She's back! Look who's back! I know I'm back! Oh it's so good to be back I
can't tell you how good it is to be back
What it is is it's coming home because now after 11 years of living aboard
Esper she is completely our home and our family is him, me and her... she's down below
having a sleep at the moment, our cat Millie, and I've really missed this, I
really have. I've had a hard time back in England but here I am now and raring to
go for our passage south to continue what we started. And on that note Jamie what
have you been up to while I've been away? I well l've have been super busy you know. I
did some shopping... What's interesting about that?! Well do you remember a couple
of weeks ago we visited the famous view restaurant and we talked all about local
dishes of course sometimes you crave those comfort foods that you're used to
from back home and trying to find some of those things in the supermarket's
here is nigh on impossible. Yeah. There's about a million shopping malls here in Lumut
I've lost count of how many there are, there so many. So this is the first one
this is Giant or should that be 'giant', because Giant is a French hypermarket and that's
what we got here so this is the entrance, first thing we see when we come in here
is it extra extra extra extra large shirts. I think that's a little bit too
big for me my brother
I guess it's like any supermarket and you got to find your way around and get
to know the layout keyboard for each of these place you to put for some reason I
think they've ended up in the ladies best section snacks we've bear-like have
a snack over there this is a local thing that I absolutely love I imagine they
are lower in sugar and cholesterol than peanuts and what having Chris and crisps
broad beans onion no garlic flavor I tend to buy a lot of these at a time
watch out though because these things tend to make you fart not a ketchup not
so ketchup not so ketchup I forget you like excuse me where's the tomato
ketchup oh they smart a ketchup it's not to
catch up it's not a ketchup it's Martha ketchup tomato ketchup can I say ketchup
tomato ketchup do you know how much sugar there isn't enough to catch up
I have never ever been able to find vegetable stock cubes
anywhere from Southeast Asia anyone out there and Southeast Asia knows where I
can find vegetable stock cubes please let me know so tell me where is the
vegetable stock cubes you have beaker salt yep yum-yum-yum yes regional easy
peasy lemon squeezy
behind me is a naughty section but it sells beer basically it sells
beer and wine at hugely extortionate prices a case of Carlsberg is going to
cost you 130 a ring get that 50 under that's about 20 25 quid approx there's a
lot of money you know for a country that loves using the bum wash there's a
surprisingly large selection of toilet paper on offer here
I have been attempting to fix the VHS you know the little handheld transmitter
thing kept cutting out nightly and it's not the sort of thing you could do
without when you're going down the Malacca Straits I need to fix it so I
had to look at it to see what I could do so why am I wearing this ridiculous
thing in my head well you may laugh but this I picked up from a supermarket
it's like a big miners work light nothing subtle about it at all it comes
with a recharger and it is really good because it gives a nice spread of light
but it has a spot in the middle which is also useful for when we're in the dingy
at nighttime as well so it's very good so what's happening is is that as we
pull this flexible cable away from the unit which is there the further way you
put it the less likely to push the talk button is working so we end up having to
use it like this we kind of then write down like that and it's the only way
that we're able to use it at the moment I thought perhaps originally it was the
actual push-to-talk button itself but I don't think it is and I haven't I've
never taken this apart before but you can see that connection there I don't
know if that is designed to actually be taken out easily
I've never taken this unit apart so I don't know that's what I'm kind of
hoping but the problem is at this end and more than likely it is because this
is the bit that gets the most amount of abuse so there are five screens here
which I've got to take out circuit board inside looks ok so that seal comes off
push the top button is here actually focusing
that's which didn't seem to be any loose connections there at all bollocks
so did you fix it then no I couldn't fix it it's all encapsulated because it's
waterproof so everything is you can't take it apart no well could you I
brought this down isn't it hahaha a spare yeah so this is the icon spare
part so you can't really take these things apart because it's all been
Weatherfield so you just buy a new one great I'm just a bit of solo sailing I
saw
I broadcast it live on Facebook so we streamed it as we were wearing anchor
from one language to the next so that was pretty cool and it was nice to be
able to chat to people in real time and we keep talking about life streaming and
we say we're going to do a proper livestream on YouTube which we are the
problem is right now in this marina we're in a bit of a basin and so we just
can't get decent internet connection so I think the first one is going to be
perhaps to anchor as we make our way down to a court Dixon yeah it's really
excited looking forward to doing that we'll do in down below and then some
action stuff all kinds of stuff art we hopefully so you've been pretty busy as
well since you've been back yeah in between sleeping and catching up on the
jetlag yeah there was one question that keeps coming up all the time it's a
funny old question isn't it so we thought we'd answer it within this video
yes it is all about washing laundry I guess it's it's quite interesting in
that of course we don't have normal washing facilities like you would on
land no we don't and in it for us it's a no-brainer but of course if you've never
been on a boat then it's a I think a very valid question so how do you do
laundry on a boat well that's easy with one of these family though this isn't
ESPA and we don't have one yet so that means we're left with hand washing which
we have to do on the boat most of it I do down here in in the galley using the
sink cause it's a bit cooler down here for larger items like sheets or towels
or most of Jamie's clothes we use a bucket on debt I fill it with water fill
it with their detergent and then once it's in there I just leave it to about
half an hour or even an hour and let the Sun the water in the detergent do their
job and while we're talking about towels here's a big tip get rid of all those
Terry tails those huge bath towels that you may have used on land and swap them
swap them for these these are Turkish flat towels they fold up really small
they dry really quickly and they do exactly the same job they're brilliant
one other little tip to minimize the amount of laundry you have to do every
time you have a shower wash the clothes you're wearing at the time in the shower
it really helps drying laundry in a warm climate like this here in Malaysia is
pretty easy but you have to get it out of the boat Niihau to range it around
the decks on how I really like these they come in loads of different shapes
and sizes and colors you just fold them out and you can get a whole load of
things on that I mean I have them sometimes just hanging up while we're
sailing and they get things dried very very quickly for bigger items that won't
fit on that swirly thing and then just use lines around the deck anything just
grab anything and just peg them on there that's absolutely fine everybody does it
and it's really useful but if are really big loads I tend to string up a line
around the front of the boat and I hang loads of things up that way and in this
kind of weather dry in an hour
but of course you don't mind holding on to your laundry for a bit wait until you
get to a marina or town and get someone else to do it for you
then there was that great big object we had to order in the UK and I had to then
log back in the luggage wasn't there yes that's our new fuel filter and water
separator to recall 500 and we've decided to put a new one on the engine
the old one was pretty old and not so efficient and was leaking so it was a
good planter to change it it's my first day back on the boat and just getting
used to the heat here but already Jamie is up to some maintenance at sort of see
what he's doing Jamie what are you doing exactly please well you very kindly
brought back in your luggage a new fuel filter and water separator delicately
wrapped up in your knickers which if you're not careful getting it covered in
fuel as I measure this up this is the old one it's very old and it's leaking
and I just wanted something that was a bit more robust and it's mounted on a
bracket it's just an L bracket like this and of course typically the measurements
are different so I'm just taking this old back off this is our old filter can
you see that and okay you can see there's a significant difference in the
size but the most important thing is the mounting bracket here so I'm going to
get a new one of these made I could get it adapted but I don't like the idea of
adding a bit of metal on I want just one solid piece so I just need to take this
bracket off to make sure I get the correct measurements because as you can
see these bolts have bolted right down into the stringer here so the nice solid
connection so it's basically just replicating this but to the correct
measurement of new filter and we need to do it first thing in the morning to get
our stainless man to make this before we leave the marina which is hoping as soon
as possible it's basically and being when we get this done
just for the record could you talk us through what you're wearing Jamie yeah
well this is um special boat maintenance attire for the tropics very important to
have a tropical looking shirt on and nice nautical sail
type pants what the brits call the pants not Americans these are Underpants and
they're nice and breathable and flexible so I can bend into any position in them
and they're run yeahit's couldn't recommend it enough too hot for overalls
this is our new bracket for our fuel filter it's pretty testy pretty big just
painted it same color as the engine just to give it a barrier just to keep it
clean and also because of the electrics of the starter motor and yeah it's going
to put it in the one thing I didn't do was the offset the base because it's on
a stringer that's of an angle really this is going to sit at a slight angle
but I figured if the fuel filter doesn't work at an angle it's not going to work
out at sea so shouldn't make much difference and this is the new filter
and as you can see compared to the old one it's pretty big and inside here is a
10 micron filter so there she is in situ and just in case you're
wondering this here is a gravity filter so this is a centrifugal filter that
spins the fuel and the dirt collects in the corners of this little filter
something we picked up in Turkey so that's effectively our first filter I
think it runs through the air the main ray core which is going to be our I
guess our main primary filter now so there we are we've done this all done we
have it's been a long day a few days sorting everything out with it just one
more thing to do yep it's a celebratory beer down the bar before we leave one of
the really great things about Malaysia was certainly this side of Malaysia is
that you can buy your beers in groups is twos threes five depends whatever and
here you buy them in free which means you get them at a discounted rate if you
only have two of your three and you need to dash off somewhere that third beer is
hot and you can have it the next day so I've got my third beer from last night
tonight and the other really great thing about this particular bar is that