In Hong Kong commissioning "Pikorua"
We are tied up to a barge in Kwun Tong typhoon shelter which is along side the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong. We don't have the luxury of a "normal" marina as in the western world, no power or water connection and a very large construction site 200m away bang poles into the ground all day! The only place to tie a tender to if we go ashore is a concrete wall covered in barnacles, not a good match with inflatable tubes so we have to use the local sanpan (water taxi) whenever we want to go ashore.
Commissioning any newly launched boat always has a long the list of jobs to get ready for the maiden voyage. It seems you tick jobs off the list and all of a sudden there are replacements at the bottom of the list!
We are now at a stage where virtually everything has been ticked off that list and we will be ready to depart. This is where the change of country "ownership" of Hong Kong has meant more red tape.
Last time I cleared out of here it was the usual 24hrs notice to all the departments. Now we need to give 72hrs notice for the boat to depart and 24hrs for crew clearance. Another "not ideal"!
Weather has not been kind either. Cyclone season officially finished on 1st Nov but someone forgot to tell the weather gods. 6 cyclones went through this area one after the other within a month.
We are trying to get across the narrow channel between Hong Kong and the Philippines but there has been constant gale force wind or wind gusts and/or 3 to 5m beam seas. Not ideal conditions you want to test out a brand new boat for the first time. So we wait for at least reasonable conditions.
We had heavy rain the other day after a few days of bad smog. The end result is seen in the picture below. Amazing the amount of black crap that dropped onto the boat. We have been trying to clean it off with gelcoat cleaner and any other items we had onboard. The worst of it comes off with a lot of elbow grease but hard work.
We are looking forward to getting moving.................
Mate - you wouldn't believe this, but this morning I was re-reading my blurb that I was writing of our trip. I had a dream during the night and had this super strong urge to relive some of the memories. Bleedin' amazing I tell ya'. :-) :-) There's still so much to fill in (we were still heading towards Brisbane when I stopped writing, and there is so much to write about our 'pre-departure' time). I'm going to get onto that when I have time - meanwhile we're cracking on with Bertie the Bus hoping to finish him over Christmas. Take care mate. Love ya' G n Vxx
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