Frustration is growing on both of us. We've now been in the yard over three weeks and figure at least another week to go before we get back in the water.

The job that has taken the most about of time was getting the old paint off Zephyrs hull. In Fiji, we did it with Tracy and a local in two and a half days. Here, we started with one guy and a wood chisel, the only tool they have for taking off old paint. After three days, he'd down about 20% of the hull. He did it well leaving a nice smooth surface but it was almost painful at the slowness. We hired a second man and that sped it up a bit but he was lazy that wanted to spend more time looking around and using his cell phone. When I was at Kota Kinabalu taking care of the outboard, they took the grinder and used it to take off the paint on the boot stripe as we had painted over it when we last did the paint in Fiji. Tommy, the man who appears to be the "contractor" supplying much of the labor here(we got our two men from him), didn't give them any instructions nor oversee the job while we were gone and we sure didn't want it done that way. They went crazy with the grinder and took off the fiberglass as well as the paint. It left gouges all over the stripe. I had a conversation with Tommy when I got back and he just shrugged his shoulders as though it wasn't his problem nor his fault. His workers were gone and I haven't seen them on the yard since. When I discussed the slowness of the scraping, his comment was that it normally takes 8 days to do a boat. Here'e our take on the boat yard. Tommy is related to the woman that runs the small general store. She is related to Mr. Wong that runs the boat yard. Tommy slows down the jobs so boats stay longer and the yard makes more money($30 US per day) and he gets a cut from not only his workers but from the yard. It's a racket to delay boats and make more money for Mr. Wong and the yard.

I pulled out our Ryobi sander and started in on the stripe trying to get it back as smooth as possible. It took just about three days but it's now decent. While I was back in KK to get the motor, Tracy got with the yard and hired one of their workers. From what she said, he worked quite hard and got a good bit done. She told him to come back the next day. He never showed!! I got with Clarence(over sees the boat yard) to see if he could either find him or get us another worker. He came back a few minutes later and told me he had no workers to help us.

About 30 minutes later, Juan showed up out of the blue and showed me some sheets from projects on boats he had worked on. we put him to work and he has worked far harder than either of the two we had preciously.

We've popped blisters on the hull, ground them out, put fairing compound on the shallow ones and have now laid up fiberglass in the deeper ones. Juan is now out with our new sander(wore out the Ryobi) and is slowly taking them down so they will be nice and smooth for the rest of the paint we will be applying. He's doing it in the rain!! Even though the forecast has been for decent weather, we have been getting rain just about every day. Sometimes just sprinkles and sometime downpours that go on for well over an hour. Yesterday was downpour day. It rained in the morning and then quit for a time. During the lull, I walked into town to start laying in a supply of ringitts so we can pay our bill when it comes due. Note to anyone coming here---they don't take credit cards!!! As I made my way back(no taxis available), it started to rain again. When I got back to the yard, Tracy and Juan were standing under the boat hand sanding the surface. Apparently, the new sander had gotten some water in it and Juan was afraid to use it. While they sanded, I checked out the sander and it seemed dry so I plugged it in and turned it on. Worked just fine. I passed it back to Juan and he started sanding again(still in the rain). We covered the electrical boxes on the extension cord so the insides will stay dry. He worked till 1600 and we sent him home. It was just raining too much.

We decided yesterday, that since we are raising the bottom paint further up the side of the hull(we just keep floating deeper as we keep adding more equipment)we will add a boot stripe to the top of it. Red for a change instead of white as it has been in the past. Should make a nice different look for Zephyr. Unfortunately, the hull has to be dry to apply it so we have to wait for at least a morning or an afternoon that is dry to get it rolled on.

It's still raining outside and Juan just keeps sanding away. We can't do the boot stripe till we have it dry for at least a couple of hours. Hopefully later today. We still have to put on a primer(and have it dry)before we can put on the stripe. We will get out of here, we just don't know when.

That's Juan and myself getting the epoxy filler mixed.