South Pacific « Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Not all going to plan

by steve, on March 7th, 2012 (Division II, Endless, New Zealand)

A little less satisfying day. Somehow we stayed busy but progress didn’t seem so apparent and there were a few set backs…..

I had a morning trip out in the rental car. I visited the auto shop and picked up 3 x 5 litre bottles of distilled water – one to give back to Peter on Nymph. Next I picked up a stiff 5 litre container for my water maker project. Final stop was the other side of town to visit scrap metal merchants who picked up my old motors (not the ones I first visited). NZ$127 is not a fortune but it all helps. A good bit of news is that they offered $5 per kilo for my old battery cable – a lot better than the $1.20 the first lot offered. Still not a good price but it’s not an insult.

Back on the boat I took a look at the placement for my new container for the water maker project. I realized it wouldn’t be high enough and my current idea won’t fly. I came up with another couple of ideas for placing the container but both require a fair bit of extra work. Not sure how badly I want this done now.

Dan, who’s helping build the battery box, was interested in a lot of our old battery cable ended up taking quite a lot. This will help pay for his time on the box and gel coat work. It’s not an easy task fitting a strong box to a curved hull and I’m glad we’ve hired him for the work.

Just before lunch I lowered the dinghy and fit the outboard to test it out. It started ok but the throttle had seized. Specifically it looked like the cable (very much like a bicycle brake cable) had seized. I sprayed in some WD-40 to see if that would sort it out over lunch. Unfortunately it didn’t. When I started to take things apart a screw head sheared off. At that point I decided I needed a professional on the job.

So I drove round to the folks who serviced it last year and discovered they’d moved elsewhere. The folks next door turned out to service outboards and I told them of my dilemma. They told me to paddle over in the dinghy at the next high tide so they could take a look. That turned out to be the following day. Given that they may have to order parts and every day counted I decided to bring the outboard over in the car. Which I did. All fingers and toes have to be crossed on this one as this could delay our departure until next week.

I’m a bit peed off by this. I should really have tested the dinghy as soon as we were in the water and perhaps saved a day or two on this. Oh well. We needed the weekend off.

Joel and Bertrand popped by on the way to the airport to drop off our warranty and to say a final goodbye. It was nice to see them again. I gave them a DVD of the pictures I took while they were working.

We still turned out to have a couple more slow leaks on our fresh water circuit. I decided that enough was enough and put in our pressure reducer. Now the leaks have all gone but the showers aren’t so much fun.

I reread the manual for our sail drives resulting in a return to the auto shop so I could buy a foot pump and hoses necessary to blow the oil out of the sail drives. Got all this done for about $30 so I was quite pleased.

A couple of successful tests. I managed to send and receive email over the single side band radio in the evening. So that’s looking good. Even better, the radio doesn’t interfere with the new stereo. The last one used to make all sorts of buzzing sounds when I used the short wave. There’s even signs there may be better reliability at lower frequencies. In the past the USB serial device used to disconnect when I used lower frequencies. It hasn’t happened yet. Could just be luck but who knows. Something to watch over time.

I also tested our final handheld GPS (previously buried in junk) on my new nav station setup. It powered up and communicated fine. Great stuff.

Helen continued to clean and reorganize the boat. It’s hard work. She even made me reorganize my cluttered desk top by the nav station.

In the evening we had (Division II) Amy and Dan’s kids over to play on the XBox/Kinnect. They’d given us a lot of their monthly internet bandwidth to download one of the games that came with the kinnect. I didn’t realize it had to be downloaded as otherwise I would have sorted it all out in the Uk. Here it is a pain. I’d done the download along with everything else on Monday. Unfortunately the USB stick I’d put the 4.6GB game onto had gone corrupt so that turned out to be a waste of time. Because the kids will get a little less video for the next 3 weeks I had promised to make up by letting them play. Despite the setback I still owed them this. They had a fun time jumping around in front of the kinnect and they ended up going back nearly an hour late. With the way things are going we may have them back again before we leave.

We had a nice surprise after they left when Petr from Endless popped by to say hello. He was visiting the next door boat and saw us. So he came over for a quick meet and greet. Turns out we have similar plans for this year so that should be good.

The last set back for the day came when I headed down to our berth at the end of the day with my laptop. I dropped my wireless mouse and now the buttons are a bit stuffed and the wheel won’t turn. I’ll have a go at fixing it today but I’m not sure about it. We’ll see.

The goal is to get out of here

by steve, on March 6th, 2012 (Division II, New Zealand, Nymph)

As much as we like Whangarei, the rest of the world is out there to discover. But to get out of here, we’ve got to get our work done. So it was back to getting busy.

So, in no particular order, here is what we got up to.

We called in a local supplier to provide some roll up blinds for the back of the boat. In the past we have often had to hang sheets at sun down to prevent the sun from going into our eyes. The new blinds will block 90% of the light but let us still see out. They will also help against chilly winds. Good down here. We’ve left this job a little late and may have to have the blinds delivered to Auckland.

I visited the bank to pick up our Vanuatu dollars. Only it turned out they’d cocked it up. Should now get the dollars on Wednesday.

I removed the old AIS unit and cleaned it up ready to sell to someone.

In the middle of everything we noticed that the bilge alarm was beginning to go off. This involved a big hunt for cause. Turned out the tee on the hot water line that goes off to the washing machine was dripping from two places. This may have been a very small issue for a long time but with the pressure from the town coming into the boat the drips were sufficient to set off the bilge every few hours. I tightened up the hose clamps and all was good. This triggered off a bilge cleaning session which was not on our list.

I raised the house batteries from beneath the guest bunk setting up all twelve on top of the bunk in the arrangement they’ll be eventually boxed. In their new configuration I needed to divide two of my old battery cables into two. I was able to get this done at All Marine before lunch time. With them all easily accessible I topped them all up. I ran out of water with four cells left. Fortunately was able to borrow a bottle from Pete from Nymph.

I took Dan from Division II to the wood merchant to order the marine ply and have it cut to the spec Dan drew up for the new battery box. Dan spent some time throughout the day touching up a few gelcoat splats we’ve found since leaving the yard and building the new box. Progress was good. He took the new box back to his boat to seal it up with resin in case any battery leaks.

We visited Norsand to see if our second motor had been taken by the scrap merchant. It hadn’t but when called, they promised to pick it up soon.

I paid a visit to the local Yanmar dealer to pick up spares for the motors. Enough to handle one change of everything. As ever, the local prices are 2-3 times that which I can source equivalents in the US. Having got the parts I spent some time looking up alternates in the US that Sam can bring with him.

I looked for parts for a water maker project I have in mind. I want to install an automatic cut off. The way we’re set up I need to create a vessel into which the water will rise when both tanks are full and then trigger the float switch I have. Spent a small amount of time looking for such a vessel but had no luck. May need to come up with a new idea here or get creative.

I made two attempts to test the single side band radio. They weren’t very successful but this is fairly normal for short wave radio. Particularly in town. I did manage to connect to one email station but not well enough to send or receive any traffic. May have to try a few different times of day and/or test away from the electronically noisy town.

At the end of the day I transferred all the fuel from our seven jerry cans into the port fuel tank. The fuel has been in these cans for a year so I had to use the filter as some crud had grown. It was a bit windy so the job got a bit messy.

Helen spent a lot of time cleaning and reorganizing. She also cooked up this years supply of chilli paste to add to curries and whatnot. Seriously vital and life enhancing work. This was topped off with a fine curry.

We finished the day off watching a movie. I had to wait up afterwards to call the Uk so it’s a bit of a surprise that I woke up so early this morning. Helen is still asleep and I await her arousal so I can fire up the generator to do this mornings wash and, more importantly, get the heating on.

Overall, a grand day

by steve, on March 5th, 2012 (Kilkea II, New Zealand)

Shortly after our successful sea (river) trial David and Marian from Kilkea showed up for a brief visit. We decided to eat lunch at Reva’s overlooking the river. Having overfed ourselves to only option was to walk it all off so we decided to take the river hike up to Whangarei Falls.

The weather was very pleasant as was the company. We always enjoy the David and Marian’s company. They’re leaving for Australia within the next few months and this may be our last meeting for a while. There is a possibility we’ll get together for the departure of the Volvo round the world ocean race departure on the 18th. We have to get our heads around finishing off our work and getting out of here first.

On the walk back David and I opted for the diversion to the top of the 787ft hill overlooking the town and river. The ladies shirked out of this minor exercise heading straight for the boat and a cold bottle of wine. In the end David and I were not far behind and nor were the cold beers which were well earned.

Beating the Sunday night special offer turnover we paid a visit to the local supermarket to add to our growing supplies of wine for our cruise up to the islands.

Helen wanted to finish off watching the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice. Not my thing so it was back to the XBox for me for a couple of hours diversion.

We finished the day having hot showers aboard using the water heated up via the heat exchanger from the port engine. Nice.

It’s now Monday and the weekend is over. Back to work for us. It’s still early and cold outside so we have the generator on to do a wash and have the A/C set to provide warmth.

I for one am looking forward to our return to Fiji.

Sea (River) Trial a Success

by steve, on March 4th, 2012 (New Zealand)

All is good. All bar one of my perceived issues I managed to resolve before the techs arrived. The crazy A/C control went sane when Bertrand was watching. We went down the river for 45 mins and then returned trying the engines out at various revs. At full throttle we were doing over 9 knots. We will have to do some measurements and calculations soon to decide how best to cruise as 9 knots drinks a lot of fuel.

We said goodbye to Joel and Bertrand. They’ve done a fantastic job. They even did a last minute alteration for us shifting the windlass from the starboard engine alternator onto our house bank.

Balancing Act

by steve, on March 4th, 2012 (Division II, New Zealand, Proximity)

As the bad weather came through we did manage a fair bit of down time on Saturday. However, we did spend much of the morning being fairly busy. We moved the rest of our disconnected and spare batteries from the front cabin area to the rear. We also shifted all our jerry cans of fuel and spare anchor to aft. The combined effect of this weight redistribution lifted our bow water line out of the water.

We managed to lay the anchor down inside our under seat locker in the rear. The fuel is not so easy to place. We’re thinking that for long trips we’ll simply keep the spare fuel in the cockpit area and transfer it into the main tanks as that fuel is consumed. The empty cans can be stored forward without a problem. It’s probably good to keep cycling the fuel through the cans.

I spent some time with Dan from Division II who is going to help me next week put in a new floor and battery boxes below the stern guest cabin. After some discussion we have it all worked out. I then spent some time with all my various batter cables figuring out what lengths I need to keep and some to cut to make up our new battery bank. The new bank will sit further down and be more accessible than the last. We will also get some additional storage space.

I ran into Rod and Elizabeth from Proximity at one point in the marina. They’re here too. They knew we were here as they saw us coming up the river on AIS. That’s a good test. In fact I am very pleased with the new setup. Right now I can see four vessels at Marsden point over 10nm away and not line of sight. Great stuff.

We treated ourselves to sushi for lunch which we ate on the boat. The afternoon was mostly R&R. I pulled out the XBox and played for a few hours while Helen read. Outside the wind howled and it alternated between sunshine and downpour every 10 minutes it seems. A good day to be inside.

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Not all going to plan

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Overall, a grand day

Sea (River) Trial a Success

Balancing Act