Girl next door?

Pulau Pangkor is an island just about 10 - 15 nautical miles out from UniKL and a popular holiday place for local tourists. We went there last weekend. Knocked off around two in the afternoon on Saturday, so we arrived early in the evening and had roughly 24 hours to relax and enjoy.

"Pulau Pangkor is more of a girl-next-door island as opposed to the supermodels of the east coast and Langkawi"
Lonely Planets Southeast Asia on a shoestring

They are lying. Pangkor and Langkawi are both supermodels. Langkawi may be dressed to kill whereas Pangkor is more like lazy Saturday afternoon, at home doing the laundry, no makeup. Apart from that they could be twins. Look at the pictures and judge for yourself.

Phat as wave in the Pacific Ocean

Just passing on some info that reached me through FB and email.

Søren Larsen, the beautiful brigantine who was responsible for me leaving Sweden in the first place, has run into some trouble. She was scheduled to leave New Zealand around mid April for a three week voyage heading for Cook Islands, the first leg of her annual South Pacific itinerary. The ship hit a storm only a few days out from New Zealand and had to return due to severe leaks. Back to refit in the yard in Whangarei, and another month of hard work before the great adventure could start.

She set off again on May 29. This time things went fine for two days, then the weather started to deteriorate. Wind speeds reached gale force, touching a full blown storm. A ship like this is solid, and built to handle this type of conditions. But the sea can be a tricky bastard, it is not to be trusted. In the morning on 1st June, a while before watch handover, an unusually nasty wave hit the starboard side of Søren Larsen. The bulwark is made of solid oak planks, supported by timberheads coming up through the deck, doubled with reinforcing posts. The wave smashed about half of the starboard bulwark down flat on deck, leaving only the parts that are supported by the shrouds and their chainplates. It then proceeded over the deck, thrashing the entire deckhouse to total rubbish. People were in the deckhouse at the time. The galley is in the forward part of it and I was told that one of the cooks was actually washed overboard - and back on the ship again with the next wave! No one was seriously injured, a miracle to anyone who has seen the pictures of the ship after the accident.

After the accident the crew worked hard to cover the damaged parts with storm boards. The ship sent out a mayday message, it was escorted back to New Zealand by a large cargo ship and Coast Guard helicopters dropped down extra pumps. The ship and all the crew returned safely to Whangarei harbor a few days later and now she is scheduled for approximately four more months in refit. Sometimes things end up a bit rough...

For more details, have a look at the ships official web page:

http://news.sorenlarsen.co.nz/pebble/

Langkawi Permata Kedah - Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah

Last Saturday was not only the Constitution Day of Sweden, it was also the birthday of the King of Malaysia. The nominal birthday anyway. The King is elected among the nine Sultans of Malaysia for a five year-term, so to the real birthday varies, but to avoid confusion it is always celebrated on the sixth of June.

The birthday of the King means national holiday, and that means the day off for the crew of the Albatross. On Thursday I asked Richard (Ulf being away), if I could take Friday off. Thursday evening, a little bit after midnight, I set off north bound in the Cutlery Drawer, the car which Ulf and I are renting. Fairly unplanned holiday trip, in other words. And just perfect!

I left the Cutlery Drawer in Georgetown, Pulau Penang, and took the early morning ferry over to Pulau Langkawi. Driving to Georgetown was an interesting experience. A lot of really old-school trucks (retarded slow!) out on winding roads in the middle of the night. Little rural looking towns and villages, with small night open eateries catering to the truck drivers. And as I approached Georgetown, the road turned into a toll highway, buildings got more and more citylike and all of a sudden i was on a huge six lane bridge crossing the strait to Pulau Penang, big complexes of highrises and skyscrapers standing tall on both sides of the bridge ahead. The central part of Georgetown has a lot of character, with old colonial buildings and intense nightlife. I fell asleep after four o'clock in the morning, in the dodgiest hotel room ever. Two hours of sleep, and then the morning ferry.



Two and a half day in Langkawi was spent scuba diving, swimming in a waterfall and talking the nights away on the beach. One main goal for the weekend was to have loads of good time and another was to relax and charge up the batteries. I succeeded beyond expectations with the first goal, but shamefully abandoned the second one without even giving it a try. The high season for westerners is over, but I still managed to speak a fair amount of Swedish during the weekend, and also a wee little bit of Japanese. It was school holiday however, and the Kings birthday on top of that, so a lot of Malaysian tourists visited the island. It is also the beginning of the Arabian tourist season and I have never ever before seen so many women dressed in cover-all burqas. Interesting sight on a tropical beach resort.




Gecko Guesthouse at night, view from the front of my room. Friendly budget place with a super cozy garden, pretty worn rooms, and a lot of globetrotting backpacker travelers.


Afternoon on Pantai Cenang. This is a five minute walk from Gecko Guesthouse, at holiday walking speed. It is the location of Babylon, the reggae bar where I spent most of the late evening hours.



Me in the water on Saturday. Diving in Langkawi is not very spectacular, compared to the few other places I have tried. But to me it was just marvelous this time, hovering around weightless again, blowing bubbles among colorful corals, after more than four years without leaving the surface.



Well, fish...



And more fish...


...and a shark!


But not very big.



Pulau Payar, this is the marine reserve island where the diving took place.



Fishermen outside Kuah harbour.



Bear. No, dog.



Me and Bren in Seven Wells Waterfall. She is from Peru/USA. Globetrotting architect/pedagogue/backpacker, sort of.



Last picture this time shows the sunset over Cenang Beach, as seen from Babylon, kind of the epicenter of the past weekend.

Welcome onboard the Royal Albatross!

We went up the slip last Monday. It was quite interesting. Captain Ulf is on leave, enjoying spring in Sweden, so our project manager, Richard Lamble, was going to take care of the operation. A little while before we started moving, he informed me that he would be leading from the shore, and that I was to be in charge on the ship. Windy is like ten or twenty times heavier than anything I have ever handled before. Luckily, to assist me I had Kenneth who is an experienced sailor and who speaks English, plus six Malaysian welders who didn't. No experience of any boats at all, and not a single word to communicate with. It was great fun!

Other things that happened this week include the taking down of the masts. Quite an easy job with a large crane. Feels good to have that crap down. Next time they come up, they will be shiny and ship shape. And it is not going to be a suicide mission any longer to climb them. Things that didn't happen this week was ordering of material. It is weird how lousy many suppliers are at actually selling the stuff they provide. I told one company over a week ago, that we had decided to order from them, and asked for a final quote including shipment. They still haven't been able to produce that, although I have been in touch with them a couple of times. Another place has had their email account too full to receive anything for over a week. It is a real hassle to find all the material for a genuine traditional rigging in this part of the world.

We have now officially changed name by the way. Windy is no longer Windy, she is now known as Royal Albatross. Yeah, I know it sounds a bit tacky, but it is actually the name of a species of albatross. Google it. It is just a big bird that flies a lot over big waters. Not such a bad name really*.


There she is, 200 tons of steel resting peacefully on the slip.


Looking forward from under the ship, facing the winch house. Note the wing keel. Makes her underwater body look like a retarded seal from outer space, but it is probably good for both stability and for reducing leeway. Plus you can slip up without any side stanchions or other supports.


Main saloon under the poop deck. Unusual layout with a little touch of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Haven't the welders done a marvelous work? Imagine this with lit chandeliers, classical music and cocktails!


And they have done absolute magic to the beautiful windows, too!

Design and daily routines

Life in our little world follows it's daily routine. The welding contractors make noises in the workshop and the ship, the office bunch are silently doing their things, while assuming the computer bent cheese doodle position, and the crew is somewhat confused in between, like fish on dry land. This life ashore is a little boring, at least on the surface. We have the occasional event or mishap to make things interesting, such as when we have cake for dessert or the welders set the ship's floorboards on fire, but it isn't very much to write about really.


Birds eye view of our little world, taken from the mizzenmast crosstrees.


Facing the other way from the same position. Note that the futtock shrouds are missing under the spanker crosstrees. None of the masts had futtock shrouds. That means that she has sailed with the topmasts effectively stayed by the backstays, and not much more. Scary...

Under the surface though, a lot of action is taking place. Our little vendetta with Massimo, the wannabe Mafioso, was taken to a new level when he tried to steal timber from us yesterday. And I have been turned into a genuine office rat the last two weeks. It started out with some really interesting jobs, helping Ulf with rigging design. It is fascinating to see that some of the stuff we did at university can actually be applied in real life. I have played around with trigonometrics and force vectors on my calculator and my laptop, discussed galvanic corrosion and fatigue limits, and I have had quite a few opportunities to ponder upon the need for a structured and professional design process. I guess I also have a basic level of fluency in the semantics of shape, which is kindda helpful.


Suggestion for gooseneck fitting for boom and standing gaff on the spanker mast.

Ulf went home to Sweden last Monday evening and left me in charge of a pile of administration routines. I guess I have done things like this before but it is still a bit scary to be ultimately responsible for basically everything, from mooring lines to coffee, to welders time sheets. It also means that I have much less time to continue with rigging design. Especially since I am fairly busy looking for suppliers for all kinds of stuff they don't use in this part of the world, such as pine tar, tallow, zinc white, 6x7 wire rope, you name it. My metamorphosis into an office rat is completed.


Welders in the engine room. They were working on the starboard side while I was making a welding template for the port generator support. Hot like hell, sweat pouring, angle grinder embers flying in the air, smoke and flashes from the welding... Great fun!


Esther, our Singaporean accountant doing... accounting?


Lee-Ann working hard on systems design, while Allan is procrastinating


Mel was feeling lost in the chaos so he buggered off and built something

Some more explanations of the nautical lingo:
Futtock shrouds: Shrouds leaning out from the mast. The lower end attached a bit under the crosstrees and the upper end attached to the outboard end of the crosstrees. Takes up the tension from the shrouds over the crosstrees. (Puttingvant/Pyttingvant.)

Mizzen: The second mast from the stern on a four-masted ship. (Kryssmast i det här fallet. Annars vanligen översatt mesan på fartyg med färre master, då mesan/mizzen är den aktersta masten.)

Backstays: Wires staying the mast aft. (Barduner/backstag.)

Mooring lines: Lines holding the ship to the dock. (Förtöjningslinor)

Tallow: Grease that you get from squeezing the shit out of a dead sheep, or sometimes another animal such as a cow. (Talg)

Nautical dictionary!

Sorry I haven't written for a couple of days! Been a bit busy. But a lot of yummy stuff is comming up shortly, be patient! On request, here comes a list of nautical mumbo jumbo:

Crosstrees: Timbers supporting shrouds around the area where masts overlap. (Salning)

Fo'c'sle = Forecastle: Area below deck at the bow, usually used as crew quarters ("in the fo'c'sle"), or a raised deck area at the bow ("on the fo'c'sle). (Förskans/back; i förskansen/på backen)

Lashing: Attachment where two workpieces are tied together with a line. (Surrning)

Ratboard: Wooden ratline (Vevlingslatta/trävevling)

Ratlines: Footstep lashed between the shrouds. Used as ladder rungs when climbing the mast. (Vevling)

Shroud: Line or wire staying a mast sideways. (Vant)

Spanker mast: The aftmost mast on a four masted ship. (Mesan i det här fallet. Mesan översätts oftast mizzen om man har tre eller färre master. Mizzen på Windy är mast nummer två akterifrån och kan kallas kryssmast på svenska.)

Stringer: Fore-and-aft hull reinforcement beam. (Stringer, essing, långskeppsbalk)

Topside: Outside of a hull above waterline. (Fribord, skrovsida)

Whipping twine: Thread/string used to whip the end of lines, to keep the strands and yarns from coming apart. (Taglingsgarn)

Rattlin' ratlines

I am measuring the rigging. We have drawings and rigging plans, but they are not very accurate. Seems that a lot about this ship is not very accurate...


Yes, it is a ratboard. Yes it is on the dock, right next to the ship. No, it is not supposed to be there, it should be in the shrouds 12 meters above deck.


And here is the spanker mast from which it fell. I was up the top of the lower mast, just about half a meter under the crosstrees, when a ratboard lashing snapped under my foot. It was expected, everything is in a slightly dodgy condition here. There is a reason that we are scheduled for almost another year in refit...

Click the picture by the way and take a closer look at it. The middle shroud is... well... not very straight... The shrouds and stays are tensioned like it was a natural fibre rig on a 10 meter boat. Ratlines are attached with thin whipping twine, in a remarkably clumsy fashion.


A picture of the port topside. Our welders are kept busy whith a lot of different projects. The dark marks here are burns from welding on stringers on the inside of the hull. I know nothing about structural dimensioning and solid mechanics of steel ships, but I am pretty sure those extra stringers are well needed. The present situation is rather severe, but around the beginning of next year this ship is going to kick some serious Singaporean ass!


And here is our workshop, where a lot of the magic is going to take place. A big tarp roof, surrounded on three sides by shipping containers.


Another little job we did today. Disassembling some hydraulics in the engine room. This tank was one of few items still fitted in the otherwise very bare ship.