A long time ago, I wrote about our dilemma with our upcoming boat work.

We had choices to make, and they would have a significant impact on what our next 12-18 months would look like.

Since then, the blog took a bit of a back seat while things got a little intense. So it’s only now, as we begin to come up for air, that I have time to update you.

In short, we decided to proceed with the boatwork in Phuket, Thailand, and split the two major projects (teak decks and Hardtop Bimini/Dodger, hereafter called “The Roof”) across two major contractors, with the hope that they could work concurrently and each finish their jobs in two months, allowing us to depart for the Indian Ocean in February.

You can see where this is going to go, can’t you? If I know you (and given the tiny audience of this blog, I probably do) you’ll be shaking your head at the wide-eyed innocence and naiveté of our not-so-young, really-ought-to-know-better-by-this age, hero.

Yup, [spoiler alert] I was hopelessly optimistic and our best laid plans ganged aft agley (Check out Robbie Burn’s masterpiece “To a Mouse” for the origin of that phrase).

Somewhat predictably (unless you’re me), the contractors didn’t play nicely together, and while one of them was excellent, the other turned out to be both incompetent and a crook.

Which, and let’s be brutally frank about this, is not a great combination in someone to whom you’ve entrusted $25,000 and your plans to sail around the world.

The key part of my description of him as incompetent and a crook is the words “and a”. At least if he had been simply an incompetent crook, we would have had a chance. But no, he was both woefully incompetent at the work, AND also a world-class lying, blackmailing, untrustworthy, thieving bastard.

Our good friends Andrew and Leslie from S/V Sonrisa made the mistake one day of asking how it was going. After I’d finished ranting about our contractor, Andrew sent me this link and said I reminded him of Clark Griswold.

Anyway, you get the picture – I’m not a fan.

Sadly, incredibly strong libel laws in Thailand prevent me from naming and shaming him (believe it or not, truth is no defence to the charge of libel or slander in this part of the world). So thereafter, we’ll have to refer to the charlatan as “The Thai Trump” or TTT, since the description above seems to work equally well for either.

So anyway, the teak decks were finished bang on schedule and budget in mid February, 6 weeks after we arrived.

And the roof, which was promised to be delivered at the same time, is still not complete as I write this in mid June. Yup, you read that right. Not. Even. Close.

At the beginning of the projects in December, we alerted those friends who we had agreed to meet in the Maldives, Madagascar and South Africa that our plans were at risk, and they all encouraged us to do what we needed to do, and not to worry if we had to reschedule. So by early February, as things were beginning to go somewhat awry with TTT, I provided them with an update:

• Plan A – Leave in February as originally planned – not going to happen

• Plan B – TTT delivers on his revised commitment to finish by Mid March – we proceed as planned through the Indian Ocean in 2019, albeit skipping the Andaman Islands and rushing through Sri Lanka to catch up with our schedule, or

• Plan C – TTT turns out to be an even bigger shitweasel than we had imagined, and we have to delay our plans for the Indian Ocean by a full year.

For Plan C, I laid out two options, the first of which saw us sailing the Gulf of Thailand (the eastern side of Malaysia and Thailand), and/or the Anambas Islands and Raja Ampat in North-Eastern Indonesia for 9 months, and the second of which involved us working for 6 months in Singapore.

This introduced a new dilemma – going back to work less than a year after we stopped was not very appealing, but on the other hand, it would restock the cruising kitty and allow us to keep our skills and CVs current.

As you know by now, TTT did indeed turn out to be even less competent, and even more of a crook, than we had hitherto imagined (something else he has in common with Trump), and so Plan C came to pass.

Except it didn’t.

It turned out that Singapore was a busted flush. We were way too honest with the potential employers we met or emailed, letting them know that we would have only 6-9 months to spend there, and so we would be ideal for interim or contract roles. It turns out that the Singapore government doesn’t encourage short-term roles, and so it’s nigh on impossible to get a visa for such a short period of time.

Ah well, not to worry, there’s worse outcomes than having to spend an extra 9 months cruising around some of the most spectacular islands in the world, right?

You bet there is. And we found one of them.

We eventually left Phuket in mid April, with the roof unfinished. In fairness it was 90% done, and we had only paid 90% (although there’s a LONG story about how we got to that point which I won’t bore you with here). The outstanding work was mainly cosmetic, and we decided that TTT was never going to finish it, either because he didn’t want to or didn’t know how.

So we resolved to head down to Singapore and around into the Gulf of Thailand, stopping for a couple of weeks in Pangkor, Malaysia to have another contractor fix up TTT’s mess.

But when we were on the way there, we uncovered a new, much bigger problem with the roof.  We were caught in a storm, and the roof was doing a good job managing to drain the huge amount of rain falling on it, when suddenly we noticed water dripping through the light fittings!  Turned out they had failed to seal the internal sides of the “hood” (the bit that our massive sliding hatch slides into), so water was pooling in the hood prior to draining (as it is meant to), but then in the large swells as the boat was rocking a bit, the water was lapping up and draining through the unsealed sides, into the cavity that contains all the electrics.

So, that was a potential disaster – not just because the electrics would get ruined, but also water on the inside would affect the long-term structural integrity of the roof.  Naturally that became our major priority, and the other (more minor, cosmetic) repairs to the roof could wait.

When we got to Pangkor, the one guy who we wanted to do the work was willing to do it, but was booked up until September, so suggested we come back then.  

Bye bye Plan C!

If it had just been the original problems, we could have waited until then, and gone off to the Anambas Islands for a couple of months in the meantime, but the new problem meant we couldn't guarantee we’d still have a roof by then!  So we came up with Plan D, and proposed to him that he fit in the urgent job now, and defer the other ones until September.

He agreed, but pointed out that although it was about a week’s worth of work, it would probably take him 4 weeks to do it, as he’d need to fit it in for a few hours every few days between his other jobs.  We were just grateful that he would do it (it’s not easy fixing other people’s problems, especially given he’d quoted us for the original job in the first place and we’d decided to go elsewhere), so we settled in for a month here, and started tackling some other jobs.

In the meantime, it’s a nice place to be, with lots of other cruisers so a great social scene.

Then, last week (3 weeks into the 4 week program), disaster struck.  The bit of the roof he had cut off in order to access the sides that he needed to seal would not fit back on – he had warned us at the outset that this was a risk, as the fibreglass, which had been shaped into a curve when being built, might “relax” when it was cut off.  So we spent a few days talking through the options, and together came up with a plan for him to solve it.  The only problem?  It would take another 4 weeks, as he was now in the busiest part of his schedule.  

So, it turned out that Plan D was a goner too.

We’ve decided to make lemonade out of our lemons, and have booked a 10-day trip to Vietnam, and we fly out this Thursday, just in time for Jen’s birthday!! Yippee, we’ve never been to Vietnam before, so are really excited. 

The other plus side is that within the extra 4 weeks, he can also tackle the original roof repairs that we wanted to have done, so we won’t have to come back in September.  So the current plan is to come back from Vietnam on 30 June, have two more weeks here, and then set sail for Anambas.  We should be able to get 3 or 4 months cruising in before returning to Thailand in December ready for the Indian Ocean in January.

So all of that means that since mid December, we have had precisely 3 weeks cruising (from Thailand down to here), and 5 and half months in boat yards.  Not exactly the ratio of cruising to “fixing things” we had hoped for, but we’re feeling pretty confident that this will be the end of it.  

Famous last words, eh?