Silver Tern Launch Day

Pre-Launch Days

In preparation for the launch, we have worked 7 days a week, 8-10 hours a day for the last 3 weeks (we used to take Sundays off). We are tired, sore and apprehensive. We assume that Silver Tern will float, that the local customs officials will be cooperative with the move to another boatyard, and that she will not get dropped or have her mast broken during the launch. We are also excited, but it is hard to get too excited while sleep-deprived. She does not look that different, but much of the infrastructure is now functioning and she is ready for phase II.

During this time we (mostly Pat) have applied 10 coats of paint to the bottom of Silver Tern. We (mostly Steve) have plumbed, aligned and wired the two Yanmar diesels. We have also installed bilge pumps, anchor windlass, deck hardware and a million other things. We now understand why boats cost so much new, there a just a whole lot of little pieces that have to go together in a very small space.

Launch Day

Our initial launch day was postponed a few days due to a typhoon that passed by north of here and made the seas too rough to work. This gave us a few more days to attend to last minute details. After days (months) of preparation, all was as ready as we could make it. Engines were started, the mast was rigged and much of our gear was stowed inside or lashed onto the deck. Silver Tern was finally launched September 29.

The launch itself took most of the day. It started with two huge cranes, one of which came into the boatshed so that one crane was at each end of the boat. From there, they attached straps around the boat and each picked up one end of the boat allowing a large flatbed truck to back underneath. Blocks were carefully positioned on the bed and she was lowered down onto the blocks. The truck then took the 48’ long and 24’ wide boat along a dirt road to the water. They maneuvered around tight turns, over really rough sections, and through some very narrow spots. At one point all stopped until another large crane could move a huge trailer that had been parked so as to leave only a 23’ wide spot in the road and allow us to pass.

By mid-afternoon she had been picked up off the truck and lowered into the

water alongside a very rough seawall across from a busy shipping dock. We tied her off, organized the gear, and arranged for one

of our boatyard workers to spend

the night on her.

After that, the truck went back to the boatyard and picked up the mast which we set down on the seawall next to the boat.

The next day Tim Mumby (designer of the boat) came down from his boatyard in Carmen and we stepped the mast. All went well until we found out that the pieces for attaching the upper shrouds and forestay (the stuff that holds the mast up)

were the wrong size. So, what should have been a 1 hour job turned into a 3 and a half hour hassle. We have had to jury rig the shrouds until we can get new pieces. For those of you who are familiar with this stuff, all of the lowers are fine, so the mast is stable for now.

In any case, we still had time that day to motor the 16 miles up to Carmen where we beached the boat. We are now waiting for the high tide at one thirty tomorrow morning to pull her up on the beach where she will sit for the next few months.

August '11 Boat Progress

Our boat is progressing faster now. Harwood's Shipyard is behind schedule and they really want our boat finished. So they are working overtime. The welding of the hull continues, and the stanchions, rails, chain plates, and deck hardware are being welded on. The welding of thin aluminum is time consuming because they need to be careful not to overheat a section which will cause it to warp and be deformed. They start by tacking pieces together and then go back and make longer welds, never remaining in one area too long.

Steve had some help starting the interior framing -building out the structural supports for all the interior furnishings, so it is going well. We have a friend from California, Sandy Tanaka, who came out August 8 to help with the electrical installation. It looks like we will finish the first phase by the end of August (we hope).

Up at the beach boatyard they are fabricating the interior gel-coat panels for us.They make one panel a day so it is a good idea to have a stack of them ready ahead of time. We will probably come home at the end of the summer for a break before the boat is completely finished and then return and continue on. It is more work than we thought and Steve will be kept busy learning and doing many new things.


Here is a view of our boat from the starboard side taken July 29. The hard bimini/dodger has been completed, the windows and ports have all been cut out and the seagull striker on the bow has been attached.
The workers are now finishing tasks that are harder to see, such as completing interior welds, fabricating daggerboards and rudders and welding on winch and mast bases.
We will have a raised cockpit seat to starboard and the primary visibility will be through the dodger windows.

We moved into a two bedroom unit in our apartment complex in Cebu City while Sandy is here. When we are finished at Harwood's, we plan to move about 40 kilometers north to Carmen, near the beach boatyard where we will relocate the boat, and work on the interior.

We rented the top floor of the only four story building in the small village of Luyang, a Carmen suburb, on August 15. It has a large living/great room that catches the breeze with the windows open, one bedroom, OK kitchen, and a large balcony with an oceanview. Why so early?- Well, the rent is $175.00 per month and it is the only place close by that we would consider living, so we grabbed it when it became available. Strange place, the Philippines, tools are about 50% higher than in the US, and made in the Philippines, even brands like Bosch are made here, hence have pretty poor quality. Wine is higher than the US, but good beer is cheap, so we are trying to change our beverage preferences from wine to beer, the hot weather helps, but wine is so nice with food (darn).

It turns out that while the boatyard that is building our boat did build two Mumby cats before us, they are still learning fabrication details, so Steve is spending a lot of time just making sure that things are done right. Being as he knows very little about aluminum, this is a real challenge. But the boat is getting built and she will be pretty amazing. Probably everyone who builds a boat thinks that way, kind of like everyone thinks their children are the most wonderful, but we spent so long looking for the right design and this particular one is so far in front of everything else around that we are pretty confident it will be a really good catamaran. Being as we have the time, and life here is so different that it is interesting and enjoyable, all is well- Except we miss B.C, families and friends, and are eager to fly back for a while and visit.

Now, in mid-August, we are just about finished with the interior framing (see above photos of saloon area) and are about to install the engines and deal with the last few bits and pieces of welding and assembly. Sandy and I will start the electrical and plumbing installation tomorrow. Rails and lifeline stanchions are getting installed and it looks like all the welding will be completed in a couple of weeks.



Galley framing- door leads to fwd cabin and head.

Stern rails for safety

Living in the Philippines

Well, we are adjusting well to life in the Philippines. We've found some good restaurants and eat out about half the time, paying a little less than US prices for excellent food. However, you can eat real cheap if you buy food from the street vendors. They serve warm stews (made fresh daily) from large pots and the locals can buy a meal for about 25 cents. This is important to many poor households since they don't have stoves and cook their rice over firewood.
The grocery stores are well stocked. We're fascinated by the many types of fish, both fresh and dried, that people use. There is good selection of fresh fruits and veggies available too, like jackfruit, pineapple, leafy greens and giant squashes. I made a vegetable stir fry the other night using Kang kong, the closest green to spinach I have found. I also wanted to use zucchini in the dish and bought something that looked liked it called sikwa. We looked it up on the internet and it's used for luffa sponges, but it tasted fine.



They sell the most flavorful sweet mangoes year round that are delicious fresh but are also dried here and sold at home (look for Philippine brand dried mangoes at Costco). Here is a picture of a commercial mango tree. Each mango is individually wrapped to resist strong winds and insect pests such as the mango seed borer which will devour the flesh as well as the seed.

This is a pretty amazing corner of the world and very religious. We were in the market yesterday evening when everyone was asked to stop for a few minutes of prayer that they read over the loud speaker. Currently in front of the Catholic churches are banners describing the evils of birth control. For a country with serious overpopulation to celebrate a family welcoming it's 12th child seems a bit strange to us outsiders. The government is trying to pass a reproductive health bill that would provide free birth control for everyone. The church equates birth control with abortion and opposes it.

We are doing well here, keeping busy putting out fires right and left at the yard and quickly learning the driving patterns that allow you to survive on the road. The weather here is hot and muggy, mid-eighties with pretty high humidity, but not nearly as bad as we expected. You just have to drink lots of water.

We take Sundays off along with the rest of the country. We went sailing July 17 with Tim Mumby, the designer of our boat, on his catamaran which he is just finishing at his beach boatyard. We easily did 8-9 knots into the wind in 10 knots of breeze, 11 knots on a reach sideways to the wind, and 8 knots going downwind. So, the boats really sail. It was great to experience what this effort will produce.

For recreation, we joined a walking group, called the Cebu Hash House Harriers, which is a branch of a world wide running/ drinking club popular with ex-pats. You walk or run a marked trail (hash marked) through countryside and villages and at the end you have drink some beer while attending a hash circle meeting, and maybe go to dinner together after.

We have enjoyed going on Hash runs here, they have given us a chance to see some of the countryside as well as city innards. We are trying to balance getting work done and enjoying the place.

We went on another Hash Run July 31 up in the hills above a development of million-dollar homes. Some had beautiful architectural monuments with expansive grounds, high-end cars parked out front and staff housing. To get to this area we had to drive through some places that are slums beyond the imagination of most people. Even more interesting were the informal settlements in the hills above this development. We walked through lots of tiny communities (5-10 huts) which had literally been carved out of the mountains. These are squatters who just move in and build a small house, farm a bit, raise chickens and pigs and settle in. They have no electricity, sewer system or other services. Water is about 500 vertical feet down the mountain on a narrow and slippery trail (about 1/4 mile long). Kids from 4 years old on were carrying water in all sorts of containers, from plastic coke bottles up to 3 gallon jerrycans from the stream at the bottom up the hill to their homes. Water quality looked to be very marginal. They live a very long ways from any store or source of any consumer goods, though undoubtedly in the next few years some small stores will develop. Everyone we saw was working hard just to survive, but also very friendly. Makes you really glad to be living where we do.

While people are poor here, they are happy. They live in extended families, take care of each other, are respectful of their elders and friendly. Filipinos are curious about foreigners and commonly ask personal questions like age, number of kids, and religion. I was in the apartment office last week and noticed they have a scale in both kilos and pounds on it, so I stepped onto it. All the office workers crowded around to see the result and this week they asked me if I had lost any weight-and I was able to say yes.

We see relatively limited tourism here and are beginning to understand why. There are a couple types of tourists in this part of the Philippines (and the rest as near as we can tell). It's an inexpensive destination from Asian countries. Many Japanese tourists come here for bargain scubadiving packages. It’s cheap, tropical and has pretty good diving. There are lots of what we would consider very low to mid-level dive resorts and a few sort of mid-to high level resorts. Cebu is also a popular place for South Koreans to come to learn English. It is much cheaper to study here than in western countries. The hotels have relatively low prices which is easy to understand when you realize that unskilled labor gets about $5.00 per day and skilled labor under $10.00 per day. Cheap labor makes it easier to run a resort or boarding school (or build a boat) but makes it harder for the young people from large families to get by.
Another type of tourist here is a western male interested in companionship. Men can make short or long term acquaintances by visiting relatively expensive "clubs" where they can hook up with girls for an evening or even a few weeks to months. The young women are lovely, pleasant and while we might be put off by the whole scene, are simply doing what they can to have a better life. In any case tourism as we view it from North America is pretty much non-existent here. It is an inexpensive place to retire though if you can accept the poverty and pollution.

Working in the Philippines

We arrived in Cebu and visited the yard first thing to see Silver Tern. She is actually looking like a boat although it will probably be a couple of weeks before the hull is completed. The lines look good and we look forward to watching her progress. The yard is working hard to keep us on schedule and avoid any mistakes.



Most of the Philippino yard workers live on site with room and board provided. They work 5 1/2 days a week and go home on weekends. We have 4 workers on our boat. I looked across the yard at a larger fiberglass catamaran that is being painted and counted 12 workers painting in unison on the deck.


We settled in at the SDR Apartments on Mactan Island, Cebu. We have a furnished single that is very comfortable with rattan furniture, cable TV, full kitchen and bath as well as a desk area. It as well as most buildings in the city are air conditioned.

We are on a quiet street where motorcycle tricycles go by, sometimes loaded with 6 people. There are nice restaurants just a 10 minute walk away.
We spent the first week organizing our shipments from Seattle and Australia into a 20 ft container at the yard. We brought in rigging, engines, electrical & plumbing- everything you need to outfit a 48 ft catamaran, we hope.

After the initial work is completed at the Harwood yard, we plan to move the boat up to the Mumby beach boatyard, where the designer, Tim Mumby is fitting-out two other Mumby catamarans that were just released from the Harwood yard last month. He is also fitting out his own. We will supervise our own fit-out there. The fit out consists of installing all of the interior pieces; electronics, plumbing, furniture and interior walls. It is a very labor-intensive process.

We are spending our time driving between boatyards to observe their progress and are now the proud owners (we hope we stay proud) of a 2000 Kia Sportage SUV. We are adjusting well to the tropics. While it is hot and humid, it cools down nicely after a rain squall which are common this time of year.

Heading to the Philippines

A few months ago, I didn't even know how to spell Philippines, now we are off to spend around 6 months there doing the "fit out" for our 48' catamaran. Silver Tern is now right side up and ready for Steve to start the interior framing. We leave for the Vancouver airport today and will be in Cebu, PI on Wednesday. We are excited to begin our new adventure.

Last February we visited the Harwood yard in Cebu, PI. We stayed at a local lodge and were picked up by Harwood's driver for the half hour ride to the boatyard. Juju, the driver was thrilled that he was the first Pilipino, pronounced Filipino, that we met. When he arrived at the lodge he asked for Steve and Fat. That was the first of many laughs we had with him. He later drove us up to the Mumby beach boatyard about 2 hours north of Cebu City which turned out to be right by his home. He lives in a one room house with his daughter and mother, having lost his wife a few years ago. The Pilipino people are small and very few are overweight, so I feel a bit like an amazon women next to them.


The designer of our catamaran, Tim Mumby, has developed an informal boatyard on a private mangrove beach in Carmen, an hour north of Cebu City. Several new Mumby 48 catamarans are here being fitted out. We hope to put our boat here after one of them leaves and use his workers to finish off the interior of our boat.

In Cebu, we hear that there are two seasons, the hot and very hot ones. Yesterday,June 12, I looked at the weather forecast while in Canada and it said 30 degrees C but feels like 40. The humidity is 80%. Anyway, we are now on our way and will find out soon enough. I am looking forward to wearing shorts and sandals again but feel nervous about the enormity of the project.

Boat build photos

Our boat build begins with aluminum stringers being welded onto frames.





Aluminum plates are then welded onto the stringers.












To see more photos, see our Picassa page:





https://picasaweb.google.com/101557906200652524786/MumbyCatamaranBuild?feat=directlink

Mumby Catamaran

We decided to get back into sailing and cruising, preferably in the tropics. After a long process of looking at sailboats, we decided on a catamaran. Specifically we wanted an Australian alloy catamaran designed by Tim Mumby. This photo shows a completed aluminum cat named Mozart sailing near Thailand.


...And so begins our adventure. We have commissioned an Australian company to build us a Mumby 48' aluminum cat hull in their boatyard in Cebu, Philippines. When completed, it will look very similar this boat.

Ready to find warmer cruising grounds

We spent the last few summers aboard our Krogan 42, White Raven, cruising in the Pacific Northwest which was spectacular. But the winters spent at our home in B.C. have been long and wet. So we have decided to look for a winter home somewhere warm. We would like to get back into cruising a sailboat and doing more diving, research, and photography. The plan is to spend time in B.C. during the lovely summer months and go cruising on a sailboat in the winter ones.