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Last full day in Whangarei?

by steve, on March 10th, 2012 (New Zealand, True Companions)

After a bit of a slow start I retested all 16 batteries. After the long equalization they all appeared fine with differences no more than 0.03V. I’ve had ads up for a week now around town for the 4 spares and had no takers. I’m not going to throw them away so we’re going to keep them. And keeping them means connecting them so the decision was made.

There was still a lot of work to do to finish up. The inverter/charger had to be resecured. The flooring above the 12 batteries had to be put in. The 4 additional batteries had to be boxed and put in place. This was all done.

While I was doing all this, Helen cleaned the deck which was quite grubby from the time in the yard.

Out and about I sold off the remainder of my battery cables for a half decent amount as well as exchanging a couple of the old 8D battery boxes for some additional distilled water. We had another provisioning run but not as much as before.

In the afternoon our new shades arrived and were installed. They look quite nice and give the outside cockpit area a kind of Bedouin tent feel. We’ll leave them up for now as they also protect the area from wind and rain to a certain extent.

In the evening Vickie and Steve from True Companions came over for pizza and a chat. They’ve just finished a tour of the south island and have returned to their boat.

So. Per the question in the title of this blog entry. Was this our last full day in Whangarei? That would all depend on whether or not the parts arrived for our outboard. They didn’t so it isn’t. We’re here for the weekend at least. That being said, the weather continues to be miserable so our prospects were to go down the river, stick the hook down somewhere and stay indoors for the weekend.

Here we can get off the boat. We may go to the movies today. We have more to do but as we were aiming to escape today most of the major stuff is done.

Some big items ticked off

by steve, on March 9th, 2012 (New Zealand)

We had an early knock on the hull. It was Neil from Palmer canvass with our rails. We needed to fit them before they could do their final measurements for the custom shades. I said I reckoned I could get it done late morning.

I noticed that the battery voltage was around 12.1V. Not bad but a little lower than I had expected. There are a number of possible causes, many of which are quite ok. I tested the voltage over each battery to see if any of the 6V batteries were down compared to their neighbour.

It turned out I did have one mismatched pair with one battery about 0.5V lower than it’s neighbour. Again, this could be due to all the recent shuffling around of batteries resulting in one battery coming into the pack that was significantly less well charged than the rest. There is only one real way to settle this and that would be to equalize all the batteries, including the four spares. This timely task went onto the list.

First though I focused on the water maker. I checked it out then ran it through it’s flush cycle to rid it of the pickling solution put in last November. While this was going on I helped Dan put in the new battery box which was finally ready.

Once the box was in place and the water maker flush cycle finished I cut off the house supply and set about, with Helen’s help, placing 12 batteries into the box. We cleaned each battery as well as sanding each of the battery cable connections. I then hooked up the four spares so that all 16 were in the bank.

Then on went the generator to bring the bank up to full charge. With everything reconnected I could now use the water maker to fill our tanks.

As I needed a tape measure to install the blind rails, and had somehow lost ours, I popped out to get one. I used the trip to also pick up our Vanuatu Dollars and to pick up some additional connectors I was short on. At the auto store I talked to them about the battery cable I have spare. They seemed interested and came up with a price around double the recent quote from the better scrap merchants. They wanted to know what lengths I had so measuring them went onto the list of things to do.

Back at the boat the batteries and after a quick bite to eat I called Dan over to help with the rails. It was an awkward job which helped to have two people and at times three. By now the batteries were charged sufficiently to engage the equalization which brings them up to around 15.5V which causes a lot of gassing while pushing out a lot of sulphates from the lead plates.

Just at the point where we had the rails in place, Neil returned to measure. I had intended to call him but he couldn’t have timed his return any better. Dan and I still had to to remove each rail, put compound around each hole and rescrew them on. Neil reckons they’ll have the shades ready today so that will be nice.

Next, Helen and I measured out all the battery cables we had that were over 2m in length. Not including those I was using to add the spare batteries to the house bank we had 11 cables totalling 42m. It would be nice if the shop will take all of them. We’ll find out today. I’ll keep the two cables I have joining the spares to the house bank as they may come in handy.

After getting my email off to the shop detailing the lengths Helen and I went on another major provisioning run, including some more wine. I think Helen has conceded that her goal of four bottles a week is somewhat unrealistic.

Once we returned to the boat and unloaded everything it was time to shut the generator down after over five hours of equalizing. Today I’ll remeasure all the batteries. If there is a problem with any of them it should show up. Of course, with 16 batteries now all connected I’m somewhat tempted to find a way to keep it this way.

So if the shades are delivered today, and it looks like they will, the only thing really keeping us here in Whangarei is the outboard repair. If it gets sorted today, we’ll be off tomorrow (Saturday). If not, oh well.

Atrocious Weather

by steve, on March 8th, 2012 (New Zealand)

It feels like winter here. Yesterday it was cold, wet and windy all day long. Not very conducive to getting things done but we pressed on.

I fixed my mouse which cheered me some what. I had thought it was doomed but it turned out quite fixable.

I inventoried all our generator spares, spare fuses and electrical parts (crimps and whatnot). Now that the generator is not our primary backup to the sails our dependency on it has reduced considerably. We have a lot of fuel filters for it in case of picking up bad fuel along the way. Those are now surplus to requirements so I created a new ad and put it up in this marina and the one over the other side of the river.

I dropped off a part for our outboard and chatted to the owner of the repair shop. He’d placed the order for the parts to come up from Auckland. They may arrive Friday. We’ll see. The weather is forecast to abate by the weekend so maybe we’ll escape from Whangarei by then.

I spoke to NZ Immigration regarding Sam coming in on a one way ticket. He needs a letter from us proving he has outbound travel. This is no different from most countries these days.

I tested our three hand held VHF radios. Two are fine but one had problems sitting in the charger and making a good connection. I sanded the contacts and now it makes no connection at all. I might have a spare battery for this one somewhere – it is the battery that has the contacts. Can’t remember where though. Two handsets is fine though so this may be deferred to a later date.

We did a shopping trip picking up fuses and crimps that I needed. We also picked up some goodies to give as gifts to villages in Fiji.

I heard from the bank. They have our Vanuatu dollars now. We decided to order them here rather than up in Fiji which can pin one down for a few days. As it was tipping down at the time I decided to defer picking up the cash until today.

I have begun looking at the weather GRIBs between here, Australia and Fiji now. It’s part of the process of familiarizing myself with the weather patterns. I like to stay about two months ahead and know what it’s like ahead of us so now’s the time to do this. Have I mentioned this before – but we’re looking forward to the warm weather up in Fiji.

We also heard from the canvas folks. The parts have arrived for our blinds. Next step is for me to install the rail under our bimini. They could do it but they’ll be expensive and I am up for the work. Only we have 20 knot winds forecast for today. As long as it stops raining I should be ok.

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.

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Last full day in Whangarei?

Some big items ticked off

Atrocious Weather

Not all going to plan

The goal is to get out of here