Before Miriam left for her boatbuilding course at the Boatbuilding Academy in the UK, we planned to do some repairs. The first thing to do was sailing Magayon II from Puerto Galera to the boat yards in Papaya Cove.
Sailing to Papaya Cove
24.-26. May 2019
After getting a quotation from the Papaya Cove Yacht Charter and Services, which we found to be a bit on the expensive side, Miriam and Martin sailed Magayon II from Puerto Galera to Papaya Cove.
With the wind from the back we made good progress and reached Matabunkay before it got dark. We anchored in the bay and had a simple dinner with a backdrop of some fantastic cloud formations during sunset.
The few miles until Papaya cove we covered quickly the next morning and arrived at the boatyard around lunchtime. After a perfect docking maneuver we emptied the hulls, finding lots of rusty canned goods cans left over from over a year of adventures.
Since the boat lift did not operate on weekends (later we found out it does with additional payment), moored her at a big buoy that belonged to the boatyard.
Mavic and Miriam came back two days later when the boatlift became available to lift her out of the water.
(Video for lifting here)
This would be our new workshop for the next couple of weeks.
Repairs
The main reason for the yardstop was the spent antifouling, painting the cross beams and the cockpit, which were still only primed, fixing the top light on the mast, and to repair the hole in the port hull, which we had fixed temporarily on the beach of Pandan Island. But having her out of the water it provided also the opportunity to finally fix the worn put locating blocks and do some other repairs and improvements. This needed several steps:
Purchasing materials
In PGYC they had warned us when we said we would bring the boat to Papaya Cove: „You have to bring everything you need.“ It turned out that the yard had blue International Antifouling. We still had the white Du Pont paint bit we needed primer and consumables. So Mavic did another visit to Du Pont.
Step one:
Lowering the mast and disassembling the boat. Before giving the parts to the boat yard team for pressure cleaning, priming and painting, we worked out a unique way to fix the locating blocks. Protected from the epoxy by packing tape, the bottoms of the cross beams served as moulds. The cross beams were re-fitted and then an epoxy / milled fiberglass mixture was injected into the worn out sections with a seringe through holes drilled through the locating blocks, creating a new, perfectly matching block. Over two weekends, All six inner blocks were repaired using this method.
Step two: Repairs
The cross beams, cockpit and outboard motor bracket were removed and given to the yard people for painting. During this time we fixed the whole in the port hull, replaced the totally rotten electric cable inside the mast, and did a few other, minor repairs.
We did want to launch here and sail Magayon II back to Puerto Galera before Miriam would leave for her 10 month boatbuilding course in the UK but due to several delays caused by weekend days with heavy rainfalls (after all it was Typhoon season) we got delayed quite a bit. So Mavic and Miriam went back a few times during the week without Martin to do some more work.
After having completed the repair jobs we went on home leave. We left the boat assembled, ready for the final job.
Step three: Antifouling.
We had subcontracted this, together with the paint job, to the yard. We had hoped that after returning from home leave six weeks later this would have been completed, but it hadn’t. Only primer was applied but not yet to the whole hulls. The reason was that two lashing pads, where the screws were removed for painting them, had become loose and the yard people had not found it safe to lift the boat for moving the stands. So we re-fitted the screws and hoped the next time we came the job would be finished.
We installed the new gib sheet travellers.
Step four: Relaunch
Raising the mast and relaunch. This went well with the help of 8 people from the yard. The boat lift, this time on a weekend, pit her back in the water the same day. Again, the motor did not start. We finally found the problem. The after market fuel hoses of the tanks have an inner lining that got dissolved and clogged the line of one tank. When trying to fix it martin dropped the fuel connector of the motor into the tank, so I had to be taken back to Los Banos for repair. The boat yard dinghi towed us to the anchoring grounds. We dropped both anchors at around 6 meters and hired two of the guys from the yard to watch over the boat.
Return to Puerto Galera
October 26-27, 2019
Finally, 5 months after arriving in Papaya Cove, it was time to move Magayon II back to Puerto Galera. There would be the 2019 PGYC All Souls Regatta on the weekend of November 1-3 and of course we would not want to miss that.
We hired Meng, our boat boy from Puerto Galera and Skipper Jose for the transfer. After stocking her up and getting the fuel tanks Martin had forgotten in Los Banos delivered with some delays, they set sail at 5:30 on Saturday morning and reached Puerto Galera in the late afternoon.
