Now if Mother Nature will just cooperate.
02 February 2014 | Royal Brunei Yacht Club
Sunny
We made another trip to BSB yesterday since we got delayed again by Mother Nature. Our internet dongle had expired and we needed to get some more days added to our simm card account and what the heck, McDonalds was right around the corner.
We got another lift to the bus station at Maura this time from a Brit. Nice guy but had a massive cold so we are just waiting for it to nail us again. We grabbed the #37 bus and with it packed to the gills headed for BSB. Unfortunately, the bus was having some engine trouble and had a great deal of difficulty getting to the top of some of even the smallest of hills on the way into town. Now the fact that we had 8 extra people on board didn't help matters but the drive just kept pulling over(at least for the first part of the trip) and letting more and more people on. By half way, he stopped doing that and was passing by lots of very unhappy people but the bus was crammed to the max and then some. He's get about half way up an hill and then stop. Put on the emergency brake and then gun the engine to get us going. It was a long, painful trip into town but we did finally make it. On to the next bus and over to "The Mall". We saw an escalator leading down that we had never taken before so down we went. What we found is probably the best grocery store in all of Brunei and certainly one of the cheapest. A huge selection in just about every department and since we have done a good bit os shopping since we got here, we pretty much knew what other stores were charging for what they sold. It called "Utama Grand". Tons of US goods to choose from and lots of brands we are familiar with that we have seen all across the Pacific. Sure wish we had seen it earlier in our trip instead of on one of the last days here. Once we had scoped it out, we got the dongle recharged($20 Brunei for 9 days) and headed for McDonalds for another lunch of fried food. If it's fried, it has to be good doesn't it? A Big Mac combo meal runs $6.00 Brunei($4.70US). Not a bad price but they get you when you want an "Apple Pie". They run $1.50Brunei of $1.17 US each!. Didn't they used to be 2 for $1.00 in the US? Have they gone up that much since we were last home?
Once done with lunch, we headed back to "Grand" and bought some more food to haul back to poor Zephyr. Sure glad we raised the water line when we last bottom painted her. We got good connections and were back on Zephyr before 1600. Quite early for us to be back on board.
We had a nice quiet evening on board at least until about 2200 when the tide reversed itself and all the trash and logs started coming back up river. We must be right in the middle of the main current as just about every evening, we get our poor hull hit(not badly mind you) but all the stuff Mother Nature and the locals throw into the river. It hits us as it goes down stream and then what doesn't make it out, hits us again on the way back in.
Today, it dawned overcast but we had hope for a nice sunny day. It took a while but the Sun finally showed up a bit after 1100. In the mean time, we changed out the oil. Tracy was at the pump(imagine a garden sprayer that sucks in stuff instead of spraying it out). while I directed the small tube that goes down the dipstick holder. No way to get any where near the main drain plug. I'd run the engine for a short time and while it wasn't blazing hot, the oil did make it up the tube. We hold about 7 quarts so it took a while to get it all out. If we lost contact with the oil, I had to redirect the tube in or out of toward the front of the pan or the back of the pan. About an 45 minutes later, we had most of the oil out. When we bought Zephyr, we found that the oil filter was set up so that it was right side up. If you unscrewed it, the oil just poured out of the filter going everywhere. I had to cover the filter with a plastic ziplock bag full of paper towels and then unscrew it quickly to trap as much oil as possible all the while having absorber pads under the entire assembly. When we had the engine rebuilt, we explained to Jun(our mechanic) our problem. He took off and returned a short time later with a new assembly that made the filter set up so when unscrewed, it held the oil, or at least most of it. All in all, it takes about 90 minutes to change the oil and clean up afterwards. We were at just 170 hours so it was about time. The current theory as far as new engines is that you should change out the oil at 100 hours. My owners manual says 200, so I tend to split the difference. Since we still have a leak in the engine somewhere, I've been adding oil from time to time so it gets a good but of new oil as it runs.
We're at the Yacht Club now, dong another load of laundry since it's gotten sunny and we can get it dried on board before the Sun goes down. Just before we came in, Brett and Suzy from Tenacious came into the harbor and anchor off our port side. We'd met them in Kudat when we were both on the hard having work done. It's their first time into Brunei so we will be giving them class on what we have learned in out last 5 weeks here. We'd planned on only staying about ten days but it just got away from us. Now we wait for Mother Nature to give us good winds to cross the South China Sea for Tioman Island in Malaysia. So far, Wednesday is looking good but we saw it change in 12 hours from looking great to dying off to next to nothing. Lets hope it doesn't do it again.
The picture for today is of a "spread" we found in the butter section. It's "Fat Spread"!! Just what everyone needs!