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3rd Tuesday on the hard

by steve, on April 12th, 2011 (Callisto, Emily Grace, Leu Cat, New Zealand, Tyee)

With the work list dwindling you’d think we’d be having less to do. It doesn’t seem to be working out that way :

I remove temporary batteries I hooked up sitting over the starboard shaft access ready for the techs planned visit.
I made my (hopefully) last trip up the mast to file down the epoxy I’d applied to the oversized countersunk holes.
The engine tech arrived and told us the second shaft seal was now not expected to arrive from overseas until late May and suggested we try and order one from the US. I nearly tore his head off. We then came up with the idea of using the new one and the best of the old ones which is still pretty good.
I cleaned and sanded the prop shafts one more time.
The engine tech ran into a new problem as the newly machined couplings had been machined in error and needed some more work. Despite all this, all is expected to be complete on this front by Wednesday.
Replaced a bent clip on the dinghy hauling lines.
Inventoried genset oil to determine how much more to buy in.
Stored around 14 boxes of wine away from the world.
Laid out storm anchor. This is one of those jobs we should have done a long time ago. We’ve had a second hand para anchor and a brand new set of bridles/lines for nearly two years and we’ve never taken them out of the bags to inspect them, let alone test them at sea. We removed both sets of lines from the bags and worked out how we would set them from the boat at sea. We removed the parachute from it’s bag and found it intact but covered in mould. We hoisted it up the mast for a couple of hours in the afternoon to dry out. It will have to go up there again today. Also spent ages trying to untangle the lines to the parachute. It’s better but not complete.
Collected our finished windows. I took them round to Leu Cat who are considering doing the same project. They were quite impressed. There I picked up our two clamshell scoops which had arrived from the US. Back at the boat Helen was delighted. We put them into the window frames and checked them out through the plastic still wrapping the boat. They looked good but we really need to see them with the plastic off.
Bottom painting progressed. Second primer followed by first coat of anti-foul went on.

During the day it was nice to meet John and Lucy from Tyee who’ve just returned from Canada. Their boat has been in the yard while they’ve been home. With envy we saw Emily Grace splash/launch.

In the evening it was a pleasure to eat out with Mike and Anne from Callisto at our preferred curry house in Whangarei. Like us, they like their curries hot so we were able to share five dishes amongst the four of us. Delicious.

The weather forecast for the rest of the week remains good and all signs point towards a Friday afternoon launch for us. Today the second layer of anti-foul goes on as will a third application on all our leading edges. The engine tech should have our prop shafts reconnected and we may even have the hull clean started. A lot to do yet but it all looks doable.

3rd Monday on the hard

by steve, on April 11th, 2011 (New Zealand)

My blog titles have long since lost any originality. Despite each day being quite different I think the titles capture the essence of our current existence so I’ll keep it up until the day we splash.

With no further ado, straight in with the days progress report :

I discussed our concerns with the new anchor chute with Peter. The result was that Dan spent some time removing it (it was very firmly stuck to it’s epoxy base) so it can be taken to the engineers to be curved some more.
With Dan’s help we attached the new through hull for the genset water exhaust.
I obtained a couple of new screws for the headsail furler and ascended the mast to expoxy the holes and put in the new screws. It looks like the original holes were misaligned by about a milimeter and someone countersunk the outside sleeve wider to accomodate the screws in the correct position. This has left it with a certain amount of movement. The epoxy should minimise this small movement.
Assembled the grab bag and double checked remaining items required.
I attempted to move our stern light behind the wind gen pole which obscures it from one angle. Turned out there was no easy option which would also be elegant. I ended up leaving it where it is and sealing the course of the power supply. I’ll await more inspiration.
The varnishing of our shower door sill was completed.
I spent much of the afternoon working with the rigging guy fixing the unbalanced tine at the top of the forestay. Turns out this work was more than prudent as the asymmetrical forces on the tine had resulted in the retaining split pin becoming close to being sheared. A failure here would have resulted in the main pin working loose and the loss of the forestay and possibly the loss of the mast. Not good. We’re glad we did this.
I called the sign company regarding our windows. They should be ready Tuesday afternoon.
I researched the means of purchasing duty free fuel up in Opua. Given the probably May passage to Fiji it looks like we’ll have time to get back up to the Bay of Islands before then.

Alongside all the the painting has begun on the boat. First, protective plastic wrap was taped to the boat above the point where the hulls will be painted and all the way up to the safety lines. We’ve had our first coat of primer applied. I discussed the pros/cons of applying a second coat of primer with Peter and have decided to go with a second coat. This will make our subsequent bottom paints much simpler and cheaper. We used our dinghy davits to raise our rudders into the air so they can be easily painted.

The weather forecast is looking good for the rest of the week so we should make plenty of progress with the bottom painting. The mechanic is due back today to install the starboard shaft. That will involve removing the temporary supplemental battery setup I have in place to allow him access. Once he is complete I’ll be able to put most of the batteries back into their intended positions. I’ll leave some access to the shaft to enable inspection and ‘burping’ of the shaft seal following our splash.

3rd Sunday on the hard

by steve, on April 10th, 2011 (Attitude, El Regalo, New Zealand)

Because we’d planned the afternoon off, the work accomplished list for Sunday was relatively short :

Lubricated all pulleys and sliders
More varnish onto shower sill
Replaced line cover over pulleys (involved spending 1/2 hour picking out a hole in tube of sealant)
Cleaned mess on cabin top (from gluing last weekend)
Created sail bag zip handle
Fixed nav station light which had been flickering
Found and sanded more gelcoat patches

Around midday we packed it in, tidied up and had a brief lunch before heading into town to watch the Tai Tokerau Haka Road Show. The show was an opportunity for three of the local (normally competitive) traditional singing/dancing groups to showcase their work along with a few other entertainers.

The show was to a packed hall and had a fundraising (for Christchurch) element to it. Curiously they had a Butlins style host who introduced each act. The opener was a great singing chap who the audience knew as a contestant on NZ Idol. Next was the first of the singing/dancing groups. If we thought we were treated last Friday, it just got better. With about 15 females and 15 males in traditional costume we were given several different performances all strung together seemlessly. The crowd would cheer when certain songs began presumably because they were familiar. All the male led performances for this group and those that followed seemed to be some variation on the haka.

Next came two sisters, a 14 year old on the cello and a 10 year old who played the violin so well it almost brought tears to the eyes. They played 2 songs to huge applause from the audience.

Next came the smallest of the three traditional groups about the same size as the group we had last Friday. Between them and the final group was a round of raffle winners. The last traditional group was the same group of performers as we had last Friday but beefed up in numbers. They exceeded their prior performance by a long shot. The larger audience brought out more enthusiasm and with more of them and bigger acoustics their performance sang out.

And there it could have finished except they decided to bring all three groups together on stage to sing and dance three traditional numbers which they all knew. Fantastic stuff.

It was no surprise that we ran into cruisers in the hall. We ended up sitting right at the front in front of Brian and JoDon from El Regallo. We bumped into Kathy from Attitude on the way out.

We didn’t stay too long as we had a little more to do. We drove to Bunnings to pick up a few bits and pieces for the boat. On the way back to the boat we stopped off and had a walk around the wetlands area we’d seen many times and vowed to visit. It was a quite pleasant and very easy walk allowing us to see a number of birds, etc. quite close to town.

Back on the boat it was now 4:30 and we lost the will to go back to work and cracked open a couple of beers instead.

Dinner was another couple of NZ steaks. I’m going to miss these. We’ve never really cooked steak too often but we’ve treated ourselves to nice filets just a little too often recently. Afterwards we settled down for a movie.

Perhaps to try and get into the spirit of the near future we watched the 50s movie ‘South Pacific’ which turned out to be too long and a struggle to get through. We soldiered on even though Helen ended up playing cards on the computer and I spent most of the time watching the live telemetry and commentary from the Malaysian Grand Prix. A quick check on IMDB revealed the usual con about movie locations. None of it was filmed in the South Pacific. The closest location was Hawaii (20 degrees north of the equator) and the rest in Ibiza (Spain), Malaysia and LA. All I can say is “Bloody Alonso”. Nothing to do with the movie or Ibiza – he drove into the back of Hamilton.

It’s now Monday morning. Real time blog readers can get the same weather forecast as us at metservice. We might just get a continued good run of weather ahead and be out of the yard by the end of the week.

3rd Saturday on the hard

by steve, on April 9th, 2011 (Callisto, Imagine, New Zealand, Sea Mist)

Just after spotting the pattern in the weather it changed again. Another fine day. Can’t complain. Guess what. More boat work :

Installed new sheave and ran line for outhaul / 3rd reef through boom
Serviced two more winches
Tested the new chain chute. Not as good as we’d hoped. Needs to be bent some more.
Applied more varnish to shower sill.
Cleaned dinghy and dinghy cover.
Taped cables going in and out of mast.
Taped damaged patches on starboard shroud cover.
Terminated data service renewals on mobile phone service.
Washed all pulleys in warm water.

During the mid-afternoon we both felt a little fatigued and had to take a rest for an hour. During this time we took a look at a new guide we have covering the area around north Fiji. We’ll be there soon.

On the way to food (and little more wine) shopping we briefly bumped into Stuart (Imagine) and Mike (Callisto) presumably paying a doctors call to John on Sea Mist who’s had a nasty cold for some time now. Hopefully he’ll be better soon.

In the evening we watched a movie then Helen read and I polished off three more Euler problems. I’m getting back into the swing of them.

The dancers we saw a couple of nights ago are participating in an event this afternoon. We need some R&R so we’ll probably go to that.

3rd Friday on the hard and an excellent break

by steve, on April 8th, 2011 (Attitude, Boree, Callisto, El Regalo, Imagine, Leu Cat, New Zealand, Proximity, Scream, Tahina)

The weather this week has been very alternating. Every other day we have variable weather and on the alternate days we have a consistently good day. Yesterday was a consistently good day. Confused? Because we had an afternoon event planned we had a shortened work day but we still made progress :

Sanded all the gelcoat touch ups
Replaced temporary split pin at top of mast
Added a layer of varnish to the shower sill
Picked up new code zero halyard
Replaced old main halyard (which was in the code zero halyard’s position) with new code zero halyard
Assembled gooseneck twice. First time I thought I had it on the boom upside down but I discovered I was wrong about this after removing it.
Installed new main sheet
Reattached sail bag
80% inflated dinghy (which was returned from having handle/rollock reattached)
Filed off ridges from inside boom in order to install new sheave for outhaul/third reef

On the external projects more progress was made than anticipated. The dinghy arrived. The anchor roller strengthening is now complete. The chain chute is complete. The props / shafts were returned from having a hole drilled and pin inserted. The new sheave was cut. Our window inserts are now expected early next week and I postponed the forestay work to Monday.

I actually had a little time to study a few Euler problems and have now developed a strategy to solve one of them which I’ll implement over the weekend. It’s interesting going back to them as at first they all look far too complicated to solve but sooner or later dormant brain cells wake up from their slumber and go to work.

Around 2:30pm we broke for the day and cleaned up for our afternoon out. The town of Whangarei was putting on a farewell seminar/show for the cruisers who’ve spent time (and presumably quite a lot of money) here in the town – particularly on services to their ocean battered boats. First was a very impressive traditional Maori challenge, far better than the one we saw at the Maori experience in Rotorua.

Next we had a half hour lecture by weather guru Bob McDavitt. For those that don’t know him, he puts out an excellent cruising forecast each Sunday that makes a relevant read every Sunday. As such he practically received a heroes welcome by the cruisers as a result of this service. He does offer professional guidance / route planning to those that wish it. His half hour brief was very informative. He confirmed the weather scenario for leaving north that I’m now already anticipating. More importantly he helped us understand the broader context for the weather patterns and their near term impact. We’re in what’s called a declining La Nina situation which historically extends the cyclone season. Thus the general recommendation is not to leave until May. This fits our general plan which was to be ready by the third week in April and to take the first available weather window. That window should now appear early May. This extra time allows us the opportunity to flex our new wings (once installed) with a sail, perhaps, up to Opua before we leave.

Next was the BBQ which was a fine feast. I thought I was taking a little of everything but my plate ended up piled high. Having had a light and early lunch I was famished and polished off the lot.

Finally we were given a cultural Maori performance by a national competition winning local singing group. Again – far better than the ones we’ve seen at tourist attractions. We are lucky to have the opportunity in our lives to go cruising and further privileged to be given such joyful, harmonious and passionate performances.

We were not alone for this farewell presentation. We sat amongst old friends from the ‘class of ’10’ puddle jumpers : Attitude, Boree, Callisto, El Regallo, Imagine, Leu Cat, Proximity, Scream & Tahina. There were plenty of others there too and the sad thing is was our need to catch up with old friends prevented us from really making any new.

Being in the company of so many friends and having the Polynesian dancing and singing going on made most, if not all, of us keen to start our crossing and get back out into the wonders of the South Pacific. Just got to get the boat work finished !!!!!

We finished the evening by inviting Frank and Karen over to a messy Dignity to share a bottle of wine. Almost like being back out on the water. Except for the gentle rocking. The slapping of waves. The warm nights. The beautiful beaches. The great snorkeling. No yard dust. Not having to pee in a bucket. Ok – so not quite so similar but we’re on our way soon.

ADDED LATER: All too easy. Euler problem nailed. Off to work.

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