Saturday 27 June Fitting new water membranes

With yesterday's success with the transmission, David donned the Chief Engineer's hat once more to fit new membranes in the watermaker. This was to replace the ones we fitted in Tahiti five years ago. Over the last few months we've noticed a drop in the litres per hour rate, down from 50L per hour to 35L, an indication that the membranes were past their best. There was a small increase in salinity too – not bad, but enough to warrant a change.

It was all going to plan until Chief Engineer knocked into the air intake duct which feeds cool air into the engine room. One small tap and it split in two places. Oops. A common case of one job leading on to another, unexpected job. A quick dash into town and checking the hardware shops failed to find suitable replacement hose. It's the type which might be fitted to a tumble drier in a house, or an extractor fan over a cooker. Plan B, a common Plan B as it happens, was to use tape to wrap the splits until we can buy new.

Another day and two more jobs ticked off. We're getting closer to being able to leave Labuan.

Before we left our friend Dennis, a professional diver on the boat berthed next to us, invited us for an evening out to show us the sights of Labuan and to have dinner with his wife and mother-in-law.  Dennis and his wife are from the Philippines and he has had a most interesting career; at one time he was a member of Philippine naval special forces.  Both he and his wife are competitive chess champions but on our evening out we kept a lighter tone seeing the monument commemorating Japanese surrendered in 1945 and dinner at a fish restaurant on the east coast.

David, Grace,Dennis and Masid