Haul out in Kudat

We have been a week in Kudat now and have spent most of the time just bumming around and humming and ahh'ing whether to haul out now or not. Today we hauled out Sophia. It's only a year since we had a quick haul out in Christchurch, so she's not overdue and could have gone a few more months easily. But, it's an OK yard here in Kudat and we like the town. It's a bit cheaper than Rebak in Lankawi, and there's a good workshop/engineering shop on site here, handy because we're going to put in a dripless shaft while out and who knows what problems that can bring.

Tiny Sophia in a huge 150 ton travel lift. She only weighs 5-6 tons. 

Today we have wet-sanded the anti-foul, it only took the two of us about 2 - 2 1/2 hours to do it, so not too bad. But phew, hard work. We were in t-shits and shorts and both got soaking wet and very red-ish from the red antifoul. Different from in Christchurch winter where we wore full water-proofs for the same job. Each has its good points. It was crazy the water in the hose was so warm, it almost warmed us up more than cooling down! Our only hick-up was that Phil had the wallet in his pocket and it too got soaking wet, hence the drying bills.

Phil got the old stern gland off but then found out that the stern gland has a bearing in it and not in the stern tube itself, which is unexpected, so he's trying to figure that one out. I didn't have enough finger prints left to start polishing the hull, so instead I polished the stainless steel, an overdue job that I might as well do now that I'm in work mode and while Phil is fiddling with the shaft stuff. It was perfect weather this afternoon with overcast sky, a breeze and the occasional drizzle = not too hot to work.

The most exciting thing about this haul out is we have our own private bathroom!!! It's quite new and very nice, good pressure on the water, there's even hot water, although I'd much rather have ice cold water, but it's only sort of luke cold.

Not boat yard related, we went to the weekly market Tuesday afternoon/evening (and it continues Wednesday morning) here in Kudat. It was quite nice, and the otherwise quiet town was suddenly really busy. All sorts of things were on sale, second-hand clothing, bags, cheap jewelry, shoes and lots of things like that. It's not a tourist market, as there literally are no tourists here, only a few yachties. Lots of food stalls, they were the interesting ones, although a lot of the food was unknown and strange to us.

We expect to only be on the hard a few more days, hopefully the dripless shaft operation will go smoothly, but you never know.