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...
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
