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Jan. 17, 2008 - HAUL OUT AT RATANACHAI
by Beth & Al Liggett

The boat was filthy! No, no, not with mold, mildew, green slime and grunge again. This time it was plain old DIRT! Well, maybe not just plain dirt; this was boat yard dirt. SUNFLOWER was hauled out at Ratanachai Shipyard in Phuket, Thailand. We'd been up on the hard now for about 3 days. We were making dirt. Everybody working around us was making dirt. The dirt part of it was unavoidable. But added into the filth on deck was a large component of fallout from the fish factory next door. I don't know what they burn for fuel over there, but it is not environmentally friendly. Nor are the noxious fishy fumes that this factory generates. Well, there was the deck - covered with soot. At least it wasn't greasy soot, nor was it ash, more like sand particles. I couldn't hose the deck because of the work going on down below on the hull. So I took my broom and dustpan and brushed up the deck. I think that is the first time I have ever "swept" the deck.

Al climbs up our good sturdy ladder. Note handrails.

We knew we were going to have to haul out to scrape and paint the bottom. It had been three years since our mega-haul out in 2004, and while the bottom wasn't a coral reef or oyster farm, the potential was there. Al had tied black plastic garbage bags around the propeller before we left the boat for the summer and that really helped control the growth. We both did some scraping and cleaning - on the waterline in particular - and then hired a friend with SCUBA gear to do a bigger scrape and clean of the hull.

Before and after the pressure wash. Can you tell which side is which?

There were three choices of boat yards for us to consider, and we had hauled at each of them before. We price-shopped all three options, but there were other factors bearing on the decision as well. Rebak Marina in Langkawi would give us the most latitude in deciding when to do this operation as we expected to spend most of the next five months in Langkawi waters. However, Rebak was doing a major repair to the hill just behind some of their hard stand which had reduced the amount of room for boats to sit after hauling out; therefore scheduling might be a problem.

These are Thai fishing boats rafted up in the fishing harbor where we hauled out. While waiting our turn we were rafted alongside - a fact which caused much amusement to the fishermen!

The other two boat yards were in Phuket, Thailand. We were going to be in Phuket for a few weeks in November, as good friends would be there for the week of Thanksgiving. One choice, Boat Lagoon, was where we had done our major refit in 2004. It has a nice atmosphere (it is part of a resort complex) and we know the service contractors who work there. The biggest problem with Boat Lagoon is working the tides. SUNFLOWER can only come into their channel with a 2.6m or greater tide. We only planned to spend a week out of the water. With Spring Tides occurring basically every two weeks it would mean we would have to spend an extra week hauled out - a considerable expense, and not necessary. Even for just one week Boat Lagoon was going to cost DOUBLE the price of either Rebak or Ratanachai - both of which were in the same ballpark with their charges. For these reasons Ratanachai was our choice.

Diver under our hull to set the cradle arms in place. They use a breathing tube for air.

Ratanachai is a fishing boat shipyard. Apparently, a long time ago a Chinese family migrated into Thailand and went to work fishing. The fishing prospered, and soon they had another boat, then another, and then so many that they finally formed a fishing company. But there was no haul out yard to service these fishing boats. So they built their own! Now the sons (grandsons?) run the operation servicing not only their own boats, but boats from other fishing companies, government vessels, yachts and super yachts too. Why? They have the equipment to haul large and heavy boats. (Incidentally, one of the brothers, Pro, broke away from the family business a few years ago and set up his own yacht servicing business - Pro Yachting. Pro and Jill are located at Boat Lagoon, and they were our main contractors for all the work we did in 2004.)

The "king" supervising his crew - line handlers and divers. Rat is seated in the background in case we need language help.

Ideally, you are given an appointment, you arrive at their slipway, the cradle is let into the water, and you are hauled. It didn't quite work out that way for us, because there was a very large fishing boat, heavily listing to port, sitting in the slipway when we arrived. We had to wait more than 2 hours. But in the end all was accomplished. Because we had hauled at Ratanachai back in 2000, all our measurements were on file, including photos of us in our cradle with chalk marks on the hull to show dimensions, placement of the arms, etc. So before we even get there, our own cradle is set up and waiting.

The power house and the big winch that does the cable hauling.

The "King" of the yard crew (one of the brothers) has his line handlers toss you lines to make fast the bow and stern on each side. Then you might as well go read a book because there is nothing else you need to do. The cradle is lowered into the water with 2 or 3 men astride who then dive into the water. (and this is a fishing harbor so it's YUKKY water!) These guys screw the cradle arms up into position, adjusting the pads, or adding small blocks of wood to give a solid fit. Meanwhile, the four line handlers are TOTALLY focused on the King who is giving them directions with hand signals, as it is their job to keep you centered on the cradle during the arm positioning. When the cradle begins to be pulled up the rails, the King sets up a tripod with a plumbob up in front of the boat as you come out of the water and makes sure you are not tilted to one side or the other but are sitting fair and square and upright.

You can see the "gate" in the rails. They jack up the cradle just enough to rotate the wheen and align it onto a perpendicular set of rails.

Once the cradle brought SUNFLOWER onto the level yard surface a ladder was brought up so that Al and I could disembark. I may have mentioned this before - I hate climbing ladders in boat yards, and more than one friend has had boatyard ladder related injuries. But I give the ladder of the year award to Ratanachai for having very stable ladders with wide steps as well as an extra set of handrails along the sides! It was time for the pressure wash treatment.

Pressure is the operative word here. The results were dramatic! All of the slime and black growth was washed away in the water blast and there was hardly a barnacle left. In fact, one of our friends with a wooden boat was pressure washed at Ratanachai, and it cleaned all the caulking out of the seams! He said he was angry at first until he realized how bad some of the seams were.

Al made chalk marks all over the hull to keep track of where he was painting. Otherwise, it is all the same color.

All the boats come out of the water on the main rails in the yard. After washing, the boats are moved to their working positions on side rails. There are "gates" in the rails to do this - I don't know what else to call them. It's all very labor intensive and seems quite awkward, but the men and are very competent and the equipment all works well. By the end of the afternoon we had been moved into position, ladder and all, just next to the office - quite convenient for us. A truck drove up and offloaded a huge pile of coconuts - drinking nuts. I went to take a photo and was instantly offered one. Didn't I want to take two? They also both told us that we were welcome to come and join the workers for the morning tea break - noodles would be served! One of the gals in the office speaks good English and this is quite helpful. She took my refrigerated and frozen foods and put them in the frig/freezer upstairs, as we have an engine driven refrigeration system that of course is turned off while we are out of the water. Another gal - her name is Rat (yes!) also speaks English and acts as liaison between us and the workers, the yard, or the machine shops. Rat would come every morning to ask what we needed or if there was anything she could do for us.

Al using the template he made to cut the holes for mounting the new instrument display heads.

We didn't have a big work schedule, just clean and paint the bottom, install the new transducers for the new instruments - depth and speed log, and get the bracket that holds the refrigeration compressor welded. There was a crack in it. We hired two men from the yard to wet-sand the bottom and scrape away some flaky stuff. Al found the transducer work to go easier than expected. He also mounted the new instrument displays in the same position in the cockpit as the old ones using a template he had made to get them aligned correctly. It was harder to remove the compressor bracket and put it back, as it meant shifting the whole engine a bit so that he could get at the bolts.

Life goes on. Because the sink turned is off I lower the dirty dishes in a bucket to the cradle platform and use the water hose to wash the dishes.

The problem with coming out of the water in a cradle on rails is that the boat is sitting about 4 feet off the ground. There is very little work you can do without climbing around on planks and their various support towers. Now if there's anything I hate worse than climbing ladders, it's trying to work while holding tools or paint or whatever in your hands and at the same time balancing on a bouncy board and trying to reach your work spot! Well, I got through it, but I wasn't real happy about it.

The painting itself is easily done. I do the waterline and about a foot below that, while Al rolls the paint onto the rest of the bottom. He uses a very small roller - about 4 inches long. This is more efficient than you would think. In fact, the Thais use these little rollers for just about all painting types of jobs. The first coat goes on and you can readily see the "holidays" showing through. I go around and recoat these voids. But then on the second coat you are painting red again over red. Al took a piece of white chalk and made marks all over the hull so he could see where he had been painting. We did 2 coats of paint then asked for the support stands to be repositioned before we did the third coat. Three coats of paint takes 15 liters of paint for our sized boat (42ft). The price of copper has sent the price of antifouling paint soaring. This is the first haul out where we have spent more money on bottom paint than for the yard bill!

One week of ladders and planks and sore muscles and grubby clothes. One week of tools spread all over the cabin - to say nothing about the engine pieces all over the floor too! One week of using a bucket at night for calls of nature. One week of sweeping the dirt off the deck each morning. And the haul out was over. We splashed, the engine started, the new depth sounder showed us feet under the keel (fewer than we would like) as we motored away, hopefully not to do that again for - well - another 3 years?