Instead, I have just basic hand tools and a very limited space in which to work!
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