New Zealand « Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Saturday in the yard

by steve, on February 26th, 2012 (New Zealand)

In the morning we managed to test one of the forward bimini supports where it attaches to the roof. This is where we know another boat had a failure. As far as we can tell this test came out well. It was quite hard doing the test as we had to protect all the underside of the bimini and boat surface below as well as use a tarpaulin to protect the area from the wind. By the time we finished this support the wind really kicked up so we passed on the second.

The rest of the morning was spent marking out the new piece of wood for the nav station with the positions of all the kit being installed on it. Then came the scary part of cutting it all. At this time Malcolm, who we got to know last time we were here in NZ, popped by to say hello. He ended up helping by holding the wood steady while I cut the holes with the jigsaw.

We broke for lunch and went into town to eat by the marina. There we met past (and probably future) crewman Paul and his son Tom. We feasted and chatted and were all very grateful when Malcolm insisted on picking up the bill.

We all returned to the yard to see how things were getting on. We hung out in the communal kitchen for a while drinking coffee and chatting some more. By the time Paul, Tom and Malcolm headed off it was nearly 4pm.

I checked out the holes I’d cut in the morning and found one to be too small with the others being almost perfect. A little more sawing and that was done.

So that’s about it. Our slacking off in the afternoon means less was done that we could have but we deserved it and feel no guilt.

In the meantime, the French techs are making blinding progress. The engine beds are now fiberglassed in and some of the electronics installed. They are making enough progress that they can do a half day today and go sightseeing this afternoon.

Friday in the yard

by steve, on February 25th, 2012 (New Zealand)

So Dell didn’t get back to me. It seemed my original order had been deleted out of existence. I could find orders I made a year ago but not the one from yesterday. So I ordered another laptop for Sam. In doing so I noticed I put the wrong expiry date on my credit card. So I corrected that and crossed my fingers. I woke this morning to find that order has gone the same way. I don’t think Dell wants me as a customer. Now time to consider options (and kind offers).

In the morning we had the nice treat of a Skype video call to see our granddaughter Bao. She was asleep which is how she always is when we’ve seen her. I’m not complaining because this is far better than crying. Crying babies is something from my past. Coped with it then. Had enough of it now. Still – it’s good to be able to use the technology to stay in touch.

Helen and I took a trip out in the car to get some bits and pieces. After trying a number of different stores in town I found a place who could make up a longer VHF cable to join our VHF radio to the new splitter and a cable to join the new stereo to the splitter so we can use the mast antenna for radio. I left my order and returned to the boat.

We then set about testing the stainless steel at the base of the two rear bimini supports. This process highlighted the crack we knew about on the port support and revealed two more on the welds on the starboard support. What we really need to do is to test the smaller supports on the forward end of the bimini but they’re in an awkward spot and we really need to have a still air day. We do know of a Lagoon 420 that had a forward support fail so this is driving us to assess the risks on our boat. The next thing will be to decide what to do about what we find. If we have to do work it would be better here in NZ. It’s good to know we have a potential problem than we can get ahead of but part of me feels ignorance would truly have been bliss. For a while at least.

The French techs worked furiously. The hybrid system is no more. While they worked I collected the pieces I wanted to keep and arranged all the parts we’re selling to another hybrid owner. The motors were winched out of the overhead hatches using the main halyard and lowered to the yard. Trying to lift one of them I couldn’t even budge it. I decided I didn’t want to take them to Australia to sell them. There is no way we can reasonably store them. And the additional weight is something else. I let my contact know of my decision. One last option is to freight one of them over. I have to look into the pricing on this. I can’t imagine it will be cheap.

As they progressed we had occasional conversations with the techs about differences they were finding. The main complication was the addition of the inverter/charger. Their English is as limited as my French so it took time to work things out. Diagrams and google translate were both very useful. In the end we worked it all out.

By the end of they day they had not only gutted the hybrid system (RIP) but made inroads into preparing the rear compartments for the installation of the motors. I felt for Joel who spent a couple of hours sanding away the interior of each space to prepare the surfaces for bonding on the motor supports.

It was amazing how much wiring and cabling was ripped out of the boat. I collected a whole load of 12V wires that I can keep for future projects. I’ve left a whole load for folks here in the yard to help themselves to. I collected up all the 70mm2 and 50mm2 72V cables for the propulsion system and took them into town to sell them. Unfortunately the guy who runs the used boat parts store wasn’t interest so we’ll need to come up with a plan B.

While out I picked up the VHF cables I’d ordered earlier. Back on the boat I installed them. The stereo radio reception is now far better than we’ve ever had. Great.

Throughout the day Helen spent a lot of time clearing out the port bow locker. It had collected a lot of water. We’d fixed all the leaks a year ago. The anchor bridle came loose just before we left Fiji so we know that’s a possible ingress. But the amount of water in there was too much for this. It’s quite likely the hatch is leaking. So sorting out those leaks is now on the project list.

I also performed a few of my regular inspections. I checked all the shackles and the cable ties preventing them coming undone. I also checked the sail cars for any damage or loose screws. All was fine. I also struck a few items off my check list – all those to do with the hybrid system. No doubt, a few more items will be going on to do with the propulsion.

I had a few email exchanges throughout the day with the folks who sold me the AIS unit. Having first defensively claimed the unit was programmed correctly they then went on to ask about cabling, baud rates, etc. Kind of daft when it’s clear the boat name and station id are all coming through ok but the boat dimensions are coming through consistently wrong. I went along with their emails as we have to work out what the problem is. Either the unit was programmed incorrectly or the software is failing to read the dimensions or it’s something else. I should be able to read my own boat dimensions from the unit so something’s up. The best test will be to get someone to receive my AIS transmission and tell me what they see. Going to have to find someone to help.

We finished the day sharing a beer with the French and stretching our overlapping vocabulary. It again strikes me how poor the approach to teaching French was at school. At the end of the day it’s all about being able to communicate. Our collective conversation was grammatically horrendous and a total jumble of language. But we understood each other and that’s what mattered. They are both quite nice guys.

Thursday in the yard

by steve, on February 24th, 2012 (Here And Now, New Zealand)

First thing after waking up was to look at the power supply / video problems for the new stereo. I didn’t want to lose any length on the wire so I had a tedious time picking away at the crimps with my wire cutters so I could release the wires intact. Once apart I tested an alternated idea with the positive wires to switch the unit on and off via an external switch. That idea worked but for the time being I left the wires simply twisted together. I then installed a relay which would ground the brake switch detector after the unit was switched on. That worked too. Now the unit will play videos and show pictures. Not essential functions but may as well have them.

Next I had a trial run with the dye penetrant. It’s a three stage process. First the stainless steel has to be cleaned. Then the dye has to be sprayed on and left for 10 minutes. After cleaning it off, a developer is sprayed on to draw the dye out of any cracks. When I sprayed the dye it went everywhere including all over the gelcoat nearby. So it ended up being a rapid clean up job. I got my lessons learned. Next time we need no wind and lots of protection for the nearby surfaces. As the weather was deteriorating rapidly, I postponed the rest of this work.

Through this time, Helen started cutting out paper templates for all the items that will be going onto the new nav station. This was to allow us to move them around and design an ideal layout. Helen did a good job of this and ended up with a pretty good solution I think. I dread cutting out all the holes as one mistake will require a restart. Don’t fancy that.

We’d promised Sam a new laptop while in the Uk and while chatting with him online we found a good candidate via the Dell refurb site – something we’ve used a couple of times before and have been very happy with the results. Being refurbs one has to pick from what’s available without customization and what’s available can change over time so if you see something you like, it’s worth ordering. So I did. Another item off the list. Or so I thought. This morning I found an email from Dell saying the order had been cancelled and not saying why. When I check on line there is no trace of the order. I called the customer support who couldn’t help. They put me onto someone else, who also couldn’t help. They put me through to sales to sort this out. Turned out this was accessories sales. At this point I was a bit pissed off and explained they were the third person I’d spoken to and I felt I was getting the run around. They promised to have someone call me back. We’ll see.

The French technicians, Joel and Bertrand, showed up in the morning. They had a walk through of the boat to check things out. They then needed to buy tools so I went as passenger taking them to the local Bunnings (big DIY store) to get the tools they needed. On the way back we popped into a marine store then we talked to the yard manager, Peter, to understand services available from the yard. Despite the late start the techs are still targeting a launch on Saturday, March 3rd. They’re going to be busy.

The next job for me was to fit the AIS transponder and antenna splitter. It took a while to decide where to put them but in the end I decided on behind the lounge seats where we currently have a fuse box. This meant moving the fuse box too. The fuse box used to have all six connections used up for various items at the nav station. Because I’ve now gone for fused switches on the nav station the fuse box behind the lounge seats now will only have a couple of connections – one going to the nav station switches. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a little out of the way.

In the end I got everything in and accessible. I needed a power source for the two AIS components and decided to wire up the new switches panel prior to installing on the as to be cut out panel (which Helen has been designing). That meant hooking up the inverter to the panel, the new radio (finishing that job off) and the two new components.

Next was testing. I first tried the AIS transponder on it’s own, connecting it to the VHF antenna without the splitter in the circuit. Using the provided s/w and connecting it to my PC I was able to detect one boat up in the Town Basin Marina. So I know it’s receiving which is good. But I don’t have a read on sensitivity as I don’t know how many boats I could/should be seeing. One disappointment was that on checking the configuration, I discovered the supplier has got the boat length wrong and the boat width set to zero. The configuration s/w says the unit can only be configured once so I’ve sent an email to the supplier asking for suggestions.

Next I tried the transponder in line with the splitter. That worked too. I then hooked up the VHF radio to the splitter and tried a radio check while the AIS was running. That came through loud and clear too. So all the vital functions are good. An annoyance with the boat spec to sort out. And I need to buy a longer cable to join the splitter to the VHF radio as the one we have isn’t quite long enough. Pity. I also need to get a cable that will join the splitter to the new stereo so we can also use the mast antenna to listen to the radio. I think Helen is getting fed up with my playlist.

By now it was getting close to 5pm so it was time to tidy up the immense amount of mess I’d created. As I reached the end of the tidying we cracked open a beer each to celebrate a good days work. At this point we were greeted by knocks on the boat. Dave and Elana had found us. We were due to meet in town but they’d decided it might be fun to scour the local boatyards and find us first. As it was now passable inside we invited them in to sit around on toolboxes and the like. We subsequently went out for a Thai meal in town and then went for a walk along the waterfront. It was nice to catch up with them, find out what they’ve been up to in the last three years and to share some of our experiences.

We were quite pooped when we returned to the boat. We did well avoiding opening a bottle of wine, our usual habit. Perhaps this is the first sign of our progress towards Helen’s target of four bottles per week.

I did get a response from the email that NZ Garmin Customer Support gave me. Turns out it’s for returns. I’m pretty sure I’m not still under warranty so this is a dead end.

Wednesday in the yard

by steve, on February 23rd, 2012 (Here And Now, Kalida, New Zealand, Sidewinder)

We’re starting to get busy though, in hindsight, perhaps not busy enough.

In the early morning I spent some time researching travel options for Sam. In the end, the best flight I could find was via Fiji of all places. That’s now booked. He leaves Sunday, April 22nd and arrives around midday on the following Tuesday. We have promised to buy him a new laptop. Spent some time researching that with some input from John in the UK. Got some ideas but not yet bought the kit.

Helen spent a lot of time throughout the day cleaning the outside of the boat. There are a lot of tiny fungal spots all over the surface of the boat. This all needs bleaching to kill off. Round 1 is done but it looks like a second round of bleaching and washing will be required.

I spent the morning dismantling the old nav station labelling all the wires as I went and securing them so they didn’t disappear into the void behind. I also replaced the broken exterior speaker.

Looking ahead I have booked a service for our life raft. That’s down in Auckland and there is a waiting list of about 3 weeks. We are now on the list and need to drop the life raft off next week. I’m also trying to arrange a service for our chart plotter as
the cooling fan is noisy and the unit overheats if the display brightness is on full. I was given an email by the local Garmin support but have yet to get a response to the request I sent. Right now I have an external fan wired in which provides some cooling from behind.

After lunch I was picked up by the car hire company and taken to their depot. For NZ$40 we’ve got quite a large, air conditioned automatic which feels like a sedan to drive. With 140,000km on the clock it’s not spanking new but it does the job.

Once in the car I visited a recommended car radio specialist to try and sort out some sort of bracket to hold in the new radio I have. While there I spoke to him about how I might install it given that it was not going to be put in a car. I got some advice re wiring which I hoped would be useful.

While out I also picked up some ‘dye penetrant‘ which I’m going to use to inspect the load bearing stainless steel around the boat. We have noticed a small crack on one of the bimini supports so we really should do the works and check it all out while we’re in a position where repairs can be made.

Back on the boat I cut the connections to our old radio and crimped on the connections to the new one. In hindsight I wish I’d simply twisted on the power connections and tested first. With the way I have currently wired the unit, I can’t turn it off. There is a button labelled off but if I press it and hold it down, the unit goes into demo mode. I also made a mistake with how I wired the brake sensor (which disables the video functions). Obviously, in a car, watching video while driving is a tad dangerous so the unit has a brake sensor that enables the video when grounded. However, it turns out the video is only enabled if the brake sensor is grounded *after* the unit is switched on. That means I need to wire in a relay to delay the grounding.

My final task of the day was to fit new blinds over the two read berths. The starboard blind broke last year. Ours is ok but the starboard forward shower is totally broken and seized up. We get the new one and the shower will get our old one. Helen wants me to do a more complicated switcheroo involving the blinds over the forward starboard bunk. All that area is full of junk at the moment and I can’t get there so I’ve done as much as I can of this project for now.

At this point I left resolving the two radio issues until the next day as I was feeling a bit tired. So I pulled out a new toy I’d ordered from the US and brought to us in the UK by Ben. It was an XBox 360 with the Kinect motion sensor. The latter enables one to interact with certain games using body movements and gestures. Despite all the clutter and restricted floor space (our bed is currently in the main cabin keeping the bunks clear) I managed to get it going. Both Helen and I spent a fair amount of time ducking, dodging and jumping. We both worked up a bit of a sweat and it was fun. And that is the idea of it. Sometimes, when we don’t get off the boat, we don’t get a lot of exercise. Maybe this a way to do it.

I actually felt a bit guilty postponing the radio work for a bit of fun but after writing this blog I think I had a busy enough day.

When I was out and about, I ran into (not literally) David from Sidewinder. Turns out they’re on the hard just down the road. We should be able to meet up with them this Sunday as there’s going to be a presentation here in Norsand in the evening by some folks who have been sailing the Pacific on traditional catamarans.

We were also contacted by Elana who we first met, with partner Dave, in Antigua while watching Obama’s inauguration. That seems a very long time ago. Turns out they’re here in New Zealand and the upshot is we’re meeting in town this evening. Should be nice to catch up.

On the subject of bumping into people, the day we arrived at the yard we bumped into Dave and Alison from Kalida. They’re here in the yard somewhere. We never did get to meet them in Fiji so we’ll just have to make up somehow.

In the evening Helen and I went on our first provisioning run. While we have the car we need to get all the heavy stuff onto the boat as it will get a lot harder later. This included everything Helen could find on special offer plus a trolley load of wine. With respect to the latter we are essentially loading up to last from March to December. Even with Helen’s reduced weekly target of 4 bottles a week that’s still quite a few boxes. We’re now about 20% done on that front.

After provisioning we picked up some noodles in town and made our way back to the boat. We loaded the food aboard but left the wine in the car. We finished the day sampling one of our wines, eating our noodles and watching an old Bruce Lee movie. Helen didn’t make it until the end.

This morning I woke up about an hour and a half after yesterday so I’ll count that as progress. Helen, having woken for a while, is back asleep. It’s still dark outside even after writing all this.

You may have noticed no mention of the French technicians. That’s because there was nothing to say. I do have communications the strongly suggest they’ll be here today. One thing I’ll need to do is have them work out a new splash date and get this arranged. With a three day delay to the start of work I doubt we’ll hit the original target.

Back to work

by steve, on February 22nd, 2012 (New Zealand)

We didn’t get a great deal more done on Monday – it was simply a struggle to stay awake. We didn’t do too bad. We tried bottle of wine I’d picked up at the supermarket. I must have been jet lagged as it was low alcohol and terrible.

We both had a pretty decent sleep but I woke before 4am. The good side of waking early is it allowed me to get on with the paperwork I’d been putting off. A bunch of letters and loads of forms later I was done. Yay.

The rest of the day was spent unpacking our stuff and planning the boat work ahead of us. I’ve put together a list of things to do which grew throughout the day as we thought of new things and/or ran into parts we’d bought before which needed a project line to get them done. We also spent some time visualizing and planning the nav station rearrangement. This is not complete but we are building up some ideas. We also arranged for a hire car to be picked up Wednesday. Being in the yard for a couple of weeks with no transport is a daunting prospect.

In the afternoon we took a walk into town principally to mail the paperwork generated in the morning but also for Helen to go price comparing and to do a little extra shopping. In the end we were out and about for about 3 hours and feeling a little tired for the effort. The really nice thing was that it is tee-shirt weather. Good to be back in the warmth.

The French techs have yet to show to start work on the sex change (diesel conversion). Although work was very officially supposed to start on Monday it turns out the techs didn’t leave France until Monday. Perhaps we’ll see them today (Wednesday). I’m feeling a little robbed as we gave up the last two days being with the family to be here in time for the planned start of work. But then. the kids probably enjoyed a bit of time away from their parents in London. The yard were a bit late finishing the bottom painting for the boat so at least we had time to get this done before the rest of the work starts.

This morning it’s 3am and we’re both up. And that’s after successfully staying awake until nearly 9pm last night. So a bit of a backwards step there.

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