Back again
07 February 2015 | Pinoy Boatyard Port Carmen
Jo
Our arrival back to Cebu, Philippines on New Year’s Eve, laden with new electronic kit was an unforeseen stroke of genius. The scrum of people bearing boxes and packages, meant that customs appeared to have an unofficial embargo. Instead of signing declarations of import, everyone was just waived through to alleviate the bun fight!
After an amusing night on Mactan island near the airport, watching distant fireworks from our window, and much nearer ad hoc ones jumping from the street below, we were pleased that we had got back to the hotel before firecrackers started bursting at our feet.
An hours taxi ride next day, and back on board Brother Wind, we surveyed the progress or not that the yard had made.
The sum total of 8 months away seemed to be a tiny bit of varnishing!
But worse discoveries were to come. We noticed that Brother Wind was rather low in the water, and closer inspection revealed that the bilges were almost full! The carpet in the main saloon was sodden, and our lovely floor was water damaged!
After some immediate pumping, we got the electrics on and the automatic bilge pump working. This should have been left on but wasn’t. Wet carpet was removed, and after a bit of sorting a cup of tea seemed the next thing.
However, our problems had only just revealed themselves, when we saw various munched up and shredded packets in one of the cupboards it became apparent that we had mice on board!
Three days later, I just about got to the end of the mouse devastation, they had found a way into every conceivable nook and cranny, and almost all of our lockers, and eaten the inedible. Tetra packs of milk and coconut milk were munched through, these had then spilled and maggots had ensued! A favourite skirt was eaten, ear rings and necklaces from far flung Pacific islands had been chewed, many were made of nuts or seeds, loo roll and tin foil was shredded, and nests made in shoes or inside other rolls. Weirdly new boxes of cockroach traps had been consumed, the bait was clearly highly desirable. All in all you name it the mice had been there. The only good thing was that they had not got much food, as I never leave rice, flour or pasta on board because of weevils, but the odd and rare pack of raisins had been eaten.
The new little vacuum cleaner that I had given Giles and just brought out from home was christened with a million mouse droppings! We laid a sticky trap, and caught one tiny mouse. A week later, when we had caught nothing else, we had to conclude that there was only one mouse, which had successfully wreaked such devastation, but 8 months is a long time…..
Meanwhile we did get some chaps working on the outside, putting back our stainless steel rubbing strake, which has been off for years, and not only looked a mess but a tube of the stainless had cluttered our decks up too. That is now looking very smart! While Giles and I worked down below threading wires, we also managed to get Rolando the carpenter to make up a smart new infill panel, where the old radar had left a gaping hole, and then he moved on to doing some long overdue and much discussed changes to our computer cupboard, which has always been a disgrace of wires and plastic boxes and a printer balanced on a box!
Meanwhile we moved Brother Wind against a wall where she could dry out and allow us to drill a large hole in her bottom to fit the new transducer for the new echo sounder and log! It is always a worrying business as the tide comes back in and one watches nervously for any leaks, by which time you are in any case committed to another 12 hours before the tide has dropped enough to access the hole again.
Giles went up and down the mast numerous times, moving the old wind vane, and installing the new, pulling new wires through, and fitting a new masthead light, the old one having blown up in our electrical burst last year. The old radar dome was removed from half way up the mast, and the new one fitted, after Alex the stainless steel whizz had remodelled it . The huge fat cable for the radar eventually came out and the new one was tugged in with a mouse line, and much struggling.
A new GPS aerial was installed eventually and a new AIS fitted. Things too numerous to count have been wired and most of them ‘speak’ to each other, although combining the new with the old has presented a few problems, and the intricacies of the wiring have involved much head scratching.
So time has slipped through our grimy fingers, and the month we had allocated for this and other repairs has vanished, and we are still not quite good to go!
I have made it sound like a pleasant and productive month, but it hasn’t felt like that! The environment we are in is anything but pleasant, we are sandwiched in a shipyard, with huge boats towering above us being repaired, this involves a lot of sandblasting, and as we are downwind of them, we are constantly covered in black dust, which goes everywhere. There is no running water, just an intermittent supply, to some old oil drums, so I am endlessly carting water buckets to try to keep both us and the boat clean!
As ever we are saved by the charm and friendliness of the locals, and a few stray yachties, who have moans and problems of their own.
Luckily we have a deadline of friends from Norfolk arriving on Sunday, so for better or worse, we will have to be good to go, slightly worrying, as our new invertor hasn’t arrived from the U.S. yet.
Hey Ho!, the Normantons are arriving tomorrow, and it looks like we’ll set off without the inverter, but luckily they are scooping up a Whale hand bilge pump we were also waiting for , and without which we would be foolish to go, they are also the bearers of various 12 volt laptop chargers, which are a necessity with no inverter.
We await the tide at midnight tonight to get the guys on board to extricate us from the spiders web of lines here, and hopefully get around the rusting hulks currently blocking our way out!
I cannot believe a life of no sand blasting and dust awaits us. Happy Sailing!