Fitting the walkway between the hulls and the cuddy

 Now that the cuddy is in position and hulls are joined together I need to make a walkway between the hull and the cuddy. The plan says "Glass a 2 inch by 1 inch timber at the gunwale " . Easily said but take a while to get it done especially I am working alone..It took many frustrating hours to get it right.

Short pieces of wood are used to force the timber to the hull while waiting for the epoxy to cure. Stainless steel screws are then screwed on from the inside of the cabin/hull.

Now one side is ready. Making the right hand side walkway wouidl be easier as I now know the trick!

Tasek Kenyir 2014 (Sept 2014)

 Last month I got an email from KC Foong who stays in New Zealand that he might be coming back for a couple of days . Then another email says he will be coming home and would like to visit Tasek Kenyir.   Ok... no problem I will organise that trip. I have been camping quite a few times in the lake and enjoy going there. The size of this lake is about 250 sq miles which is bigger than the island of Singapore.

First of all I do not know the adaptability of the ladies on a camping trip so the idea was to hire a houseboat so that we have a comfortable platform. What I did not realise is that the dates we had chosen were a long weekend in Malaysia and most of the houseboats had been booked much earlier on. Only one boat is available and that is a huge 14 berth boat so we can almost have a double berth each (there are only six of us). So on the appointed date 13 Sept Heng Yuen and wife , KC Foong and Soon Peng started driving from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of the morning  while I and Cheong started at 0700 hrs from Chukai. By 1100 hrs we were at the Power Station jetty offloading things to the houseboat.

 

I took along my Boosese Scout sit on kayak to enjoy some paddling in the lake. KC Foong is also another keen kayaker so I have company. Too bad I could not bring along one more kayak otherwise it will be good fun .

 

Our first destination is Langsir waterfall . Going at 3.5 kts it took us about 2 hrs to reach the waterfall. While on the way the avid and hopeful fishermen were preparing their tackles in the balcony of the boat. (I had declared I am not a good fisherman from the start!)

 

There were three other boats near the waterfall and they were very noisy so after a good swim at the waterfall we decided to continue our journey to Petang Island.

KC was having good fun with the kayak . He tried fishing but it must have been the bright signal yellow colour that were scaring away the fish so we have no fish for the cooking pot.

 

However the baotman En Karem was kind enough to put in a net and we got some real good eating lampang jawa for food. 

The second day was a trip to the Kelah Sanctaury. In fact this is always the highlight of my trips to Kenyir. I must say the sanctuary is well managed and there are strict enforcement on the protection of the kelah fish that breeds in abundance naturally in the clean water of the Petang river.

Plenty of kelah fish here to give you a massage !

The water here is really clean and unpolluted. There is a ranger assigned to each group and the sanctuary only accepts 80 guest per day. It closes from Nov to Feb every year.

En Karem our friendly boatman.He hails from a village that is now submerged by the water of the lake. When not at the helm of his houseboat he collect wild honey. All of us ended up buying a few bottles of really good wild honey from him.

Somehow we did not manage to get fish here . It could be our baits were of the wrong type or the fish are scared of strangers!

 

However, I managed to get a 5 kg Patin fish when I used the correct bait. This bait has the Bank Negara governor's signature on it !.

On the third morning I kayaked round the island of Petang and it was good fun. I hope my fellow friends will come back to the lake for another visit soon....this time a strictly kayaking and camping  trip!

Visiting an old flying pal ....Andrew Lian

I first get to know Andrew Lian in 1983. That was the time I was instructing on ultralights. He came in as one of the volunteer instructors and I gave him a check ride on the Quick Silver MX2 Ultralight. I found this uncle to be very well coordinated and can really fly the machine by the seat of his pants. We became instant friends and I got to know he was a Simulator instructor in Singapore Airlines. In the simulator he flies the Boeing 707 , 727 and B747.

In the early days he would fly up to KL to fly ultralights on the weekends and he stays with me quite a few times. Likewise whenever I am in Singapore his home was always open to me. At one point of time somewhere in 1987 Andrew was encouraging me to join SIA as an airline pilot. He arranged for me an informal chat with his nephew Gerald who was at that time a training captain on the 747 fleet (Today I was told he is the VP ops in SIA!). Well I could not agree on certain terms and stuck on to flying helicopters.

Andrew is almost 90 years old and when I visited him in Johore he is still very much alive when we talked about flying. His favourite is instrument flying and he had derived some short cuts to master instrument flying. To the younger pilots who had flown with me many of the short cuts that I talk about in flight are from this great man!

One of the ocassion that I remembered most was when Andrew was an instructor in Kuching in the 1980s. In those days the ultralights had no intercom so the students would have to be thoroughly briefed before the flight exercise. One of the ground handlers after listening to Andrew briefing his students many times decided that he can fly..so when Andrew went away for lunch this ground crew took off and bounced back (a hard one but he survived!)

Today Andrew is still trying to master flying the Bell 206 but on the Microsoft Flight simulator! Old pilots never die...

Of course his son Dennis is also a pilot but for a career he has chosen motor racing!

Fitting the Mast Beam

 The mast beam supports the mast when the boat is ready. There are three portions of the beam  It also holds the central cuddy in it's position. When the cuddy was being built the central portion of the beam was built together.

First of all the position of the holes to be cut on the cuddy had to be carefully drawn. One left and one right rectangular hole to fit the beam had to be cut. The left and right section of the beam had to be able to slide through the holes. The side of the hulls had to be trimmed so that there is a perfect fitting of the beam inside and out.

 

By now I get to understand why the plan calls for "fit when assembling". This section joins the mast beam and the cuddy (the unpainted portion of the cuddy)

Glass joints are applied both on the inside and outside.

 

Of course there is a lot of preparation work to make the glassing operation a smooth one.

Picture shows the left mast beam resting on the hull and being glassed.

More glassing later on..this time attaching the beam to the hull. When the left side is completed, work starts all over again on the other hull. the beauty of constructing a catamaran. Always got to work twice!

100 plus Km of Cycling in Wintery Melbourne

 My mission was to see how my son is getting on in Monash Clayton . I took along my faithful Dahon Mu 8 folding bicycle along as I always develop "Cyclenintis " disease when I see nice trails and I don't have my bicycle.When I was in Melbourne I put up with my good friend Max Tan in Bundoora. The afternoon of my arrival was spent exploring Bundoora with my bike. i was specifically looking out for garden equipments and I was not disappointed.

 

The second day I decided to cycle from Bundoora to Clayton. Using the iphone app Cycle Lite I was navigated to Clayton via two very interesting trails. The distance is about 40 km through the Darebin Creek trail and the Gardenier Creek trail. This mean I actually spend about 95% of my time passing through various parks. Absolutely minimal traffic. This coupled with a cool 12C temperature makes it an interesting ride.

 

The trail was well marked and there is little chance of getting lost. I made numerous stops along the way to enjoy the good view.

 Somewhere near to Clayton (in Oakland) I saw a homebuilt boat. It looks like it is in the late stage of construction.

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The beauty of a folding bicycle is extreme flexibility. I do not have to ride back to Bundoora. Max came over and fetch me and my son back to his house. Plus we had a good dinner with some friends.

The next day I had my new recruit Alwin to come along for the ride to Arthur's Creek. We borrowed a seldom used bicycle from Max Tan

The ride to Arthur Creek from Bundoora started on riding along the highway. However we decided to use the pedestrian path instead as I saw trucks speeding along the highway. Poor Alwin's borrowed bike had a severely unbalanced rear wheel and was wobbling along.

 After an hour we met Max overtaking us so we hitched a ride on his van until we reach the secondary road going to Arthur's creek. Cheated about 5 km! Once we were on the country road it was good cycling again.

 At Arthur's Creek we met up with another Tan who stays in a hobby farm. We were given a tour of his farm and his wife cooked a good luch for us. Thank You...

 

Fire is a constant danger in this part of Australia but for today the risk is low.

Again we took the van back to Bundoora. I had a dinner appointment with some of my classmate in Melbourne. 

Day three... started with going to the CBD to meet up with my nephew Jun Wey. The bike was with me but we locked it and did a foot tour of the CBD. Later we took a train back to Clayton.

Over the ne4xt two days it was exploring the suburb of Clayton by bicycle. I went over to the airport and the coastal area near Clayton

Finally I surrendered the bike to my son Alwin.  Hope he takes good care of this bike. The total pedaling distance in Melbourne is about 120 km only. Not much but a lot of fun.

Joining the cuddy to the cockpit

The heavy stuff now. manouvering and positioning the whole cuddy to be joined to the cockpit which had earlier been joined to the aft beam. Real heavy. Have to rely on simple since of using car jacks and metal rollers to position the cuddy.

 The cuddy were positioned on 44 gallon drums. I got this idea from the previous builders.

 

The cuddy had to be positioned that there are no gaps otherwise the epoxy will not stick. In my haste to do it fast i had to redo this process...Less haste more pace is very true!

 Strips of biaxial and 600 gm mats were readied for the job.

 First on the outer portion. Had to sand down the portions that needs to be glassed. This is the easy part.

 The back breaking part is at the bottom !

And the sides where I had to squeeze in to work! It is done now ..Just the cosmetics later on.