Easter Monday 2010
We have now been in Langkawi, Malaysia for six weeks and will probably stay in the Malaysia/Thailand region for a year or two. However long it takes to make our boat look presentable again. While the prices here are reasonable, progress is excruciatingly slow. Nobody ever shows up when they have agreed to and most of the time is spent waiting. Fortunately for us - other yachties are slowly going insane - we are certainly not in a hurry and we have plenty of other things to do. Of course, most of the time is spent teaching & playing with our daughter. At this moment she is taking a big test for the Calvert School. We already got the materials for the next 2 1/2 years.
I have successfully and all by myself fixed the roller furling, something that amazes me quite a bit and saved me many thousands of dollars. Even our daughter (6) can easily reef the genoa. We now have extremely bright single LED bulbs in all our navigation and anchor lights, a new wind direction indicator at the top of the mast and I have already ordered a new set of batteries as the old ones were dying as long ago as New Zealand. There still remains an impressive list of things to do. Water in the saildrive, one engine needs a new crankshaft seal, both engines could actually do with a complete overhaul, the headliner needs to be replaced, so do all our cushions, wood exposed to the sun needs varnishing, new antifouling and and and.
We have made many new friends, especially Abraham, who used to work in the merchant navy once and is now a grandfather (scarcely older than me) who owns and runs a banana plantation with 40,000 trees as well as pumpkin and corn fields. Then there is "auntie" and her family of Sin Hwa Cold Storage. Their children like to play with Ulani and everybody is happy because the are forced to practice their Mandarin Chinese.
Tomorrow Liping and Ulani will fly to Kuala Lumpur and the day after on to Taiwan. Liping has last seen her family on 20 November 2005, so it is about time for a visit. It's not all visiting friends and family, though. Aurora needs to check on her Kawasaki Syndrome and a lot of paperwork needs to be done. In fact, I think Liping will be quite busy for the 30 days she has on the island. I will try to use their absence to have the messiest job (new headliner) done. The previous owner did it by himself and it took him six weeks to do it. I hope to have the help of professional Chinese/Malay craftsmen. It seems that they consider the job rather difficult, as there are plenty of rounded or curved surfaces around and lots of the work has to be done on the boat itself. Let's hope I can convince them to help me anyway, because otherwise that particular job has to wait until we are in Thailand.
Once we leave this area, we'll go to the Chagos archipelago, then on to Mauritius, Madagascar and South Africa. With our mega-slow speed it might take us many years to get there. <grin>
Greetings from Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani on the DHARMA BUM III
