30 Years Living on a Sailboat #BoatTour | Pangkor Marina S7 EP8

These sailboats you see in Pangkor Marina have sailed the high seas to get here. They come from around the world and each one has its own uniqueness. They tell a tale and if you're willing to listen, there's much to learn from the owners. Today, we have the opportunity to speak with a couple who built their own sailboat and went on to spend 30 years sailing together. Everything they learned is in their sailboat. 30 years ago, Hank and Lucy built their steel catch named Gentle Lady on their front lawn. The build took them four years and they have been sailing ever since. When the pandemic hit the world, they were hauled out here in Pangkor Marina. After two years of boat work, Hank and Lucy are ready to set sail again and this time, they make their way to the Mediterranean. We chose to feature this couple because of their age. They're now in their 80s. In this video, they give us a boat tour and share much of their wisdom. My name is Hank. Yeah, I'm Lucy. This is a boat Gentle Lady. She's a catch. She's made of steel. She's 12 meters and that's her home. How long have you been sailing? Well, we've been sailing on the boat for 30 years. We sailed the 2007 rally to Indonesia. The first stop was Kupang and we spent three months with the rally and after that, we sort of went out on our own and we've been out on our own ever since. How did it all start? We were sitting on the beach in our car in Geraldton. Our children were all married and then the question came up. She says, what are we going to do with the rest of our lives? Now, I've never ever spoken to Lucy about building a boat, but I've always wanted to do that from a child, a young boy onwards. So, I said to her, I said, I would love to build a boat and sail the world. So, some months went past and then one day she said to me, when are we going to build this boat? I said, we're going to build it right now. So, we investigated for two years and what material we use, what sort of boat and so on and so on. So, we got some plans from a company in Sydney. So, we built it in our front yard. I built the hull upside down. We eventually had the hull turned around. Then we did the main superstructure on the top and then we started on the inside and we had the boat sandblasted and we did the whole thing in a day. Then we started on the inside. It took me two and a half years to build the inside with the help of Lucy. Well, it took us four and a half years to build this boat all together. It was quite a challenge. I don't recommend it to anybody, but if you really want to, it's a big achievement after you finish. This is what I call a bow spread and it's the roller furler which actually does the the furler. These are the two anchors. One is a Bruce anchor, one is a plow anchor. That's the anchor winch. That is actually the winch that will take the anchor up. We've got a spotlight on the top there. That's got a camera on top. So, we can turn around and at night time, as we come into an anchorage, we can actually see where we are. Alright, this is our dinghy which we use to go between the anchorage and the shore. It's just got a small motor on the back which is a six horsepower engine. You've got to have it otherwise you're stuck on the boat forever. These are our fuel drums. We carry spare diesel. It's 125 litres in here. We use water. We carry water, 100 litres of extra water and petrol for our genset and for our dinghy motor. That there is our life raft. In emergency, we've got a raft which we can put overboard and then use it. The mast is where all the winches are on and what we call halyards to pull up the sails. This controls our sail system. This is a clear view. When it rains, we actually set this to work. It's got an electric motor in it which spins all the the water off it and we're having a clear view of what we can see out the front. This is the crank. These are the cranks that we use for the winches. These winches are the main winch for our jib. This is just a normal home garden and kitchen air conditioning which we use here on the boat. This here is what we call a Honda 3.5 KVA genset which provides us with the voltage which we need for all the appliances and all the things that we have on board the boat. We use about a tank full which is 10 litres a week but that doesn't only just run the air conditioning, it also runs the battery charges. We charge up our main batteries. We don't have solar power because I haven't got the room. Another safety device which hangs onto this life raft, if we throw the life raft overboard, this will go with it because it's attached to it and as it drops in the water it flicks off and on the light. So once it goes overboard we'll keep contact with the people. This here is what we call a tuner unit which actually hooks onto the antennas here. We've got a couple of big antennas here. That's for the radios. That's our six horsepower outboard which goes on the back of the dinghy. This is our saltwater shower so if we want the shower we put the what we call the marlin board. It goes down and we can stand on that and have a shower. This is a spare outboard engine. That is our weather station. It tells us the speed of the wind. It tells us the temperature. It tells us all the things we need to know when we do sailing and of course that's our what we call our aft light. The steering wheel which steers the rudder manually. That's the compass and it's seen as a steel boat. We've got what we call compensators that has these two balls on the boat which compensates for any magnetic flux that is in the wrong place. They keep the compass in order. This here is the forward and the acceleration for the main engine. That's the stern, that's forward and that's the speed. Okay now this little unit here when you're sailing and you're not using the motor the prop keeps turning which is not good for the gearbox because it makes the gearbox run hot. What we've done on the propeller shaft is the same thing as you got on the front of a motorbike. The motorbike brake, the front wheel brake and this is the plate which is actually sitting on the piece out of calipers which actually holds the clamps onto there and stops the prop from turning. All right now this is an echo sounder which tells you the depth of the water that's underneath the boat. Got an alarm on it just in case you don't have enough water on your boat. I'll turn on the radar for you so you can see the radar. So the radar will tell you at night time if there's any ships around the place. I've talked about the spotlight on the front there. You can switch it on here and then we've got a camera on the top which will give you a picture there on the screen and you can go left or right. That's the normal radio which we can play music on. This is the satellite system which we can put onto our phone onto what we call a hot spot on the phone and that's how we can use we can ring people up to whatever they sort of want to talk about. This is a phone this is actually an intercom. When somebody's sleeping at the front I can actually pick this up and go and say hello wake up. Instead of shouting down. We don't want to shout on the on the boat we actually got little radios which we can put on and it's we can actually talk to from one another when we do the anchor. We have a Furuno unit which is a Neftec which tells us if there's any containers fallen overboard by big ships in the area we're in. It works fairly well. This is the speaker for the sound system and that's just the bilge alarm. This unit here is your remote for your automatic pilot. Once you switch on the pilot you don't have to do any steering you do it with this little knob here. Normally there's a communication computer up here. The computer is hooked onto the AIS and it gets the signal from the GPS system over there. Oh you have a special camera in the engine room? Yeah and that's where it comes out when we're navigating. Hey welcome aboard. Thank you. And this is my galley. This is my microwave which is very popular and this one here that's a electric cooker you know where you can. I don't use it a lot when we're sailing because you've got to be careful with hot water and all that sort of stuff. Okay yeah well this is all for these are lockers. This is my pot and pan where I keep all my pots and pans and stuff. This one here is where we keep like cool drink and so on in this one and of course we've got to carry lots of food but and these are my like knives and forks and everything and all the rest of the stuff that you normally carry in the house and tea towels and everything in there. And under here there's a little oven and there's also a little gas stove that we keep as a backup as well. This is a rubbish bin but it's bolted to the floor otherwise. It's also your seat. Yes it comes in. I love your spice rack. Yep and of course your safety things you always have here near your galley and that's a e-perp that's always handy here if an emergency we grab it and go okay and these are flares in here all these things are here. It's going down here which has got you know like food in it yeah and the next two or three cupboards are full of food. Our aft cabin where we don't sleep now because it's part Hank's workshop and it's also for storing. When you do long trips you've got to have plenty of room to store your food. We've stored quite a lot. Wow. Well this is not only part of it. This is just part of it. So how much food can you store for how many months? Well we like to have at least three four months or something so you've got to have a variety of everything and then this cupboard's here and then that's the pump for the pumps there's a pump in there okay and the locker you're standing on is all hoses and spare parts. So this is all the extra food you have? Yeah so far we've got to get more yet. Really? Oh yeah. Well isn't there food where you're going? Yes but when you're doing long distances and you don't always can find what you like to eat you know when you go to places. So you like Maggie I can see there. Oh yeah I like that. The chicken flavor one? In stuff. So this used to be where you slept? Yeah Hank's hobby is he's a radio amateur and he's also been in electronics, TVs and all sorts of stuff and so he loves all that stuff. Yeah a lot of stuff's in here and under the bed and so on of his so we just leave it there. Okay I'm surprised about how cool the air conditioning is flowing through the place even though it's just coming in from one area. Yeah yeah. It's cool in here as well does it stay cool in the afternoon? Yeah all day. See we've only got it turned on low at the moment so when we turn it up higher at night I usually sleep under a duna and that's nice. That's lovely that's great. Normal home circuit breakers which are used in the houses and they'll work perfectly well on on the system on the boat. It's an inverter it's actually three inverters and battery switches and an anchor switch and that's our fridge. This is the communication side of the HF radios and we can turn around and and sit here we can actually that computer is hooked on to that we can send emails and so on and so forth. There is just some more communication system on different frequencies. Hello Hank. Hi. How did you keep this engine room so clean like this? Purely by making sure that everything is in order if you have an oil leak fix it don't leave an oil leak and so on and so forth. I don't know if I would turn around and go back into a normal lifestyle I'd be very worried for myself that I would fall into a hole and you know and don't know what to do. When we go to back to Perth when we go into spend with time with the kids and we go into a supermarket I can see so many gentlemen sitting down there on benches and they they lost they are lost people because they've always worked hard in their life you can see that on them and then all of a sudden there is this retirement thing and that whole bit of their lifestyle falls away and they fall into a hole and then they're sitting down there in air conditioning watching the crowd go by. Now I can't do that that would drive me totally crazy. Hey who's ever watching this video we to our family especially we love you and this is a great opportunity to say keep an eye on us and so on and so forth. We miss you but this is the sort of thing we need to do to fulfill our life. Oh what can I say I love you all dearly to my family I do miss you especially our you know little grandchildren and great-grandchildren and every everybody but you're always in our hearts and to our friends we love you too. Merry Christmas have a lovely Christmas and a happy new year and we'll be in contact anyway. Okay and those who go sailing who start sailing or who want to build a boat best of luck absolutely it's a it's not a challenge but once you set your mind to it and keep at it you'll accomplish it. Thank you Hank and Lucy for giving us your time we learned so much your commitment to living your dream is so inspiring to those of you who watch till the end we hope you take something with you. Sam and I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. Thank you for watching please remember to click like comment and if you haven't already subscribe bye-bye