Right now we’re waiting in the dockyard canal waiting to be hauled. We’re tied to the canal walls and the lifting gear is set up beneath the boat.
The workers are off to lunch while the tide goes out. We can’t go anywhere. We might as well relax.
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We made good progress yesterday. I paid off the guys for the work done on the genset. While out and about I visited the upholsterer. Our new (and much more comfortable) helm seat base was ready as was our new table cloth. Back on the boat I fitted the helm seat. As it was approaching high tide I was able to load up our chain and take it up the not so steep ramp and take it off to the second hand store and turn it into wine vouchers. We finished the morning replacing all the halogen bulbs in the starboard hull with LED replacements we’ve had for some time. I also had an extra, extra bright LED replacement for Helen’s reading light. Unfortunately it didn’t fit to well so I started soldering a different pin arrangement into it so it would fit. By now it was already late morning. We were visited by Malcolm who we’d met and wined with when we were down in Christchurch. He’s staying in the north island and we’d given him an invite to see us on the boat. We ate lunch aboard followed by a visit to the nearby clock museum which was quite interesting. After saying goodbye to Malcolm I finished off the work on Helen’s replacement light which ended up working fine. We then set upon the rear locker which we cleared out, cleaned then laid our shorter piece of new chain into the base. We oiled up a load of rusty cans and threw away a few things we felt we’d never need. After tidying that all away the back of the boat looks a lot tidier. The weather today looks ok for our haulout so hopefully we’ll be on the land by this afternoon. The weather ahead is not so good. Oh well. Not on Monday though. After getting the new chain down to the dock the rain resumed in earnest and that was that for the rest of the day. Tuesday was far more productive. The genset guy came. The old heat exchanger is leaky and a little clogged so I’d ordered a new one while we were on our NZ travels. Also, the return diesel feed lines that carry hot diesel away from the engine had become stiff so I wanted them replaced before they cracked. I wanted to have comfort that the replacements were done right so hence having someone else do the work. I’m glad I did as the work was long, hard and messy. The results are good. Raw water flow appears improved which should help the genset run a little cooler which can only be good. While this was all going on Helen and I worked on the old/new chain. We lowered our 200ft primary chain into the dinghy and then fed it onto the dock to be hosed down. We laid out the new chain to mark off 50ft lengths so we have an idea of how much chain we’re putting out. In the end we discovered we had around 370ft of chain, not 300ft as we expected. This is way more than we need so after some cogitation we decided to separate off about 90ft of the chain. The 280ft length, now marked off, was fed into the dinghy and then raised into the boat using the windlass. I carried the remaining 90ft aboard for subsequent storage in our aft locker. This means we no longer need our old 200ft of chain. I found a buyer for it at the nearby 2nd hand marine store. Not a lot but enough for another box of half-decent wine. Those two jobs took most of the day. There was another wine run in the morning. I did a motor test too. I hadn’t done one since cleaning the props and all appeared much better than last time. We have one more day on the dock before our haulout tomorrow when all the hard work really begins. The jobs we’re having done on the boat include :
If we’re lucky with the weather we’ll splash a week later. The forecast, however, is not looking good. We’ll be doing whatever work we can do to help things along and save on the cost. We’ll also stay aboard for as long as we can stand it. We didn’t do a great deal on Sunday. I spent some more time installing apps on my rebuilt laptop as well as nailing a few more Project Euler problems. I’ve now passed 150 correct which means I am no longer attributed the status of “Novice”. I also spent some time troubleshooting some technical issues with a nearby boats AIS/PC. We managed to narrow down the possible causes of error which hopefully steered him in a better direction than he was going. We made our usual daily run to the supermarket for some more wine. We now have over half of what we need for the season in Fiji. Now that we’re into a new week there should be new wines on offer so the sampling starts all over anew. It’s a hard life. In perusing our movies we’ve decided to start watching all the Star Trek movies (interspersed with others – we’re not that sad). It kind of takes us back as our first date was going out to see the first three movies end to end (ok, so we are that sad). Today it’s been pissing down with rain so we’re having another lazy day. There has been some excitement the packages we’ve been waiting on have now arrived. This includes the replacement chain which is a long saga going all the way back to Grenada when we first bought 300ft of chain which turned out to have issues with the galvanization. That old chain we left with the folks on Palmerston atoll. Now we have a brand new chain free of charge. We also have the new Canon S95 camera with it’s underwater housing. Somehow I managed to order two housings so one is already up on trademe (the NZ equivalent of eBay). We managed to schlep the chain down to the dock at high tide (the only time the walkway is not too steep for such a heavy weight) in a small gap in the rain. It’s now sitting on the dock for future labours. The genset guy due last Friday may come this afternoon. Or maybe not. There’s a few inside things we could do today but there’s no rush. Saturday morning Helen and I went out shopping for a few bits and pieces for the boat plus another batch of chardonnay. With the new sealant I finished off the shower tray and fixed a loosed grill on the stove. Leaving Helen to use the sealant to fix some small leaks on the hatches I set about fixing our dinghy wheels to the dinghy. That required removing the outboard and getting the dinghy onto the dock to work.
In the evening we met up with our friends at the Mongolian Restaurant where they had an all you can eat special on. Quite a few of us had skipped lunch in order to make the most of this (typical for cruisers). It was all very enjoyable. We’ll probably go there again sometime. This morning is a slow one. A little time off from the boat chores is in order. |
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