ETERNAUT

Lantau Yacht Club

We had and still have nice days at Lantau Yacht Club. The staff is friendly, the environment reasonable. Discovery Bay Plaza is just a couple minutes walk or a short ride on the shuttle bus. A supermarket, a few shops and some restaurants await us there. Unfortunately they have Hong Kong prices though… and those are not a cruiser’s dream

Fun at anchor

The tender engine had a short workout and we had fun with the tender. The 20HP Tohatsu 4-stroke is still within it’s run-in time frame, so only 50% power. And still, we managed to get the RIB planing.Much to the delight of it’s occupants.

Repairing the water maker

We have new neighbors. Ed and Christine on MV Destiny. Ed is super knowledgeable and I learn a lot. Here he we are repairing the water maker feed pump. Good news: The water maker is running and Ed saved me a couple thousand $$$ for not throwing the Selmar water maker into the bin. Thank you Ed and Christine 🙂

55Kg Rocna Vulcan

It took longer to search for a company which could deliver the anchor than the delivery itself. The Bruce type anchor (original expensive Manson Ray anchor is shxx). Cannot recommend at all. After lot’s of research I decided for the 55Kg Rocna Vulcan as primary anchor. Cannot say how it performs though,… I’ll keep you posted

Anchoring with the Rocna Vulcan

Dry anchoring in the marina. Despite the short scope the boat did not move a notch. Again I can thank Ed. His patience and ideas lead us to a way how to place the 63Kg Sarca Excel and the 55Kg Rocna Vulcan on the anchor rollers. We were both rewarded with nice sun burns despite the clouds as it took us a whole day to figure out

The welded support

Darbi from CarboTech is very creative and has good ideas. Together we had figured that if we lock the forward anchor support in upwards position the Sarca Excel could deploy without problem. Seahorse Marine had the anchor in their shipyard for five years… and done nothing.

The weld job was done by RHKYC… and as we can see: the material chosen was not up to the task.

Bilge Cleaning

I tried to clean the engine room bilge with borrowed high pressure cleaner and wet vacuum cleaner (thank you Ed). I have a smiling face, but that is fake: Again it revealed that the design of bilge underneath the engine is crap. SHM did a really sh.. job and likely it will be me who has to clean up the SHM mess

Cleaning up the mess

I want to build a shelf for storage in the forward bilge compartment. There’s plenty space. But: First I have to clean up the SHM mess: remove the old paint where cracked, prepare the steel with rust converter, apply two coats of epoxy primer, apply two coats of special bilge paint. And while being in there: remove the super crappy China made bilge and shower sump pumps. Seaflo pumps: we had two failures out of three pumps within half year. So that gives you a 33% survival chance if you count on their bilge pumps

Warranty work in Hong Kong?

SHM had asked Wan Marine to attend to boat warranty work. After one day they bailed out, probably as SHM did not want to pay. But it was even worse: We had to permanently watch over Wan Marine workers as they tried to short cut their work: Work not done, work improperly done, complains when being asked to do a proper job, throwing rubbish onto the solar panels when not being watched… That was my experience with Wan Marine

Leaking engine exhaust

The engine exhaust is leaking. After our last short cruise we discovered burn and soot marks on the engine room ceiling. This is a serious fire risk. Also do not forget that engine exhaust gas might contain carbon monoxide: a serious killer. Thus we are not able to move the boat at this moment