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2nd Thursday on the hard

by steve, on March 31st, 2011 (Boree, Imagine, New Zealand, Proximity, Sea Mist)

As I think back on yesterday I can’t figure out what order things happened in so again I’ll just list the events in semi random order.

We had a couple of visits from outside contractors. The stainless steel guys came by to measure up the bowsprit for the anchor protector. While they were with us we discussed an improvement to the anchor locker which will prevent pile ups of the anchor chain.

We were also visited by the engineering firm to examine our gooseneck/boom and our rudder bearings. They came back with rather a large quote later in the day, mostly for the rudder bearings. In discussion with the yard manager, Peter, he came up with a better and cheaper solution to address the wear on the bearings.

The sanding continued all morning. We occupied this time by washing and conditioning our jib sheets and old furling line. I was interrupted in this task (although I can’t remember what by) and the lines are still sitting in the bucket to be finished today. We also visited the chandlers to pick up replacement nipples/through hull, a large tub of rust remover, some flares (our current ones are out of date), a grab bag for our emergency supplies if we have to abandon ship (better late than never) and a few other sundry items. We also picked up a cheap blow heater as it was freezing cold yesterday morning (though not so bad today). We finally found Arthur’s Emporium, a fantastic store filled with all sorts of things. We didn’t have much time and will have to go back but we did manage to pick up a replacement hammock which we’ve been scouring town for.

When the sanding had finished we were loaned the power wash to wash down the boat. The blue dust was every where and it took 2-3 hours to clean the boat top to bottom. At the end of this we scraped and sanded all the through hulls and I gave them all a second thorough inspection for any pitting – there was none.

At some point in the day I verified we had the latest s/w for our two Garmin GPSs and Helen created a list for the grab bag contents. We have most of it at hand but we want to do a proper job with the contents.

We received a call from the rigger who’s finished the splicing and will drop them by this morning and perform a rigging inspection. We also received a call from the upholster who’s finished the back of our seat which I can collect today.

During the day we had the pleasure of bumping into Ingi from Boree in the yard (and in one of the stores) and also Stuart from Imagine swung by to say hello. We got to know Rod from our neighbouring boat Proximity. He seems to know everyone we know but somehow we missed hooking up along the way. It was of course impossible not to bump into John working hard on Sea Mist from time to time.

We were pooped after all of this so we had a takeaway pizza for dinner and finished the day with a movie.

Category: Boree, Imagine, New Zealand, Proximity, Sea Mist | Here is my comment

Hauled out

by steve, on March 24th, 2011 (Albatross III, Emily Grace, New Zealand, Sea Mist)

Thursday turned out to be a long day. As we were rousing for breakfast we were visited by the sail maker who wanted to take some measurements of the rigging. Once that was complete I made another wine run in the car and to pick up some milk (priorities, priorities). I also paid off our marina fees so we were good to leave. Back at the boat I prepped the lines for leaving the dock and performed some basic checks to make sure we were ok. The wind was up so I turned on the instruments to keep a track of the wind strength. Once this was all done I settled down to rest until we were due to go.

Shortly, though, I received a call from the yard as they were a bit concerned about the wind there and suggested I came over to take a look. At the yard the wind was around 15 knots and gusting up to 20 almost right into the dock. I felt we’d be ok with that but agreed to prepare the stern anchor just in case we ran into difficulties at the entrance. Back at the boat I roused Helen to help prepare the stern anchor, rode and chain.

By then it was time to go. We knocked on Albatross III who’d agreed earlier to help with the lines. I also let the folks know on the neighbouring boats as people usual like to keep an eye on things. Leaving the dock was fine. Motoring down the river was a bit slow due to the head wind and from the drag from all the crud on our hulls (see later pics). We even had a bit of a squall as we approached the yard.

Earlier concerns about approaching the yard proved to be cautionary rather than real. Even though we had a bit of a tail wind coming in the boat handled well. Hull crud doesn’t make a difference during slow maneuvers and so the boat was easy to maneuver in the winds as we approached one side then the other to throw lines ashore. By about 1 we were settled in the dock with six lines ashore holding us steady.

Then it was time to place the cradle beneath the boat. Derek who’s in charge of all this was incredibly careful. He’d been to see the boat in the marina to check out where the bulkheads were and checked and rechecked positioning of the supports. The cradle was driven under the boat and jacked up to touch the boat. Then it was off to lunch for the workers and us providing time for the tide to go out and leave us propped up on the cradle.

After lunch the crew got back to work and dragged us up the ramp and out of the water. Here they scraped and power sprayed all the gunk off the bottom of the boat. It took some time and required a complex three point turn so that the second hull to be washed was positioned near the ramp. During this time we were provided a ladder to get off the boat which we were grateful for. On land we met John from Sea Mist nearby and Tom and Kim from Emily Grace. All are here in the yard with us. I also ran into the owner of Endless who left the marina last week. He had had a hell of a time getting out as he also had crud on his props. I’m glad I cleaned ours (despite how disgusting it was) as we may not have made it against the wind if we had not.

It was past five by the time we were finally placed in position in our assigned place in the yard and the boat chocked up for support.

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We ate dinner aboard the boat but I had to lug the washing up to the communal area. When I’d finished that, John, from Sea Mist, gave me a ride into town so I could collect our car.

We have water connected and we have a couple of our wastes connected via hoses to 10 gallon drums but we have to be careful about our usage. We also have to be careful about our electrical usage aboard. The weather is not good so we’re not getting much sunshine for the solar panels. The wind gen is helping but with the fridge running and our using our laptops we’re using more than we can make. We’ve decided to run like this while we can before transferring the contents of our fridge to the communal fridge. Without that running we’ll run a net surplus. If we’re stuck here for a while we’ll alternate back and forth every few days.

This morning the works manager, Peter, has already been around to discuss work to be done to the boat. There’s not a lot that can be done due to the wind and rain. However, they can sand down the hulls under the bridge deck and if they get lucky they may be able to do more. We’re going to go through our work list in a little more detail later today and discuss what Helen and I can accomplish over the weekend when/if the weather improves.

In theory we could do a lot of the work we’re having the yard do. Given that one day I know I’ll go back to work I’d rather pay people to do the grunt work and get us back in the water much sooner than we could ever manage. That may give us a little time in the islands of the north shore before we leave for Fiji.

Category: Albatross III, Emily Grace, New Zealand, Sea Mist | Here is my comment

Wheely Good Day

by steve, on March 19th, 2011 (Albatross III, Attitude, Boree, New Zealand, Sea Mist)

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.

Not all went well. After fixing the first wheel I tested it’s motion (having thought I’d done this before drilling all the holes, applying all the goop and screwing it on). I found it wouldn’t extend below without jamming against the bottom of the dinghy. I had to quickly remove everything before the goop set and fill the four holes I’d made. Very messy. I eventually fitted both wheel satisfactorily and they seem to work well. From the picture I took afterwards it looks like the right hand wheel is a little wonky. It shouldn’t make much difference but it’ll probably bother me forever.

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.

Category: Albatross III, Attitude, Boree, New Zealand, Sea Mist | Here is my comment

More work ….

by steve, on March 17th, 2011 (Albatross III, Attitude, Boree, Jackster, New Zealand, Sea Mist)

I’m thinking blogs about boat work are not very rivetting so I’m going to bullet point our day.

  • Helen continued cleaning and sorting, now a full campaign.  Retired at end of day with a back ache.
  • I visited customs/immigration at Marsden Point to obtain knowledge regarding reentry later this year.
  • More wine supplies and samples acquired.
  • Bolts for dinghy wheels purchased.
  • TV antenna purchased so we can watch the news (has wrong plug so this will wait)
  • Bought new horseshoe float as old one has collapsed after 3-4 years in the sun.
  • Finished of US tax submission and sent off.
  • Did a little prep on UK tax submission.
  • Visited yard where we’ll haul out to discuss additional work
  • Returned hard drive to Sea Mist
  • Ran into Inge (Boree) and Kathy (Attitude) in supermarket.
  • Inquired into dive regulator servicing.
  • Started organizing Mongolian BBQ for Saturday evening for local cruisers we know (14 so far)
  • Backed up my laptop and reinstalled operating system so that I can eventually get my compiler working.
  • Enjoyed our sample Pinot Noir – today’s supermarket raid now defined.
  • Watched and enjoyed Social Network.

This morning it carries on.  I’ve removed the helm seat as the upholster is coming round to pick it up for softening and recovering.  Managed to make a couple more hours of water before supply weakened.  I’ve also had to chase our second package which has yet to leave customs.  I’ve already received an apology from them and confirmation it’s now released.

Category: Albatross III, Attitude, Boree, Jackster, New Zealand, Sea Mist | Here is my comment

Another Busy Day

by KC2RIY, on March 16th, 2011 (Albatross III, Boree, El Regalo, Endless, New Zealand, Sea Mist, True Companions)

We started the morning fully unloading the car. This enabled me to load the main table top and take it round to the upholsters to have it traced onto the new fabric. After that I drove to the New World to collect some more bottles of Merlot that passed our previous day’s tasting and to pick up a couple of Chardonnays to prime the tasting pipeline.

After parking the car in the free but further away car park I returned to the boat to get on with some online stuff I needed to catch up on. Helen was progressing with the dark arts of cleaning and sorting out the boat.

One thing I hadn’t mentioned in our blog from two days ago is that we had received some mail while we were away. Two pieces in fact. One was a speeding ticket from the morning we took the boys to the airport and one was a final reminder as we’d passed the due date. So my next chore was to walk into town and to pay off the fine. I was able to pay by Eftpos using my local NZ debit card so with a quick wave of plastic the fine was paid for.

Back at the marina office I checked for our second expected parcel from the US, the one containing our new camera, some accessories and a few other sundry items. It wasn’t there but I did find more mail. I was worried it might be another speeding ticket but it turned out to be a note from customs. I gave them a call and soon it was all agreed that this was personal items for a foreign boat in transit. They were all very polite as usual which is great compared to some of the officials we’ve had to deal with in the past. I emailed them a copy of our Temporary Import Form and that, theoretically, should ease it out of their system.

By lunch we were ravenous as we’d both skipped breakfast. In the afternoon we discovered our first ‘real’ problem – more of a bloody annoyance. I’d left a printer ink cartridge out on the side and it had obviously leaked all over the DVD case it was sitting on and the gel-coat surface beneath. They were both badly stained. The DVD case we couldn’t care about but the surface was a problem. We borrowed some On/Off from Steve on True Companions which made some difference. We’ll try applying it routinely for the next few days to see what we can accomplish. We are having some exterior gel-coat fixes done so maybe we can scrape this off and have new gel-coat applied inside too. Bugger the bother and cost.

The most memorable point of the day came around 3pm. This was my underwater excursion to check and scrape the props. It took me nearly an hour to find all the gear that we’d last used many months ago. 3pm was a good time as the tide had been coming in for 4 hours. The water was still murky but I felt it may be cleaner than an outbound tide with all the liveaboards and fishing boats upstream of us. Also, being nearer high tide there was less chance of kicking up the bottom silt. Finally, at 3pm the sun was still reasonably high to help with the poor visibility.

With Helen keeping and eye out for problems and to assist I lowered by self into the water with my tank on. It wasn’t as cold as I feared but the visibility was less than a foot. I could not even see the rudders from the back step. I carefully made my way forward not wanting to rub against the barnacle encrusted hull. Once I found the rudder I was able to follow it to the prop. It was a mess. There was aboard a cm of barnacle on each face of each blade and a whole mess at the hub. Because we’d been turning the props a lot of the barnacles had been washout out of their shells but were still encrusted onto the props. It took a lot of effort to scrape them all off. Worse still, the gunk coming off the props reduced the visibility further making the whole job trying, particularly as I was also trying to avoid getting my skin scraped off on the barnacle invested surroundings. In the end I came out of the ordeal with barely a scratch. Glad to be connected to shore water I showered for a long time to rid myself of the river ooze.

The boat behind us, Endless, was due to leave to dock at 4pm. Bryan and Jodon from El Regalo were helping out. I shared our experience with them in case they ran into similar difficulties. Forewarned they too found very little action from their props. At one point, when they’d reached the main river they looked like they were having difficulty maneuvering the boat but they managed it. I’ve shared our experience with many others now so folks can take appropriate action.

Once all cleaned up and the excitement over I headed over to Sea Mist to borrow a disk drive with some files on. I was plied with a couple of beers for my trouble (how can I complain). On leaving I ran into Bert on Boree and had a chat with him. It feels like we’ve fallen right back into our old groove.

Dinner was refried left over Chinese from the night before which always tastes better than it sounds. We finished the evening chatting with Rob and Ruth on Albatross III just the other side of the dock from us. Both our boats are work in progress so it ended up with each of us sitting on our own decks and chatting across the divide.

Category: Albatross III, Boree, El Regalo, Endless, New Zealand, Sea Mist, True Companions | Here is my comment
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