Tidying up

Today was just loads of whippings on the lazy jacks to tidy up the sail packs.

We also created a bridle for the mizzen sheet. This will enable the mizzen to be closer hauled than it had been, and therefore sail better.


With all the lines now tidied away King Malu now looks very smart.

New Sails

All week I had been hoping the new sails would arrive in time for the weekend. I'd been watching the tracking on the courier's website. The sails first went to the wrong place, then returned to the correct port of departure eventually making it to Milan and waiting there for a few days...

Finally, on Friday, we are told they arrived. So off I go to collect them. That they had arrived many hours earlier in Cyprus was true, that the courier's Cyprus representative had collected them from the airport and I could thus collect from them was not true. When I arrived at the collection point an hour and a quarter before they closed for the weekend I was told that their driver was at the airport now and he would be back in a hour, with the sails. 'Please come back in an hour' was what the clerk advised. That would leave only 15 minutes before they closed. I wasn't hopeful.

I arrived at the duly appointed time: Everyone was packing up for the weekend and the computers already switched off. The clerk found some paperwork and said, 'Let me see if it has actually arrived'. Yelling in Cypriot across the warehouse gained the information that yes, our package was here. So I signed for it and took the car round to the loading bay. I had taken our Mitsubishi estate car, since I knew the package would be long as the battens for the fully battened main were long. They were in two pieces, since airlines will not fly any package over 2 metres, but had been led to understand that the package was about 1.75 metres, which would just fit into the car. However, it was actually only a few centimetres short of the 2 metres and I was not sure after all this it would fit in the car! We moved the front seat forward as far as it would go and then folded it forward and the package fitted with maybe 1-2 centimetres grace.

Saturday turned out to be God's grace on us weather wise, it was pretty close to dead calm all day. Whatever wind did happen should come from the north so we motored King Malu over to the wet dock which meant she was facing north and started unpacking. Laying it all out on the ground beside the dock we saw for the first time our logo on the sail bags.

The old sails were quite soft and we had been able to fold and bundle them quite easily. The new ones were directly the opposite, especially the genoa, which was made of Dyneema Hyrda Net. This is the balanced weave material that the sailmaker uses for the Performance Cruising Sails. This is the same as Ellen MacArthur uses on here round Britain yacht Skandia.

The sail had been neatly folded to a barrel on the floor of the sail loft in the UK, which made it easy to get on board.

To my surprise it also went up the new Furlex easily. Now we see our logo flying on the corner of a sail. It also furled very easily, the padded luff making it a smooth roll on the Furlex.

Fitting the main with its stack-pack and refitting the old and cleaned mizzen with a new stack-pack would definitely need more than just Tim and me, so my son Daniel and daughter-in-law Becky came down to help. Becky to take photographs and video.

First discussion was the battens: There were flat and round battens... the old main had flat battens, but the new one had round, the flat were for the stack-pack. The technology of sails seems to bear little resemblance to the old sails, which had been on the boat for goodness knows how many years. The round battens were impressive, with locked and threaded screws to tension them meaning the sail could be set to a very much better shape and the battens would also fall into the stack-pack easier when dropping the main.

But... what really concerned me was getting the bolt rope around the stack pack into the slot along the boom. We decided to raise half of the sail up the mast to get it out of the way and then have less marterial to try to deal with along the boom. This proved a good move.

The sailmaker had added a piece of white cloth along the edge that went into the slot. It looked much tougher than the blue of the stack pack, which seemed sensible. However, what we also found was that this material was slippery and made the whole process of getting the sail plus stack-pack onto the boom very much easier.

We then tied the lazy jacks to the stack-pack and dropped the main into it.

The main is a Long Distance Cruising Sail, made by the same sailmaker and to the same specification as Gypsy Moth IV used in the second round the world trip. This is cut from Bainbridge Ocean Sailcloth, not quite as crisp as the Hydra Net, but stiff nevertheless and dropping it into the stack-pack for the first time was interesting to get it to flake correctly and actually fit.

We raised it again and then dropped it and the second time was very much easier.

Finally, we fitted the old, now cleaned mizzen into it's stack-pack on the mizzen boom. We now have three sails to demonstrate Premium Cruising, Long Distance Cruising and old technology cruising sails.

Time for lunch!

After lunch we move King Malu back to her berth, except we couldn't resist taking her out and seeing the new genoa filled with air.

The shape of the new genoa was excellent, it filled and sailed like a dream. The forecast for next Saturday means, if it holds, we can have a long full day sailing to see how the new suite of sails performs.

The wind was too light to get a real feel for the new sail, but the shape was fantastic even in light wind.

Tomorrow, time to do whippings and clean up all the little fiddly bits.

Cold, wet and thundery

It's cold, wet and thundery here in Cyprus. Not the weather for being outside doing woodwork or in King Malu sanding woodwork with the for'ard hatch open letting in the rain.

So today I will try to rebuild the position plotting system having moved it to another server. Basically when you click the button on the spot device it receives a code at the control centre and you can configure it to send out either SMS or emails to whoever you want. One of the addresses will be a specially set up gmail account.

So I will then download that formatted email message, setting it up to check every 15 minutes for new emails, extract the lat/lon and using gmapez plot the position on Google maps,  which displays at the top of this blog.

We are very impressed with the Spot Locator system buying into the technology very early on. Recently Spot have brought out a new system called HUG, which is specifically designed for boats.

This system can be integrated into the yacht system to also send alerts if the boat is stolen and also four monitors for things like battery, water increase in the bilges or other sensors of your choice.

For'ard cabin

The previous owner had a fire onboard. He and the boat were very lucky to survive. He had no smoke alarms and a fan in the for'ard cabin caught fire during the night when he was asleep. This caught the wood alight and in the process doing damage to the to a significant amount of the woodwork. The fire put itself out, but the woodwork looked really bad. He never bothered much with it as the for'ard cabin was not used as a cabin but as his workshop.

We have now started on the interior restoration, so I have removed the front of the locker in the for'ard cabin and will be working at replacing and upgrading. I have also started stripping the varnish off the wood to re-varnish. In the saloon the varnish is matt, whereas in the cabins it's a mixture of gloss and matt, so when I re-varnish I will make it all matt.

The Fein Multimaster is really coming into its own - not only did I use the saw blade to cut out the old panel in a way that would have been impossible with even a jig-saw, but the sanding attachment allows getting into the ridges and corners of the cabin.

It's going to be a long task doing the woodwork, so watch this space...

Sailing boots

I'd been looking for some yacht boots for some time. I was unwilling to spend a vast amount of money on something you wear very occasionally in the Med but wanted something for when I really needed it.

Last year I decided I would spend some of the birthday money relatives send on some yacht boots and went up to the Mailspeed Marine Trade Counter to try them on and see what was available. I eventually chose some of the new neoprene boots from Yacht Boat Company.

Mailspeed Marine now have them on special offer... £25 less than I paid for them at £39.95, so grab yourself a bargain!

Sails... bolt rope repair

We have a new genoa and main sail on order and they should arrive on Wednesday. These are being made for us by one of the premiere sailmakers in the UK, but banded with our own Malu Marine brand. These will be the first of the new brand sails so we are really looking forward to seeing them.

The old genoa was not too bad, but had an 8mm bolt rope and the new Furlex needs a 4mm bolt rope. So there were two options: 1. Send it to the UK and get them to change the bolt rope 2. Do it ourselves. We opted for #2. Yesterday evening Tim was up till midnight unpicking the bolt rope and then this morning I joined him. So by lunchtime it was unpicked. It was a phenomenal amount of work. I calculated that we (and Tim did most of it) unpicked between 5,000 and 8,000 stitches.

After lunch we attached the new bolt rope and pulled it through and then using our trusty hand sewing machine re-sewed the new bolt rope in place. Next weekend will be sail weekend. We'll check the new bolt rope on the genoa fits and then take King Malu out for a sail with the new Malu Marine sails. Let's hope the weather is good... it's been pretty awful recently and we're due for another storm this week.

Cleaning metalwork

The children of friends of ours do the deck cleaning for us. This is a weekly task and involves two things: One, a complete clean of the deck, using detergent and water and secondly cleaning the stainless steel and aluminium and all the other metalwork on the boat.

Normally it takes about one hour for the deck clean and a second hour is spent on the metalwork. However, we're waiting for a new sails which should arrive within a week and so we haven't been out for a few weeks and the deck hasn't needed cleaning. So... Jacob and Marie have been busy with cleaning the metalwork.

Cleaning the metalwork takes a lot longer than an hour, and involves a lot of what we in the UK call 'elbow grease' in other words, hard work. So I bet the kids are looking forward to sailing again so that it will be half deck clean and half metalwork!

Varnishing, EPIRB and 200V switch

We're slowly moving from phase 1 to phase 2 of the restoration of King Malu. The deck work is mostly complete, we have ordered a new suite of sails and so we are starting to look at the cabins.

The most obvious part is what the saloon looks like. The cabins are seen only by us, but when we invite guests on board they see the saloon. In general the saloon looks pretty good. We need some new upholstery and a carpet, but the lockers are solid teak and look smart.

Notice the bolt cutters behind the steps. These are a critical safety tool every yacht should have available. If you loose your mast you need to be able to cut the rigging free quickly.

Anyway... what didn't look so good are were the steps down into the saloon and the teak behind the steps. So the first thing to tackle was stripping and re-varnishing that area.

We used some cheap triangular sanders we bought from Lidl plus a Fein Multimaster. The Fein Multimaster is new and expensive, the sanders from Lidl are at the opposite end of the cost spectrum. In combination they worked well. The Lidl sanders for the large areas and the Fein for the detail. What the Fien was particularly good at was the gaps between the teak tongued and grooved boards. There is a rubber linear piece that takes sand paper for doing exactly that. We highly recommend this tool.

We then used a Sadolin water based clear varnish. On the teak woodwork I put 4 coats and on the steps I put 8 coats. The steps took a bit more work. We removed the old anti-slip, which was no longer anti-slipping and replaced it with Treadmaster. We kept the metal anti-slip tread holders and we are very pleased with the result.

At the end of 2011 we also bought a McMurdo EPIRB and fitted that.

It is fixed in place very close to the steps, as in an emergency you need to get and deploy it quickly. It won't do any good being in a locker if the yacht sinks!

The EPIRB will automatically start transmitting when it's in salt water, so you might wonder if water coming in through the companion way will set it off. This is not a concern as there is also a magnetic switch in the unit, with a small magnet in the bulkhead fitting, so it has to be removed from the fitting as well as be immersed in water to set it off. There is also a way of setting it off manually.

We bought the McMurdo EPIRB from Mailspeed Marine in the UK. Dave Somers is the representative we deal with and he is both helpful and very knowledgeable.

The McMurdo G5 Smartfind Plus is a 406MHZ Epirb designed to operate with the COSPAS-SARSAT international system, but is also fitted with a 12 channel GPS receiver. This addition ensures that the exact position of a casualty is relayed directly to the emergency services.

Finally... the last thing we did was to fix the Sterling 220V Automatic Switch in a new place in the saloon locker above the chart table.

This switch is a great device. It automatically swaps between shore power, generator and inverter, but in each case makes sure the power is clean and stable for 10 seconds before connecting it. You can buy it from our store at Malu Marine.

Malu Marine

We found that many of the world class specialist marine products that we need to restore King Malu are not available in Cyprus. So we imported them ourselves. Around the marina people started asking us about them, so we decided to set up a company that would supply and install these specialist products.

We have launched a new website malumarine.com to sell them but the best way to buy them is to talk to us. Email richard-at-malumarine.com or tim-at-malumarine.com or phone Richard on 99313751.

Sails are custom made, both for the yacht and to match the sailing style and desires of the owner. Getting sails right is a complex business. We have learnt how to measure yachts for new sails and can quote on replacement sails or repairs to your current sails. We work with one of the UK's premiere sailmakers, so the quality is world beating! See options on our website.

Marine electrics can be complex and we are now the Cyprus distributor for Sterling Power, who are quite frankly the best in the world for marine electrics. They are certainly not the cheapest, but on a yacht or power boat reliability is paramount. 

Life Jackets

I don't usually repost things, but I came across this training video and feel that it is something that everyone who sails should see. We have always worn lifejackets, but sadly not everyone does.

We bought two types of life jackets for King Malu from Mailspeed Marine in the UK. 

We bought Mailspeed Marine Charter Lifejackets for guests (link to the right). We have not had an problems with them and our guests have been comfortable in them.

To both types we added military grade light sticks which we tied inside with a lanyard. The military grade light sticks are guaranteed to last for 12 hours, and are worth it compared to the 'party' type light sticks you can often find on ebay.

We bought Secumar life jackets for the permanent crew (link to the left).

These are more comfortable and if you are wearing them for along time are worth the extra cost.

Whatever type of life jacket you use... remember to do up the crotch strap!