Post Covid Dining

Happy Hour onboard 'Ocean Magic'

As Malaysia re-opened, so did the population of the marina.  Folks had returned to their boats after Covid Cabin Fever and seemed much more social than before.

Unfortunately, like many restaurants worldwide, there were many places that had to shut down.  The same thing happened in Malaysia and some of out favorite places were out of business.

As it turned out, the giant Food Courts turned out to be our go-to places for large group dining. 

The Chinese (WDS) Food Court

 

The 'Looking Good" Food Court

Lunch at Nipah Beach, Pangkor Island

The Home Curry House moved into the building where Vasantha Bavan was located and kept their old hours of lunch and closed at 6PM.  That pretty much rules out Home Curry for dinner but they are considering staying open until 9PM which would be great.  So we really lost 2 good Indian Restaurants.  

Fortunately our good friends who own a Mom and Pop food cart in the WDS Food Court called Lodge's Indian Food Corner survived Covid.

Dave's Birthday at The German Restaurant

Being one of the remaining Indian places, their little cart ended up tripling their business.  They have lines of delivery guys from GrabFood (similar to Uber Eats in the US) waiting to whisk their deliveries away.

We took a rare day off and went over to Pangkor Island and ate at Nipah Beach.  It was a going away lunch for our Aussie friends Peter and Denise on REVERIE who were heading over to Indonesia and downwind.

The 2 main Western Food joints,  JOOKS 2 and CAPRI, were still in business mostly due to their cruiser and expat clientele. 

Brett's Birthday at Jooks 2

The best Thai food in the area is THAINESE which picked up a new, larger, and renovated corner venue due to the closure of the Malaysian joint that was there.  They will end up doing great.

Our new favorite Indian Food

A great lunch buffet place, D'WARISAN, had just re-opened while we were there and is doing great.  WAN'S Coconut Shakes, the best shakes in town, moved into the same building and is piggy-backing on the buffet.

This was the first time that we were in Malaysia for Ramadan.  Many places just stayed closed for the month and the ones that were open, started serving closer to sunset.  Many tables were pre-reserved for the fasting Muslims so we pretty much avoided those places since we didn't want to eat so late. 

Carlsberg Special Brew 6%

All-in-all, our food choices have become more limited but Covid closures did force us to find new places to go dining.  

Hopefully we will get good full menu Indian and Thai places up in the future.

Ending of a Looking Good Dinner

Tessilmare Rubrails on a Privilege Catamaran

Insert style rubrail

There are 2 types of rubrails.  One kind is a track with a slot that gets an insert. The other is a track that gets a cover over it.  The tracks are screwed to the boat. 

 

 

Cover style rubrail by Tessilmare

Tortuguita has rubrails down the sides and around the swim platforms.  Both were in terrible shape and were removed for the gelcoat spraying.  The rubrails that are on the sides have an aluminum track with a plastic insert.  The aluminum was deteriorated, the caulk had failed and dirt and algae were living behind the insert. We replaced these with Vetus EHARO60.

Original swim platform rubrail

Old rubrail removed from groove

The swim platform rubrails were an extruded white rubber that was screwed to the hull through a slot down the center which was then caulked to keep water out.  This is kind of a hybrid design.  These were also in terrible condition.  I researched all options and unless I wanted to have 500’ custom made, I could not find an easy option.

New rubrail has to fit in this groove

The big problem finding a replacement rubrail is that it has to fit into a recessed groove that runs around the perimeter.   

 

Rubrail on LUNA.  RADIAL 30

 

 

Lou on LUNA turned me on to the Tessilmare RADIAL rubrail but the one he used was a little smallish looking (30mm) but it did mount inside the groove easily.

Mounting and thermoforming the track

Well, of course I wanted bigger and didn’t care how hard it was to install so, I bought a sample of the Tessilmare RADIAL 60mm and came up with a plan, sort of.  Nothing ever goes as planned.

Bend the cover to get it on the track

The rubrail mounts on a track by bending the cover and feeding it onto the track.  It’s a neat design and there are many videos on youtube of installations on flat surfaces. 

The problem with installing it into a groove is that the cover spreads out when bending which keeps it from fitting onto the frame.

Mount and trim the cover

 

The first part was to mount and screw the track to the groove so that the cover would fill the groove as much as possible.  I actually installed the rubrail upside-down so that the long edge runs around the upper corner of the swim platform to hide the gap at the top.  The track had to be thermoformed with a heat gun and screwed in place so that the finished product wouldn’t have gaps.

Hold the bottom in the groove and pull the top back to access the screw

Now the fun part was to remove the track and mount the cover on it. 

Then the assembled unit had to be caulked and screwed into the prior drilled holes. 

Some thermoforming was needed on the cover around the compound corners.

After the caulk dried, the edges were taped and caulked.

Each hull took 8 long days to complete with the only real unexpected issue was that the track, being black plastic, expanded 6mm in the heat of the day.  This really caused problems getting the screws back in the correct place during the final remounting.  Nobody said it would be easy.  Especially me.

Finished product