Bowsprit Fixed

Sari Timur sitting with the anchor back on the bow roller

My brother Matt asked for some photos of the repair.  Fortunately the pictures should make her look a bit normal.  But anyway here are some photos.  Hopefully showing Sari Timur looking normal.

Well, an update to the "Lesson Learned" post from below.  The bowsprit is now officially fixed.  We still have some varnish work and finish sanding to go but the major work is now officially finished.  Thank goodnes as I am not sure I have much strength or patience left.

In Singapore

Pauline flew to Singapore on Jan 11, 2011 to help her parents move to the new flat.  She took the opportunity to stock up on spares for the boat.

Moving is never fun, with lots of packing and unpacking.  Fortunately, I have a helper and she helped me pack most of my stuff before I got back to Singapore.  I only had to take care of some personal documents and papers.

The movers came on the 12th and was finished by late afternoon.  We worked at arranging and sorting stuff out.  The old flat was a lot bigger so we threw out a bit of furniture and stuff.

My parents are pretty happy now and settled into the new flat.  When I left on the 17th, the telephone line has not been connected as was the cable tv.  However, I got a call from mum today that the telephone line is connected (well, that's how she called me).

I have posted some photos of the flat with all the fittings.  We are rather happy with the work that the contractor did.  There were only a couple of things that needed fixing.

The living area - the sofa

The living area - TV

The TV

The dining area

The TV in the master bedroom

Master bedroom - bed

The shower

The kitchen - oven and cooker

The kitchen - sink

Lesson Learned (updated 14 Jan)

See updates at the bottom.

We had been trying to leave Coron Town, Busuanga since January 2^nd to head up to Puerto Galera in Mindoro.  This is a complete typhoon anchorage and offers easy access to Luzon and Manila without the hassles of being in the big city.  We needed to get here as Pauline had a flight to catch to Singapore and Mark wanted to take the time to do some maintenance jobs on Sari Timur.  The kinds of jobs, you just never seem to get around to were on the agenda.  They were nothing serious but with a list of 13 enough to keep him busy.

Anyway January 2^nd had a storm outside with very heavy winds and seas coming from the direction we needed to head, so we sat.  January 3^rd much the same but things seemed to be dissipating in the evening.  January 4^th we got up at 05:30 and checked all the weather indicators and things look like they had dissipated more and shifted a bit south of us.  It would still be lumpy out there but we could punch into it for 55 miles and hope things kept easy as we got further. 

Coron is a very protected anchorage and it is about 8 miles of weaving to get out to open water.  We got out to the entrance around 8:00 and found the winds were still blowing about 24 on the nose and the seas were easily 3 metres.  We discussed it and said well we are this far might as well keep punching into it.  And we did, up down all around, making slow progress by burning diesel towards San Jose on the bottom end of Mindoro.  The further we got the worse the seas were but we were hoping once we closed in a bit more on Mindoro the island would start acting as a shelter and the waves and wind would ease.  We were busy making sure the ships that were crossing outside knew we were there as it was pretty hard to see our small boat in such huge seas.  We talked to them all on the radio and confirmed they could see us and continued on trying to adjust our course to take the least amount of water over the bow and not get in their way. 

We had negotiated our third ship and were pretty much out of their way with only about 33 miles to go when we looked at the bow and noticed that it was moving in a funny way.  Oh no, have we broken the bowsprit, in such seas?  A quick check showed the bowsprit was ok but our pulpit platform, which is quite large on Sari Timur, had completely broken free.  This holds our anchor, bow roller, and a large platform we often spend countless hours on.  It had broken its wood mounts and tore a stainless piece of angle iron in two.  We decided we had to turn around.  The good news was with the wind and seas behind us we made exceptional time heading back.  What had taken us 6 hours in the other direction we covered in just over three going back.

We are going to be here for a couple of weeks while Mark works on the bowsprit and orders material from Manila while Pauline heads to Singapore.  And those jobs that we just seem to never get to?  Well they can wait!  And we are learning slowly the idea of not rushing the weather is a good one, especially if you are heading to weather.







The pulpit pulled away from the broken crosstrees



Well the good news is the bowsprit is going back together.  Coron though an excellent place for most things is pretty limited as to what supplies are here.  I had to fly to Manila to buy lumber and stainless angle bar.  Even that is difficult.  The wood is Narra which is a local hardwood and is no longer cut.  Luckily I had some advice from a man in the know who knew a lumber yard that had some.  As you can see from the pictures I have the cross trees now cut and notched etc as well as on and glued in place.  I have to let it sit for about 48 hours for the adhesive to set then I can drill the holes that hold the pulpit floor down to the cross trees.  Been a bit a of a pain as Pauline is in Singapore and I am working by myself.  Probably better so she doesn’t hear my cursing etc.  They don’t fit perfectly trying to balance on the whisker stays and hold the pulpit out of the way as I measured the pieces was tough.  But it fits close enough that the 5200 can fill in the gaps.  I became rather efficient with the wood chisel and hand saw.  My trusty little saber saw didn’t like the hard wood and would make slanted cuts.

Anyway I think it will be a lot stronger than the old one.  Or at least I hope so!  I am not real keen to take this project on again.

Broken bits removed

New Bits going on