S/V Po Oino Roa: April 2014

Saturday, April 26, 2014

THINGS FINISHED

Pinoy Boat Yard
Port Carmen, Cebu
Philippines

The boat projects have been moving along. Some quickly and other on the slow side.

Kathy has continued on with her sewing. First finishing the back cushions for the cockpit. Next it has been making padded covers for our cockpit table and the saloon one too. Now when I have to use the saloon table for a work area the pretty varnished table will stay that way. She also has redone our old back shade that stretched from the old bimini to the arch. It used to attach with a zipper but with the new hard top we gone to a lift the dot system. Next was a new front shade replacing one I had sewn back in 2007. She has been busy.

Our old bow pulpit has been showing it's age with several cracks along the various welds. I spoke to Alex, the welder here, regarding fabricating a new one using the tubing from our old bimini. he said no problem. the project was begun on Monday morning and finished and installed by Wednesday noon. We even had him add brackets for a seat. Now I just need to locate more of the old teak stored under our bed to finish that up. As I said some things move quickly.

On the slow side we are still waiting for the front enclosure being built by Hyde sails to be finished. We had hoped it would be done last week but there was a small fitting problem so it went back in for the correction to be made. We are looking forward to it fitting correctly this week and then I can install the fittings. the rest of the enclosure will wait until after Kathy returns from her states visit with more material.

On the domestic front it took about ten full days before Blue cat finally accepted our new crew member who we have named Chica or little girl in Spanish. This is the same name as the first cat we had aboard back in 2001. that Chica we had gotten on Cuaraso [sp] in the Caribbean. That Chica jumped ship while we were at anchor in Acapulco. Now that there is acceptance it seems that blue cat is lots more active for her age of twelve.

So things continue on here. Kathy is busy getting ready for her trip home. We are making lists of things not available here for her to buy and bring back. There is also the list of projects for me to complete while she is gone, they will be the ones that create the biggest messes. First on that one is repainting the vinyl ceilings, I'm not sure after that but something.

The weather has been very hot lately with daytime temps in the 90's and little or no wind. We keep a constant lookout on the weather and are happy to see no adverse systems in the immediate future that being the next three days.

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KATHY AND CHICA

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COCKPIT TABLE AND NEW CUSHIONS

FRONT SHADE WITH LIFT TO SNAP FASTENERS

KATHY'S OUTSIDE SEWING STATION

PADDED TABLE COVER

PULPIT REMOVED

THE OLD PULPIT

WORKING ON THE NEW

ALEX FITTING

NEAL HAND POLISHING

NEW PULPIT INSTALLED

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

NEW CREW MEMBER

Pinoy Boat Yard
Port Carmen, Cebu
Philippines

Once again it's been quite awhile since our last update but when there is little to report on I just don't get to motivated to write. Today we added a new crew member so I am somewhat inspired. About a week ago two perhaps 4 to 5 week old Tabby cats were abandoned here. One of the other yachtie ladies took to feeding them and today Kathy brought the female, as yet unnamed home to the good ship Po oino Roa. The male has been adopted and taken home by one of the yard carpenters. So once again we have two cats. The old lady of the crew "blue Cat" is not to happy as yet but with a bit of time we believe they'll get along.

Back to other news we have made two overnight Cebu trips for grocery shopping with the long bus ride we prefer to go in one morning shop stay in a hotel shop again the following morning before returning to the boat. It's nice to have an air conditioned room and meals out. It's affordable with the room at $40 US and meals from $10 US for breakfast and lunch to our extravagant $30 US for dinner for 2 which includes Kathy's wine and my beer. The grocery items consist of the ones we are unable to get here locally.

Boat work has continued but at a some what slow pace. I was a bit lame with some sort of stomach difficulty for a little more than a week. I have managed to finish the re-build of the forward head new parts in the toilet along with several coats of new bright white paint. The toilet work was so much fun I also did a cleaning out of the hoses and joker valve in the aft one.

The folks from Hyde sails have been making their weekly trips working on the bimini enclosure. We have had only one small drawback as the clear window material that we have been carrying around for the last ten years had become defective with bubbles in the laminate. Luckily Hyde was able to supply us with some.

Things continue to progress along. Kathy has even scheduled her trip back to the state for visiting and shopping in the land of plenty. She'll be off on the 12 th of May for a months stay while I'll stay and take care of the cats and continue with the everyday boat stuff.

One further note as I've said in the past the Philippines is the land of typhoons and tropical storms, we have just had another near miss. We have watched for the last week as a system built and started to move our way then only to dissipate from a tropical storm yesterday. It's still to the east of us and over warm water but regeneration does not appear favorable.

What follows is a varied selection of photos.

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