Pitufa.at

Smurfy was having a great time at the Lav Garden Hotel, getting along with neighbouring cats (also ship’s cats) and having an occasional brawl with stray males. But one day all three of us were having sundowners up in the garden of the hotel, when a crazy, little female stray rushed at us: she beat up Smurfy and loudly demanded FOOD, FOOD, FOOD from us!!
We were impressed by her fierce fighter spirit, but we wanted her nowhere close our room (and the terrified Smurfy), so I doused her with a garden hose, when she attempted to follow us. She didn’t budge despite the cold water and from then on she was roaming around our room, constantly shouting loudly for FOOD.
Soon she discovered the flap in the window mosquito net we had made for Smurfy, I tried to fend her off with my hand over the gap, but she fought her way in–growling and hissing.

Once inside she became quiet and timid–she was clearly not used to being inside a house. I gave in and fed her–right next to Smurfy while petting them both and explaining to her, that she’d have to be nice to our tomcat, if she wanted to stay. Miraculously she seemed to understand and started charming Smurfy–playing chase, doing mock fights and even grooming him. Our strange, difficult only child had made a friend, so we decided to take the little one in. We named her Minnie Mouse, because of her mousy colour and miniature size: we couldn’t believe it when the vet declared her at least one year old, despite her weight of just 2.6 kg (!). Due to malnutrition as a foetus and kitten she won’t grow bigger than kitten size.

Once she had found a home, Minnie hardly ever went out again, stayed mostly inside day and night and only went out with us to sit on the terrace or to take walks in the garden. Despite her close attachment to us, she didn’t want to be touched or petted–not ideal (as Smurfy isn’t cuddly either), but we accepted her personality.

A month later, during one of our regular evening walk with the cats, we heard loud squeaking and noticed a dirty-white speck under some shrubs. A kitten–tiny, dirty, with just a stub of a tail. Feeling sorry for him, but not wanting to attract yet another feline, we tried to feed him far up on the property, but the little one was at first too scared to approach the food, so we just left it there. The next evening he was squealing again, for food, for his mum, for help–we started feeding him regularly and of course he soon followed us to the room, discovered the cat flap, stuck in his little head and caught a glimpse of cat’s paradise: Smurfy and Minnie lounging on the bed, their food bowls waiting in the back ground… Squeaky wanted a piece of heaven. Once more we tried to fight off the intruding snout, once more we failed. Smurfy was indifferent, apparently he wasn’t sure what that tailless, tiny thing was. Minnie reacted like someone who has managed to get on a life-raft and is fending off other swimmers with a paddle, biting and scratching whenever the kitten approached her.

For the first few days, the kitten was mainly hiding under the bed, just rushing out squeaking at meal times. Finally we managed to touch him–two days later he was climbing on our laps, sleeping in our bed, cuddling up with us, purring like crazy whenever he got any attention. At last a cuddly cat! Despite his charm, we knew we wouldn’t be able to keep him, so I started looking for a home–a fruitless effort in a country full of stray cats. We took him to the vet to deworm and vaccinate him and the vet estimated his age at 2 months (his eyes still had a hint of baby-blue, but were just turning orange).

So there we were, suddenly with three cats instead of one. We couldn’t leave one behind, but how would we manage logistics? How to provision enough for them? Where to store all that kitty litter and would they agree to all just use one litter box? We had brought Smurfy’s litter box to the hotel, but he hadn’t used it at all since we let him out into the garden after the first two days. Squeaky saw the box, climbed in and (much to our amazement) pooped in. He just house-trained himself without any explanation from our side! From then on he insisted on doing his business nowhere but in the toilet and we couldn’t persuade him to pee in the garden anymore. Minnie followed his example and started to occasionally use the toilet as well…

We wanted to have Minnie Mouse spayed, but couldn’t manage while we still all lived in the hotel in just one room. Impossible to keep the boys from playing and fighting with Minnie after a surgery and we also couldn’t close the cat flap to keep her in without locking the boys out. Therefore we waited with the surgery until the last week ashore. Then Christian moved to Pitufa with the boys, while I stayed with Minnie at the hotel for a bit after her surgery.
When I brought Minnie back from the vet still drowsy from sedation and in pain from the surgery, she cuddled up with me and purred for the first time since we had known her. She needed help, was clingy and grateful for my constant attention and has remained extremely affectionate ever since.

Three days later we moved to Pitufa as well, Minnie forgot all about being careful with her fresh wound, started exploring–chatting loudly about everything she found, clearly excited and happy. She had already been pregnant when she was spayed and at some level she must have known that she was supposed to take care of kittens, because suddenly she was showering our boy cats with motherly love and attention, licking their ears and looking after Squeaky like a mum.

For Squeaky the whole boat is one big playground. He’s delighted whenever he discovers one of Smurfy’s old kitten toys and is generally racing around most of the day exploring and playing. Smurfy is the only one who’s struggling with the transition from hotel to boat. He misses roaming his huge territory and can be quite cranky with us and the little ones. We hope that his new pack will help him overcome his disappointment and boredom…

After 4 months with Pitufa in the boatyard and us living ashore in a hotel we’re finally back aboard! There are still tons of project to finish, the boat needs tidying and of course we’re provisioning (and adding to the general chaos), but we’re incredibly happy and relieved to be back on our floating home. Life ashore really isn’t for us
To make things even more interesting, we have new crew! I’ll introduce them soon to you, dear friends and readers

…IF you’re good at looking away.
If you admire the blue sea (and avert your eyes from the masses of rubbish the rivers are sweeping out).
If you watch the funny, colourful buses and trycicles on the roads (and ignore the cloud of dust and smoke hanging over the road)
If you enjoy the cheap, little food stalls (and don’t see the mangy, starving, stray cats and dogs begging for food).
If you walk into the shiny malls (and ignore the outstretched hands of begging kids and the homeless man scraping a squashed fruit from the road and licking it from his fingers).
If you chat with the smiling cleaning lady (and don’t ask about her wages to find out she’s only earning 400 pesos a day, about 6 euros).
I have no filter. I see it all, take it all in and it weighs me down. Sometimes I feel so sad and heavy, I barely manage to drag myself through the day.
So we encourage people to use rubbish bins, take in some strays, tip our workers and try to stay sane and healthy.

Since we got back in the water, we haven’t had a day off:
Christian installed two gigantic solar panels instead of our old bimini. Unfortunately one of the panels arrived smashed, but we put them up as a roof anyway, while we’re waiting for the replacement panel. Yet another hiccup and delay…

Galley and bathroom were finished with pretty new countertops:



Then we changed the forestay: of course things didn’t go smoothly. First the old wire wouldn’t come out as it had been sikkaflexed in by some kind and foreward-thinking person in Grenada, then the new wire turned out to be a teeny bit too short. It took a whole day, but in the end everything worked out, thanks to many helping hands (merci, Thomas and Soraya for a whole working day!!)




AND we finally got rid of our old kerosene oven, ripped everything out of the gimballed oven to turn it into storage, did a thorough cleaning and installed an induction stove in the stainless steel plate!



Of course there’s a few dozen tiny jobs that still need to be finished, but all the big projects are done!!

Getting on the hard here is a fairly adventurous undertaking: At full moon or new moon (when the tides are especially high) boats go into a cradle in the shallow water, then when the tide is low the cradle is dragged up the ramp to be able to work on the boat. To get back into the water, it’s the same system in reverse…
We have accumulated lots of layers of antifouling over the last 18 years. Usually it was my job to sand off whatever was coming loose fairly easily and then we just slapped on the next coat… This time we used the opportunity to have a whole crew of workers, who took about 2 weeks to sand Pitufa down to the epoxy. First by hand, later with an orbital sander and then finally with the angle grinder and orbital sander to once more to finish it off.
We couldn’t get our beloved Carboline Alloy plus antifouling here in the Philippines (the only aluminium antifouling that has worked for several years so far) and in the end we settled for the only available antifouling for aluminium: Nexeon 710, according to PPG “an innovative ultra-low friction copper-free antifouling”, but mainly used for freighters . We’ll see how that’ll work.
Christian used the opportunity to check the cutlass bearing, always fun to get the prop off

Our two painters Genesis and Jay Ar spent two and a half months working on Pitufa, 6 days a week, but now they’re finished and–to be honest–I already miss having them around: especially while Christian was gone for a month, they helped me with all the tasks my ribs won’t allow, carrying gear around and picking up parcels. Thanks a lot!
They started outside (sanding and painting the deck, cockpit and transom) and then continued varnishing Pitufa’s woodwork inside from the aft cabin to the fore cabin, including lockers and floor! Finally they sanded, fillered and painted our (formerly) leaky water tank (we used a special food-grade tank lining).
We asked them to sign their piece of art on the last day

Living ashore has been quite a challenge for Smurfy: making feline friends (and foes), climbing trees, roaming the property at night–everything here is a first for him. We usually take a walk together early in the morning, then he spends the day sleeping in our hotel room, in the evening we go for another walk and after dinner he disappears for the night–running the mysterious errands only felines know about.

Fortunately the many local and stray cats that have their territories here get along quite well and it’s fascinating to watch their behaviour, relationships and hierarchies. Smurfy has a few acquaintances that get a casual nose sniff when passing, two friends he plays with and a few foes that get howled at, but fights are rare. It probably helps that Smurfy is larger than most of them (due to his high protein diet from kitten on) and suprisingly good-natured towards other felines (we thought he’d be a bully, given how often he used to pick fights with our hands and legs).
For some funny reason the numerous dogs that live here or just cross the property, are all terrified of cats and make a big detour when they see a cat from afar. Smurfy immediately caught on to that concept and gets a kick out of chasing dogs–no matter how big they are.

We’ve now spent almost 2 months in Zeke’s boatyard in Carmen. We’ve made great progress: Deck, transom and cockpit got finished just before the onset of the rainy season (phew) and are now sparkling white. We had a new bimini frame welded from aluminium pipes and our good old Yanmar got his 5000 hour service.

Now the work continues below decks:
We managed to hold on to our two painters who have been doing such reliable, high quality work outside (despite the high demand for workers here) and they are now varnishing inside! We emptied the aft cabin and head completely (we moved all gear from the lockers to the saloon–there’s not an inch of surface left and everything’s piled up high) and they spent a week sanding and varnishing there. Once the aft cabin is done, we’ll move all the gear back there, continue work in the salon and eventually all the gear that’s filling up the forecabin to the ceiling will have to move to the salon–you get the gist. And we have LOTS of stuff: in 15 years aboard we have accumulated everything we need for our jobs, hobbies, home-brew, spare parts, scrap material and of course sails…

In the meantime our carpenter has just started ripping out the galley in order to install new countertops and a new and better solution for the lids of our top-loader fridge.

There’s more demand than available workers, ordering parts is difficult and time consuming. Many boaters come here with huge projects and have complete refits done, so when we arrived, we were slightly shocked and disheartened to find that many of the cruisers already had been there for many months–in some cases years. We briefly considered turning around and just running away, but Pitufa was in desperate need for a major refurbishment that we had been postponing for years.
Now we’re glad we tackled the huge project! It’ll still take a while, but eventually she’ll look like new

Do you know the Queen song “I’m going slightly mad”? I’ve been humming and even singing this song more and more often to myself recently. I’m a quick, efficient person and I struggle with the concept of time in the Philippines and how complicated just every little errand turns out to be.
I’ve been having problems with my eyes, slowly getting short-sighted after a laser correction 20 years ago, massive floaters and veils in combination with the onset of age-related far-sightedness on top of that giving me headaches and making it impossible to get any work done on the computer. So I wanted to see a specialist to discuss options.
I called a clinic in Cebu and got an appointment for last Wednesday at 11.30. I went out for the bus at 8.30 am as it takes about 1.5 pothole-filled, dusty hours to get to the outskirts of town, then another half hour of stop-and-go to reach the city, add another hour to get from one part of Cebu to the other.
So I reached the clinic at 11, only to be told that the doctor was actually seeing patients at another branch today–this time I took a taxi. At 11.30 I was told to wait in line to receive a number. Then “Get back at 2″. I killed two hours in the vicinity (no time to run any meaningful errand), got back at 2 waited until 3 to see a doctor, a superficial examination, drops to dilate the pupils, another hour waiting, then another examination at 4 and the advice to get reading glasses–not the expert opinion I had hoped for. Plus there was no optometrist present at that day at the clinic, so I was told to come back another time.
Great, through rush hour in the city and with another bus up to Carmen I got back at 8.30 pm: 12 hours wasted.

I mean, why bother to make appointments when there’s a queue after all? Why not just give out appointments on the phone to patients staggered every 20 minutes, so you can simply arrive in time to the see the doc like in any other country??
The next day I was seen fairly quickly by the optician, had my glasses prescription made, picked frames, wanted to pay by card, but that wasn’t possible, even though the clinic does accept card payment–just not for glasses. The ATMs in the vicinity didn’t work, so I gave up.
Another attempt at a different optician closer to Carmen yielded more success. After about 2 hours I was at a stage where I could pick glass qualities with the two women behind the counter giggling and acting like they had never gone through their own lists before. My questions whether they could order daily contact lenses for me led to half an hour of phone calls, yes they could order but only big quantities, no actually just 2 boxes, no actually they were not available and did I have “a sample of my previous lenses”? What sample? Well, a photo of the box maybe, they asked!?! At that point I was looking over my shoulder to search for the hidden camera.
But no, no joke. Just the reality of trying to get things done in the Philippines…

While living on Pitufa we make water with the power of the sun and of course we also drink out watermaker water, so we don’t buy any water bottles. Having seen them floating as trash in the sea much too often and wandering over little islands literally covered in plastic trash, not buying one-way bottles is basically a religion to me
Therefore I was worried how we’d get drinking water while living ashore in the Philippines. Fortunately they have water dispensers everywhere! At the hotel as well as in the boatyard we order replacement containers every week for just about 1 Euro.
Even on the city streets we see people refilling their water bottles from slot-machines for a few pesos!
There are separate rubbish containers for plastic bottles and aluminium cans and I’ve seen poor people getting those items out of general bins, so there must be recycling centers paying for the material.
Yes, there’s still lots of trash around, but water dispensers and deposits on bottles are already great steps towards a cleaner environment!!

Our two paint experts from Zeke’s boatyard are making great progress: after putting on 2 layers of primer they have fillered the deck and are now sanding the filler before adding another layer of primer.
In the meantime we are catching up on all the steps we missed living aboard over the past years, taking packed tricycles and mini-buses to run errands and shopping trips in nearby Danao town, where poor people in rickety stands offer goods and repairs next to big malls displaying modern, shiny luxury frozen in air-condition. A trip to Cebu, the next bigger city, takes about 1.5 hours rattling without suspension over a myriad of potholes on good days, but with heavy traffic one journey can take up to 4 hours (as fellow cruisers told us). We’re also taking the opportunity to have some maintenance done on ourselves

When we bought Pitufa, the previous owner had just had the topsides repainted, but hadn’t got round to doing the deck. He gave us a small discount and the already bought paint. After sailing the boat to Croatia we got cracking–and soon despaired. Some patches came off easily, but the rest was impossible: the non-skid paint layer on top was rock-hard, the filler like concrete and the primer just smeared into the metal and resisted all attempts to get it off. We tried heating it up, we tried chemical paint stripper–nothing worked. We tried our best (and sweatiest) with our angle grinders, managed to strip the paint off the aft deck and cockpit and then ran out of steam.
We thought we’d never leave if we got stuck on this project and set out cruising with a patchy paintwork. On an aluminium boat the paint is just cosmetic, the bare patches weren’t big enough to slide on when wet (yet) and so we decided we were okay and kept postponing the project.

Now we’re finally at a boatyard where we can dive into big projects. We arrived at Zeke’s boatyard in Carmen (Philippines) two weeks ago and discussed our long list of projects with Zeke. They work on a come-first-serve-first basis, so everyone here has to show some patience. It’s essential to be at the briefing every morning at 7 to get jobs and workers scheduled for the day and to arrange orders. Many of the cruisers here have been hanging around for months (some for years!) working on big projects.

For now we’ve been proceeding quite fast: after just two days we already got a spot in the marina, where work can start (later on we’ll have to get on the hard). It was quite a challenge to slide Pitufa into her spot in the packed, little basin, but everything went okay The day after, we already got two workers to start on the deck project: Ideally we would have liked to have the deck sandblasted, but they can’t do that here and work by hand instead. It took our two workers seven full days of hard work in sizzling hot, dusty conditions to get Pitufa all shiny showing her bare aluminium deck! We couldn’t have done it without them.

Of course our floating home has become a complete mess with dust covering everything, tools out to add to the chaos and extreme sauna-like conditions inside with all hatches closed. No way we could live there. Fortunately we found a really nice room in walking distance from the boatyard with gardens, a restaurant and even a swimming pool! It’s a green refuge away from the dust and noise and chaos of the boatyard…

During long nightwatches the Pitufino is my best friend: Thanks to Christian’s boat-data gateway I can sit on the comfy sofa and still have the nav instruments in front of me on the smartphone. I can also track AIS targets, watch subtle changes in the wind direction/speed with the log function and even remote-control the autopilot with the phone! Of course I still go up into the cockpit every 10 to 15 minutes to check for lights, squalls, etc.

860 nautical miles was the longest passage we’ve done in a while. Ever since we got Smurfy we’ve avoided trips longer than a day or two, as he gets very impatient and bored and we constantly have to make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish–like jumping on the bimini while the boat is rolling wildly… We needn’t have worried, the weather was nasty enough for him to be cold and a bit scared and that’s the only time he gets cuddly (usually he avoids lovey-dovey attempts by his humans). On this passage we got more Smurfy love than usually in a month–having him curl up on our laps makes the whole squally sailing worthwhile

In the end the dreaded long-distance sail only took us 6 days with strong winds and a friendly current pushing Pitufa along.It was sporty sailing with many squalls, sail changes and torrential rain, but it was nice to see the miles ticking down at record speed with Pitufa doing her best daily run since the Atlantic crossing: 168 nautical miles in 24 hours is very impressive for our small, but heavy boat with her classic design and short waterline