Waking up to the sound of the starboard bilge going off I came to an immediate and, as it turned out, accurate guess as to the cause of our occasional water pressure pump activations. It was the deck shower dripping into the the stern compartment. With a small drip it takes a day or two to fill the floor then to spill into the bilge. I confirmed the shower head was dripping and simply turned off the tap. We’ve had this before a couple of years ago but it took a while for the possibility to click. I think it was the water underneath the immersion tank that was the distraction. That hasn’t come back so I’m putting it down to the pressure of the town water tripping the pressure release valve on the tank.
The winds were light but we were keen to head on so we fired up the motors and left our anchorage before 8am. Once clear of the anchorage I shut down the port motor as it is more efficient to run on one motor. Also, as the engines still have less than 10 hours on them we need to keep the revs at around 70% of maximum to break them in. In the river we didn’t have much of a chance to do this so I was keen to make up lost ground.
The wind was very fickle and for the first couple of hours we simply motored towards out destination. After a while I presume the land breeze stopped cancelling the light easterlies and we had enough of an angle on the breeze to motor sail. We raised both main and headsail gaining about a knot.
When the starboard motor hit it’s 10 hours I switched over to the port motor. The port motor is also heats up our immersion tank. I calculated the changeover so that the starboard engine got more time. That means if we do a short hop soon we can use the port motor and get more hot water. It’s delightful having a nice hot shower in these climes.
I had the fishing line out but had the most typical result of no fish. We did see plenty of sea birds including a few of the tiny blue penguins that frequent these waters.
We arrived at our intended destination, Mansion House Bay in Kawau Island, by mid afternoon. Although we’d motored all the way it was very pleasant with slight seas and sunshine all the way. Kawau Island is very pretty and made for a nice arrival.
When we dropped the sails Helen noticed they were damaged where the batons occasionally rub against the shroud. Alarmingly so. This will ultimately need a proper repair but for now we’ve put two layers of sail patch over the problem areas. Our starboard shroud cover has some rough patches which may be the cause so I’m going to have to go up in the bosun’s chair and cut those sections out. Bit of a bummer as I’d hoped we got all the repairs behind us now. Looking back I now wish we’d inspected our sails much sooner and had the sails sorted out while we were in Whangarei. All lessons learned.
Today we plan to visit the Mansion we’re anchored off and go for a walk along the DOC administered walking trails here.
Leave a Reply