We are finally back in Phuket. It feels so good to be sleeping in my favorite bed again, inside Dali’s hull. I feel like I have abandoned my boat for too long. Over the years, I’ve developed a very close relationship with my boat, almost as if it were a human being. Sometimes it is happy, in good shape, singing in the waves. Sometimes it is sad, in much need of repairs. As I found Dali sitting on the hard, out of the water, in the boatyard we had left him back in may, I couldn’t withhold a strong feeling of guilt. Boats are not meant to be out of the water. They are not meant to be abandoned for almost five months.
Reunited
It was all for good reasons though. We spent a long time in KL, were we edited our first documentary and participated to season 3 of The Apartment. We transformed our blog into a proper website, with a lot of new exciting features. We visited my family and friends in Europe and spent some quality time with Iva’s family in KL. We were finally able to make a long due visit to Singapore where shared our upcoming projects with our friends.
But is now time to take care of Dali again. Iva and I found the boat in its moldiest state ever. It seems it’s been raining a lot in Phuket while we were gone, and the first few days will mainly be spent cleaning the entire boat : its walls, its ceilings, empty all the drawers, open all the cabinets, clean their content, lift the floorboards, scrape underneath, empty the bilge…
Scrubbing under the Floorboards
Once the boat is back in livable conditions, the proper work will start : some fiber glassing work needs to be done on the keel before we give the hull a new anti-fouling job. The front sail has suffered a rip and needs some sewing. I would like to change the mounts of the engine, possibly the injectors. There is quite a bit of plumbing work as a lot of hoses lying in inaccessible places need to be changed. The rudder needs to be adjusted. The list is endless, as usual…
While we take care of the boat we have to continue working hard at finally generating some income with our website and documentary. We must focus on finding a sponsor, and try to get the financing for our next documentary, which we would like to shoot on the west coast of Sumatra from January to March. How we will achieve all these goals at the same time I don’t know. But Iva and I work so well as a team that I can’t help but be confident…
Phil
