Haulout at Satun - Oct - March 2012

I know some have been wondering why Cool Bananas blog has been so quiet. Well, short answer is that a haulout for a paint job quoted to take six weeks, that we expected would probably take 12 weeks, ended up lasting 5 months and only achieved the outside being painted not the inside. The upside is that Daryl says ‘he’s learnt a lot’!!!

Phithak Boatyard, on the whole, was great. Little hiccup with the initial haul when they put the boat on the trailer, each keel on a couple of sandbags, no other support, and while reeling the trailer up the rail, the jerking put the boat in a rocking horse motion which Daryl truly thought was going to lead to the boat tipping off. I was soooo pleased I wasn’t aboard (as I usually am).

Just hauled...............................................................Mast taken down

"Cool Bananas" slowly being stripped................Tenting going up

Tenting progressing...........................Stripping completed

There was a good engineering workshop and the stainless engineers produced good work and a reasonable price. Labourers to give you a hand were readily available but Daryl found their skills limited and most jobs he preferred to do himself. We had to remember a lot of these workers, especially the ones from Burma, have probably never even seen an electric drill before working at the yard (and boy did they ever want to take any opportunity to try up skilling on our boat). This is certainly not a place where we’d leave the boat and expect work completed when we returned. Rather a place where you need to be on the job constantly checking things. A major pitfall was that none of the workers or staff (bar Jia the manager) had good English so much was ‘lost in translation??’

The yard had good accounting systems and we had few problems with any of the yard accounts. In saying that, everything still needed checking.

Jia, the manager, was excellent to deal with. We felt he listened and did his best to resolve issues. He had a great knowledge of what parts and products were available and knew the cheaper Thai equivalent for branded products that we needed. For us, he added great personal touches like ordering a special cake for Fi and Daryl’s birthday, having a cruiser bbq built, and a lovely parting gift.

Socialising around the new bbq...............................Birthday cake from Jia

Satays for lunch anyone?...............................Morning tea break with Maureen and Steve

Daryl did achieve some of the jobs that were on his list. The dinghy got a spruce up, he made covers for the side windows, manufactured some deck tread, new timing belts on the motors, new bearings through the saildrives, moulded new spouting on the canopy and rebuilt the engine control panels -just naming a few.

Now we come to Satun Yacht Services, who we contracted to paint the outside of the boat. They pride themselves on producing a world class standard and for us this is a joke. With the team they put onto our boat there is no way a world class standard could ever be reached. The preparation work was great but lack of management made the job slow and tedious. Each morning the 8am hooter would sound and we were lucky if there were even two SYS team ready for work. We tired of the excuses and empty promises. Further down the track the painter was sacked and all went downhill from there. Slowly staff threw up their hands in frustration and left until we felt totally abandoned and decided we too may as well pack up and leave.

Although a very dissatisfying experience, what’s left to be done is cosmetic and nothing some time and work won’t fix. We are grateful we were on a fixed quote although SYS have a good go in more than one direction to load the bill.

It was then topped off for Charles and Maureen on Minyana who had waited 4 ½ months in the yard for the SYS team to finish our job (they had a start date of mid December 2011) only to be told by SYS in mid March that they weren’t going to do their boat at all!!!

Slow progress.........................................................Good, one working today

Stern during dismantling.....................................Foredeck masked up

Hardtop being painted................................................Topsides getting attention

Au, our trusty helper............................................What greeted me on my return!!

Any one who wants any further information on any details of our experiences in the yard you’re quite welcome to contact us.

Daryl, watch what you're doing!!!............Re assembling begins

Daryl and Au putting the trampoline back on......Sails being hoisted back aboard

Mast being lifted and put back on....Sling being unhooked

Before and after on the canopy roof

Before and after at the helm

During the last week the yard said we could launch any day but when they pulled us out of the shed and saw how far forward we were sitting on the trailer the ultimatum came. At 5pm Tuesday we were told we needed to launch at 2.30pm the next day or wait two weeks for the similar tide. With Dave and Anne already waiting for us in a hotel in Langkawi we didn’t want to be another two weeks. So by 5.30pm we were armed with paintbrushes, two extra helpers and we started the antifouling. At 7am next morning we put on the second coat. Next came the crane to put the mast on. Then into town we went to shift out of the house and check out with immigration. At 2.25pm cruisers and staff formed a chain gang to get the car unloaded up onto the boat and then down the rail we went. A perfect launch...and Cool Bananas was back on the water – stuff absolutely everywhere, no sails or boom on, wires hanging out in all directions, tools inside and out but we were finally out of the yard.

Fishing boat getting a revamp.............................zzzzzzz at lunch break

Yard on a full day....................................................Artist at work

Launched back at last