Rassada Fiberglass, Phuket

Here follow a few observations about the work carried out by Rassada Fiberglass, located in the Asian Phuket Boatyard, when we had our teak deck removed and replaced with a fibreglass non-slip material.

I initially had a meeting with Mr Tu of Rassada Fiberglass to see if he was capable of doing the work I wanted, and we went through this step by step:

1)       remove the deck fittings

2)      take of the teak

3)      fill the screw holes with epoxy

4)      fix any problems with the deck and smooth the surface

5)      paint the deck

6)      refit the deck fittings using Sikaflex 3M 5200

7)      apply  non slip-material; Mr Tu showed me some immaculate examples of a non-slip material that would be applied and said that he had done this before

8)      undertake a post-renovation and clean of the boat.

We thought "let’s go for it"; everything seemed good, his wife, Mrs Noi, spoke reasonable English and would say regularly when we had questions "Don't worry, Mr Tu he understands,". It became a bit of a catch phrase.

We were hauled out on railways tracks up a ramp into the Asian Phuket Boatyard; we slipped off the cradle and back into the water at the first attempt; perhaps our yacht, SV Coromandel Quest, was trying to tell us something.

The workmen built a bamboo and tarpaulin tent over the boat to shelter themselves from the sun; I would estimate the area was about twice the size of our spinnaker.  They attached this to the mast and forestay, which I was not too happy about, but the cradle looked significant.  One morning when I came down I found that they had released the rigging to remove the fittings through the deck. If it had been windy the keel-stepped mast could have broken and fallen down. I had to tell them several times to fasten at least one pair of shrouds on to prevent the mast falling down before they did it, eventually they caught on, "Mr Tu, he understands".

They removed the deck fittings leaving the genoa tracks and forestay fittings in place, removed the teak deck and screws, and said they would fill the screw holes with epoxy.  When I went to the boatyard one afternoon, they had sheathed the deck with fibreglass.  At this point we decided that all seemed to be going well; all they had to do was fair the deck, apply the non-slip and refit the deck fittings.  We therefore decided that we could to go touring inland.   Mrs Noi would say "don't worry "Mr Tu he understands,".  

The first we suspected that we might have a serious problem was when we were in Chiang Mai in the far north of Thailand and we received a text message asking us for photos of the deck, because Mr Tu could not remember where the deck fittings went.  After a brief discussion, we hastened back to Phuket the next day. The horror story then started and I spent the next two weeks going to the boatyard every day. We found they had fastened the deck fittings down with ordinary domestic silicon sealant.  I instructed Mr Tu to remove this, clean the fittings and replace them with 3M 5200 or a similar Sikaflex product, which they duly did, or so I thought. 

When I  looked at the rigging screws I found they had managed to undo these without removing the clevis pins; they had just turned the screws until the pins bent. I didn’t think that would be possible, but they managed it.

Prior to removing the pushpit and pulpit, I showed them where to disconnect the navigation lights.  I later found that they had simply cut the wires instead, but I noticed this only when I tried to reconnect the wiring in the bow.  I did this myself as by this point I had lost confidence in their abilities, and I did not want the fear of an electrical fire.  I rewired the windlass and navigation lights in the bow. I extended the wires on the pushpit before they refastened it, to make it easier for them to reconnect, and supplied them with a connector for the purpose. 

The rigging fittings through the deck had been moved, notably the starboard forward shroud fitting.   I got them to redo this but they put it back in exactly the same place not once but twice. They had made raised bases for all the fittings on the deck, which would have looked nice had the deck fittings been mounted centrally on all the fittings.  It looked a mess, but was serviceable, and I let it go thinking I could fix it later.  I decided that Mr Tu worked on the principal that if he continued to make a mess of things he would still get paid, then get paid to do it again the following day, wearing you down to the point where you let it go. 

They fitted a new toe rail, and managed to split it by over-tightening the screws, I think.  Once this was pointed out they started to fit another toe rail but without filling the holes for the previous one; they then took the rail off, filled the holes and put it back on, splitting it again in the process.  Mr Tu then sacked the people working on the toe rail, and a third one was fitted, with some minor errors that were later rectified.  If I had not called attention to the splits in the toe rails, and the errors, they would have been left on.

Deck cleats were re-fixed with 6mm bolts and not 8mm as were on there originally.  If I had not taken off the head liners to inspect the fittings this would have gone unnoticed and we would have been oblivious to this until we were tied up somewhere and the cleats put under strain – they could have pulled out if put under strain in a rough harbour or marina in bad weather. 

The petty theft of two packets of cigarettes from the box of 200 we had on board is no big deal; they could have taken the entire box and we might not have noticed, as these were intended  as gifts for fishermen. 

The last few days there became quite stressful.  Mrs Noi said they wanted paying the full amount before they would finish the work, as some yachts in Boat Lagoon Marina had left without paying (we now understand why).  Initially they wanted cash, but Linda explained that we could draw out only 12,000 baht per day from the ATM, and persuaded them to agree a to a cash transfer from bank to bank, as we had done when the work was first commissioned.   Linda spoke to the bank from Mrs Noi's office, then asked the bank clerk to speak to Mrs Noi so that she would understand that the money had indeed been transferred.  Mr Tu then demanded to see our bank statement to confirm the money had been transferred, saying that he would do no more work until he had the money, so at this point the work ground to a halt, and Mr Tu started making threats of violence, almost trying to pick a fight, if he did not get his cash; apparently he thought we were not paying the full amount after seeing the bank transfer as it was shown in pounds sterling not Thai baht. Since I did not want to wind up in a Thai prison, I ignored his offer and left the office.  Thereafter he refused to speak to us, ignoring Linda when she asked when he would be finishing off the work.  Since we had transferred the cash there was nothing we could do, as it took three days for the cash to appear in the Rassada Fibreglass account.  Linda printed off another bank statement showing Rassada Fiberglass as the beneficiary to show that the money had been paid and we were finally allowed to leave.  In the last three days, no work was done on the boat but we were relieved to leave the yard.  Mrs Noi has subsequently apologized for their bad behaviour prior to us leaving the boatyard and for disbelieving that Linda had paid them, by paying us 5000 baht compensation.   However, if we had not paid the bill Rassada Fibreglass would have prevented us from leaving the boatyard, so our boat yard bill would have continued to increase. We left the boatyard with the boat covered from stem to stern in fibreglass dust and general boat yard grime.   At this point, though, we thought that we had some superficial cosmetic problems to sort out that would take a few days. 

Once we were back in the water and away from all the stress in the boatyard, the following is what we found and this from a brief inspection of the boat whilst we were at anchor in Ao Chalong, Phuket.  Our discoveries made us return to a marina in Langkawi, Malaysia  - yet more expense but as the rigging would have to be removed, it seemed wiser to do this in a marina.  These are the problems we found and how we fixed them. 

1)       Holes had been drilled through the outside of the hull when fitting new toe rail; these had not been repaired. (I have now filled them with epoxy and painted over them.)

2)      Sikaflex 290 and 3M 5200 and epoxy resin had trickled down the side of the hull and residue from masking tape that had not been removed quickly enough in the sun. The sealants had been used under the toe rail and the epoxy when they sheathed the deck in fibreglass. (I have sanded off the masking tape residue and the sealant came of with patience and acetone.  I removed the  resin runs  with a sharp wood chisel.)

3)      The whole yacht was covered in shreds of fibreglass matting and epoxy dust, both inside and out. (Linda and I spent two days using lots of sweeping, hosing, scrubbing, vacuuming and visits to the laundry to make Coromandel Quest habitable again.  I developed a rash from exposure to raw fibreglass.)

4)      The deck had a fibreglass non-slip material applied to it, which was stuck down using an epoxy cement. They left voids under the non-slip material particularly around the edges, where raw fibreglass was visible and collecting dirt.  The non-slip material has undulations in it where the cement is at different thicknesses. It has diamond shapes in it, but some diamonds run at right angles to the diamonds on the non-slip material next to it.  (Here I faired the edges with epoxy putty, and painted with Toplac; there is nothing I can do about the undulations and diamonds without removing the non-slip material.)

5)      Epoxy putty and sealant were paddled into the non-slip surfaces on the deck and in the cockpit area.  (I used a sharp wood chisel to remove most of the epoxy, and used both acetone and various scrapers on the sealant; it did not want to come off easily.  The deck remains covered with a variety of dirt, dust and oil.)

6)      3M 5200 was smeared over two of the seat cushions in the main saloon (Linda used nail polish remover to shift this.)

7)      The screw holes were not filled before they sheathed the deck with a single layer of fibreglass,  the epoxy resin ran down the holes leaving the fibreglass over the holes with insufficient resin. (I cleaned the Screw Holes, filled them with epoxy, followed by a few thin layers of Toplac.)

8)      They ground to the core of the boat, aft of the port side genoa track, and covered this with a single layer of fibreglass.  The resin ran out down the edge of an aluminium plate in the core and the plywood.  (I removed the non-slip surface, dug the fibreglass back to the core and filled the voids with epoxy putty.  I then used three layers of fibreglass to bring the deck to the right height, faired it with epoxy putty, stuck down some new non-slip material and then applied Toplac.)

I discovered items the 2 items above when it got hot one day and I noticed bulges appearing in the deck, due to moisture that had got inside the deck evaporating and causing pressure. The moisture was due to heavy rain and the screw holes not being filled in the boatyard, as soon as they were removed as instructed; I found the water in the screw holes was not saline to taste, but pretty unpleasant.   I have attempted to rectify this problem by drilling holes on the underside of the deck to release the moisture at the problem spots, but will have to see how this goes. 

9)      The paint they had put on the deck started flaking off almost immediately in places once we left the boatyard.  An International product had been used with an epoxy primer, followed by the topcoat. The flaking, I suspect,  is due either to contamination of some sort on the undercoat or to too long a time between applying the undercoat and the topcoat.  (All I can do here is touch the paint work up as and when required.)

10)   Rust and dust particles were embedded in the paint all over the deck; we suspect the rust was from the steel boat next door to us having new plates fitted in the hull or perhaps the metal particles were from screws they had cut to get the deck fittings off and the deck not been cleaned prior to the deck being painted.  ( All I can do here is sand back the worst patches and paint  with Toplac.)

11)    The stanchions had been fastened back on too close to the genoa sheet winches, so that when you turned the winches with two hands you hit your knuckles on the stanchions. (Only thing I could to do here was move them back to where they were originally, which involved having to cut the non-slip away where I wanted to refit the stanchions, repair the holes with glass fibre and epoxy, re-drill and tap the holes in the plates embedded in the deck and then paint.)

12)   On removing the starboard side stanchion base, the fibre glass sheath came away from the deck.  I found  it had been laid over dust so had not stuck.  In addition it had been secured with only two screws -  the third screw was held in only with sealant and a broken drill bit. (Here I cut back the sheath until I found where there was no more dust and good fibreglass and rebuilt it. Hopefully this point on the boat is where the dust had accumulated and I hope it is not like this anywhere else, fingers crossed.)

13)   Some of the stanchion posts had been bent whilst they had been trying to remove the bases.  (I fixed these easily by bending them straight again.)

14)   None of the clevis pins had been re-fitted to the stanchion bases.  (I had to buy new clevis pins and fitted them.)

15)   Some of the bases are at slightly different angles to the other ones and have been moved in on the deck reducing the deck area a little.  One on the port side has been moved back four inches impeding access to the cleat.  The Genoa furling line is mounted on the stanchions and now rubs on the shrouds making it harder to furl ( I will move them in the future. )

16)   On close inspection the rigging connections through the deck were no longer in line with the rigging and the bases looked a mess.   (Here I disconnected the rigging, pulled the connections out of the deck, re-glassed, re-drilled in the correct places, faired up and painted with Toplac.)

17)   The cockpit lockers were full of fibreglass matting, epoxy resin, dust etc, which had contaminated my spare sails and ropes.  (I cleaned what I could and threw away the rest.)

18)   They lost a locking nut of the backstay somewhere under the capstan, and removed the boards to try and recover it. My spare oil cans fell into the gap but they put the boards back without removing the cans.  They also jammed a spare tarpaulin under the boards.  When I removed the boards to get the tarpaulin out, I found the oil cans jammed under the steering cables, which could have caused a significant problem.)

19)   When I removed the tarpaulin I found they had stood on the spare tubes of grease for the max prop; two of these had burst, thus spreading the grease all over the underside of the tarpaulin and the 50m of 25mm multiplait anchor warp.  (I threw the tarpaulin away, but am still trying to get the grease off my multiplait.)

20)  I found epoxy resin and putty on the shrouds, where they had held. ( I scraped this off with my chisel.)

 This story could go on for a long time, but I think any yachtie reading this considering having work done in Thailand would want to avoid the people that worked on our boat, but who are working all over Phuket.  We have heard you can get good work done in Thailand, but we have heard of more bad work than good. Take care.  We are now considering having the whole work done again - but this time we will do it ourselves.  There are only two positive outcomes to the situation:  (1) The teak deck has been removed and (2) we have a new toe rail.  Big deal!