09 January 2019

Catamaran Starry Horizons

This is useful report on a “quick” haulout at this yard from SV Starry Horizons.

Phithak Shipyard and Services – Among the best little shipyards along the West coast of Thailand/Malaysia

From Fred Caron – September 2018

It is the opinion of many boat owners that Phithak Shipyard and Services (PSS), located in Thailand across the water from Pulau Langkawi, Malaysia, is among the best little shipyards along the West coast of Thailand/Malaysia, and we agree.

If you are lucky enough to be cruising this interesting coast, there are important reasons PSS should be high on your list of boatyards to consider. The management and administration teams genuinely value their customers and try hard to satisfy their needs. They also have good-natured and friendly attitudes. The majority of yard workers are hard-working and honest, but, if you prefer, you can always do the work yourself. The yard has a first-class machine shop, managed by Mr Goun. Mr Goun’s shop is capable of turning out both heavy and detailed work. Mr Samreung, is the quiet, meticulous man work behind those big lathes, a highly thought of a person, well-known for the verity of boat parts he has custom-made.

Mr Young is an ace stainless steel welder who sculptures up-market (316) stainless steel deck fittings and rub rails. There aren’t many moderately-priced, old-school yards left. If you have hauled out in Singapore or Phuket, you will know exactly what I mean. PSS even offers affordable and serviceable accommodations for those who prefer living off their boat while at the yard.

The first time we hauled Arcturus at Phithak Shipyard and Services was on May 4, 2010, followed by September 18, 2015, March 19, 2017, and May 3, 2018, totalling 196 days on the hard during an eight-year period.

To be clear, PSS is not like NASA, where each day is sliced into hours, minutes, seconds and microseconds and employees are held to account. Tight, inflexible planning like that works for spaceships but not so much for managing the yard work on our ships. After all, our goals, tasks, and priorities can change several times in one day so our flexibility and the yard’s flexibility are important elements in satisfying our overall goals. Customers agree PSS does a better than average job with flexibility, scheduling and meeting commitments.

A good, moderately priced, full-service boat yard is a tremendous asset to any boat owner. It’s an oasis where out-of-water jobs and modifications can be completed quickly and efficiently while creating the least amount of stress. Here’s a time-tested tip for reducing stress and assuring success while at any yard.

• Try to avoid tiny “boutique” yards which are okay for bottom painting but can be hopelessly under-staffed when you discover you need a good carpenter, a seasoned refrigerator man, a master welder or a well-staffed machine shop. Or, all of the aforementioned.
• Friendly, smiling workers are the most valued workers, they usually deliver better results than grumpy workers. Strive to find and hire those happy workers.
• Yard managers are important people. A good manager can save you time and money by recommending the best worker for your tasks. Person A: is our best bottom painter, he is just finishing another job, I can have him here on Tuesday morning. Person B: is an excellent wet sander and he can start your hull in the morning, Person C: is our best stainless guy and he is an English speaker, I will introduce you to him this afternoon. Etc, etc.
• Manage hourly workers as if they were gold. If their workday starts at 08:00, get to your boat earlier. An owner’s presence at the starting hour each morning is often enough to stem tardiness and tardy starters are often the same folks who try to leave early. If the behaviour goes unchecked by you, workers are likely to assume you don’t care. unfortunately, your outward approval of that behaviour can cause it to spread to your other workers. Good luck managing that when it happens. Your presence on the job sends a clear signal that you care about your boat and this job. It also sends the message that you are watching everyone and everything. This is a powerful and silent managing tool, which is often overlooked.
• Praise expresses so many things: respect and gratitude, warm approval and admiration. If a worker does a great job, thank him personally. Sincerely thanking the worker for a job well done, while in the presence of the yard Boss, can instil pride and confidence in the worker and your words could even make his future brighter. That worker will never forget you!

Like all of us, good workers can have a bad day, we just have to accept that fact if it happens. At PSS, most workers speak Thai but you probably don’t, so turn to the managers for help. Un Ramwong and Michael Whippy, both fine young men and good managers, speak English and are happy to accommodate customer wishes.

On occasion, unexpected things happen, touching both customers and employees. In March of 2017, the yard manager, Aon Ramwong, a good man with 24-years of yard experience at PSS, suddenly passed away. Aon’s passing did not mark the end of a sad period of events and sorrowful news. Jia Hongwaranon, a handsome, fast thinker with a nice sense of humour and a bright future, the yacht division manager since 2010. Those who know Jia agree, he did his job better than most he was guided by a sense of fair-play. A pleasant and understanding guy. On April 6, 2017, this bright and much loved young man was stricken down by a stroke and is still recovering. So, in the short period of one month, two heavy blows were dealt with the yard and families. Only determination, dedication and hard work on the part of the staff and hourly workers brought this company through this difficult and emotional time. The emptiness caused by those losses has now healed or is healing, and the time for mourning has passed. When we hauled at PSS in May of 2018, we spent 34-days on the hard and the yard was clearly open for business.

Our little ship, Arcturus, is a Nordhavn-46 with a maximum range of over 3,000 miles so we can go anywhere in comfort and style. Christiane and I like to keep her in tip/top condition and nothing has changed now that she is on the market. We have active minds and can make destination decisions on short notice. We never know if our next adventure will have us following today’s setting or tomorrow’s rising sun, so our plan is simple. A day to fill the pantry and check out. Then, enough time to plan a route and top up fuel and freshwater tanks. Nothing could be easier, but this plan only works if all major systems aboard Arcturus are functioning properly. That’s the reason proper maintenance is of primary importance to us.

This year we arrived at PSS with our “to do” list in hand.

–   Pressure wash and wet sand her underwater hull.

–   Apply thee coats of International bottom paint.

–   Christiane would scrape, sand, clean and polish our 30 x 24-bronze prop to a mirror-like finish.

–   Mr Goun’s machine shop will replace the bronze backed cut-less bearing on the main shaft.

–   Machine shop to inspect and service the rudder bearing and seal.

–   I will remove, clean and rebuild a bronze through the hull.

• Machine shop to fabricate a new 316 stainless steel elbow for the generator.
• A new 316 stainless elbow will also be fabricated for our Volvo, 2003 “get-home” engine.
• While at the yard, we watched with interest as Mr Young and his people, fabricated a beautifully welded, polished, elaborately built dinghy davit for a catamaran in the yard. The quality of workmanship was excellent and that got us thinking about replacing our lower rub-rails. Eventually, we ordered 14-meters of 1.5-inch by 4.5-mm 316 stainless steel. After the shipment arrived from Bangkok, it was measured and marked for drilling. A total of 102 holes, each precisely spaced at six-inch intervals were drilled and then countersunk to accommodate screw heads. After the drilling was finished, the rail edges were bevelled and the facing side was polished to a mirror-like finish. Polishing took the longest time but the result looks beautiful.
• During this stay, we also had a new Westmar bow thruster installed. The original unit, a 5-hp VDC, had served us well over the years, but it was getting a little “long in the tooth” so we traded up to a new V2 with twin, stainless steel blades. The installation was neither simple or straightforward because the existing hole in the thruster tunnel was much larger then the new unit required. Mr Goun’s machine shop staff and Michael Whippy arrived on the job with good suggestions that evolved into the plan that we would follow.
• Naiad recommends changing the lower seals on the hydraulic stabilizer fins every three years. We decided to replace the seals now so the new owner can enjoy years of carefree service before the next change.
• Our refrigeration compressor had been getting louder and louder over time. Cooling was not a problem, the compressor was simply getting too noisy. While at PSS, we had their refrigerator guy change out our noisy compressor for our spare unit. Another task the new owner won’t need to deal with.

This year, we arrived at Phithak Shipyard and Services on May 3 and departed 34-days later. All work was completed within the timeframe promised and in good workmanship like manner. Thank you PSS, you kept your word and helped us once again! We are grateful…

I suppose I should include a disclaimer about our connections with PSS. We have no financial connections what-so-ever and have not received compensation in any form. Our motivation in writing this article is to publicly express our sincere thanks to Phithak Shipyard and Services for years of first-rate service and excellent guidance.

If any readers have questions about PSS or the services they provide, we encourage you to contact us, we will be happy to speak with you.

Fred Caron

Pangkor Marina SDN BHD.

Jetty Complex, Marina Island

KM 1, Jalan Teluk Muroh

32200 Lumut, Perak, Malaysia

Cell: 012 803 4668

PSS SHIPYARD, Satun, Thailand

8 Months in 2017

During 2017 TIGER LILLY spent 8 months in the PSS Shipyard at Chebilang, Thailand. We were attracted to PSS by the enthusiastic endorsement of many of their former yacht customers whom we met as we cruised up the Malay Peninsula. Before committing to the yard we made an advance planning trip from Langkawi over to Satun / Chebilang on the ferry to meet the staff and tour the facility. The then manager Jia had built a strong positive reputation for PSS among the International yachting community, and we were favourably impressed with him. After our visit to Satun, Jia came to Langkawi and surveyed TIGER LILLY together with Tom and discussed in detail the projects we planned to accomplish.

Tom’s experience with planning/executing ship overhauls and maintenance availability’s while in the US Navy, and working as the Port Captain of a large commercial heavy-marine construction company after Navy retirement, taught him that much of the success in any major marine maintenance or overhaul project depended on two prerequisites: Work Package Definition (with exacting technical specifications and procedures); and Logistics Planning (thorough identification and pre-ordering of all the needed tools, supplies, materials, and consumables necessary to complete the work). Fifty years of maintaining ships, tugs, barges, crew boats, and yachts all over the world has taught him that if the advance planning is not thorough and accurate, then the vessel owner is subject to the vagaries and vicissitudes of shipyard profit maximization; and there is little chance for success or efficiency under these conditions.

Jia impressed us as a person we could work with. He was smart, enthusiastic, educated, of strong character, responsive, and as the yard owner’s son/heir he had some skin in the game. The PSS yard was adequate facility-wise (they use a marine railway / side-spur system), and the machine and welding shops are basic but sufficient for most yacht work. The majority of the work done at PSS is the repair of large heavy wooden fishing trawlers, which has little in common with the much more sophisticated and complex work of yacht repair. The major shortcomings of our pre-planning trip to PSS identified were two-fold: communications and logistics. Jia was the only person at PSS who could speak English proficiently and who had an understanding of his international yacht customers and their boats, and the location of the yard in a small Muslim fishing village in remote southern Thailand put it at the very end of a long and circuitous logistics path. (Read that limited choices, expensive, and lengthy delays.) Additionally, the Thai Customs / Import system is difficult, bureaucratically complex, and expensive for bringing in goods from offshore. It was apparent to us that we would have to plan this haul-out very carefully, and very thoroughly.

With Jia’s strong concurrence we drew up fixed-price specifications for all the major projects we anticipated. Jia told us that most of the past problems he experienced with yacht repair work at PSS were as a result of a lack of understanding of the project, and the associated costs, by his customers; from his side of the table, he welcomed a well-defined project. Since our critical path project was a PU deck paint job, we were leery of weather and logistics delays, and the added expense those delays would incur. We structured our written agreement with PSS such that we paid the hard stand rates and an apartment rental for the two months that PSS quoted us, and after that, we would not be charged. This kept our costs within projections, but (as expected) there were significant delays – which we did not pay for. Before TIGER LILLY came up the marine railway at PSS we had email confirmation of our Project Agreements, and before the close of business on our first day in the yard we had signatures on printed-out versions of those same Agreements. For TIGER LILLY this is just basic boatyard procedure.

The entire management system of PSS’s yacht business was centred around Jia; not a nut or a bolt were ordered without Jia’s direct involvement. Tragically, at the six-week point in our overhaul, 34-year-old Jia was struck down with a near-fatal and permanently debilitating stroke. With severe brain damage, it is unlikely that this lovely man will ever get out of his sick bed… Jia’s family was heartbroken, the yard staff was paralyzed, and the then current half a dozen International yacht customers were suddenly stranded. The whole operation was rudderless. Jia’s Dad, the owner of PSS, was of course personally devastated, his son could no longer talk or move; Jia was the future of PSS, and that future no longer existed…

Jia’s Aunties Oh and Aor was brought in for a few hours a week to talk with the yachties and communicate their needs and concerns to the PSS workers. However both of these professional ladies had extensive business interests of their own, and after some months of floundering around, the decision was made (drifted into?) to permanently replace Jia with the Yard Foreman Un. Un had become the Yard Foreman because his father had had that position before he recently passed away; around PSS (and much of Thailand in general) these valuable jobs are passed down within a family regardless of qualifications. One year before Un found himself to be the General Manager of PSS he was working on the marine railway as a labourer… He has a workable vocabulary of self-taught basic English, some understanding of basic yacht repair (he was raised in the shipyard), he can send and receive email, he is a pleasant person, and he has absolutely zero capability as a manager or leader. To assist Un with project management an itinerant Fijian deckhand was hired. Michael is an intelligent, personable young man, with fluent English skills, but he has only a cursory knowledge of yacht systems and repair procedures – more times than not we saw him get it wrong when it came to advising PSS customers. In 8 months at PSS, we never saw either of these “managers” write anything down – and they needed to be reminded on a daily basis of our requirements. The current PSS “management team” of Un and Michael is reactive (never proactive), seldom admit corporate responsibility for their mistakes (and never personal responsibility), inefficient, technically deficient concerning yacht repair, and on multiple occasions, we have called Un on price-gouging.

We tell other yachties that we got good Second World yacht services are done at PSS for Third World prices. That end was achieved only because we had detailed written technical specifications, signed/agreed to by PSS, and to their credit, PSS stood by those agreements even after Jia went down. We became the superintendent for all work done on TIGER LILLY. We did all of our own QA. We were adamant about only paying for supplies we personally ordered and signed for. We examined every single line-item of each invoice before we paid it. (The accounting and office staff is inefficient, refuse to speak English even though they know some, and have an open disdain for the international customers.) In eight months we seldom took a day off.

Notwithstanding the above-described problems with the PSS “management team”, many of the problems we observed encountered at PSS by the yacht customers were clearly self-induced. Few of the yachties we met there had any sort of technical or marine project management experience or expertise. They arrived unprepared for the task before them, and the results were predictable. Of course, there is no fault in being a former “office worker”, but then there is little advantage when these unrelated skills are brought to the waterfront environment…

Bottom Line: Although we are close personal friends with the family who owns PSS, we do not recommend PSS for any work other than do-it-yourself projects. Their haul-out rates are on a par (or higher) than other yards in the region, their shop skills are moderate (except for the paint contractor Goi who is unacceptable), and their project management and QA skills are non-existent. If you choose PSS for a do-it-yourself haul-out, there is a significant cost and availability advantage to having Duty-Free supplies from Langkawi aboard when you arrive.

Hope this helps clear up a lot of obvious misconceptions regarding the CURRENT state of the PSS Shipyard.

Tom & Lilly

S/V Tiger Lilly

Trincomalee, Sri Lanka

January 2015

Time for a haulout and much-needed maintenance, SY Totem researched the options and due to a combination of timing, opportunity, and economy chose to haul Totem at the Phithak Shipyard and Services in Satun in Thailand. Out of the water for the first time since early 2008 they reported on all stages of their haulout experience on their blog:

Hauling in Thailand: part 1- a new bottom

Hauling in Thailand: part 2- through hull replacement

Hauling in Thailand: part 3- lessons learned

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