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Refit Blog 5 February 2006 OK, so it has been a long time between posts, but my computer had a wobbly (my excuse & I'm sticking to it!) so I have been unable to update. Lots has happened since my last post - we moved on to the boat two weeks ago, so are now real live-aboard cruisers. We are still at Westhaven, and have been working hard at getting the boat ready & doing stuff to Hewson Street before the handover date, which is tomorrow. What is more, we have had THREE DAYS OFF! Christmas Day, New Year's Day & last Sunday, when we went up to Leigh to see Bonnie Prince Billy play at the Leigh Sawmill and to go snorkeling at Goat Island Marine Reserve. Bonnie Prince Billy was awesome, we managed to get front row for it, however Goat Island was a bit disappointing as a storm had been through earlier in the week, stirring up silt, throwing up kelp all over the beach and scattering the fish, but Bruce saw snapper, blue cod and maumau & I saw a bunch of fish. The boat is really starting to come together & the difference is amazing. We are trying to wedge all our stuff on; we have had a bit of a cull, but it wasn't too bad. Should be sailing very soon! 26 December 2005 Well, season's greetings to you all, I hope you had a good Xmas. Ours was quiet but pleasant. Fortunately the weather has been very crap, so not being out sailing hasn't been too painful. The big news here is that we have sold the house, with transfer being in February, so that is a load off the mind. Now, we just have to rent out the apartment... Just about all our shore side work has been completed, many thanks to Bruce & Katherine for the use of their workshop. Bruce has been beavering away there getting the last of the woodwork projects done while I have been sewing the canvas accessories for the boat. We now have bright red sail covers, winch covers, tiller cover, weather cloths, self-steering sail, wind scoop, cockpit cushions & I'm about to finish up with a BBQ cover. And all with only a moderate amount of bad language. 14 December 2005 At last, a few days of rest & recreation, staying with Mum in Marton. I'm convinced we are being used as part of a foie gras experiment - she has just sat us on the sofa and fed us continually. Can't be long until the funnel and the coup de grace arrive! After much running around, stress & long days, we got Ngapuhi Road cleared up, fenced & moved. so we are back in our Ellerslie place in the interim, waiting for it to sell. We have a conditional contract on it, so fingers crossed. It has been a couple of sad weeks. First Anna, our 18 year old Devon Rex cat went to stay with Sue & Laurie at Whangarei Heads. We have been getting emails from her, which has eased the agony a bit. Unfortunately the news wasn't so good for 20 year old Griffin, our ginger tabby, who had become increasingly senile and infirm & who is now residing in a small rimu box on the mantelpiece. It was something that had to be done regardless of sailing plans, but that didn't make it any easier. Sorting through memories while packing up all our stuff and selling/giving away stuff I loved hasn't been much fun either. It was fine at the start when you felt lighter & freer, but as the stuff got more personal, it became harder and I felt like whole pieces of my life were being scraped away. Nearly there, though. Looking forward to getting back onto the boat and finishing off the little jobs we have left. When I say little, of course I mean trivia such as installation of radios, wind generators, new stanchions etc etc, so it will still be a few weeks before we are ready. Getting the boat back in the water was a great milestone, enlivened by an engine that wouldn't start. It turns out when it had its last problem that it got salt water in the starter motor, which then corroded to a halt. Thank god for days of little wind and dinghies with outboards that can tow heavy yachts! 27 November 2005 Did I say unemployment?? Silly me, I meant working for no pay. In fact the way Bruce slave-drives, I've been craving for the peace & quiet of the Borders buyers office, even when Michael has a country & western theme day. I have been joking that I can tell when it is the weekend because Bruce only makes me work 8 hours. Was that dumb or what? He threw in a couple of 9.00pm finishes last weekend, just to show me. Thanks to the rigid application/recoat times of two pot paint, and the need to paint after the boat builders finish to avoid excess dust, there have been some interesting finish times. I must say the last month has been bloody hard work! We went into it in the blind conviction that we would be done in a week, but as yachty singer Eileen Quinn so aptly puts it "one week in the yard somehow stretched to four...". My first disillusionment came with the paint stripper, a natural non-caustic product (good, cos I always sit in it) so eco-friendly you can feed it to dolphins. According to the distributor, all we needed to do was paint it on, leave it on overnight and when we came back in the morning, the paint would have all fallen off. Um, no, not really. Several coats, three days of scraping and a case of RSI later, the bottom was clear enough to sand. Bruce wouldn't let me go back and slap the distributor about whilst shouting "lying piece of sh*t" at him. In the way of boats, nothing is simple. Once we had the paint off the bottom, we could no longer continue our sailing on an African river (de Nile) and had to admit those wee bumps were indeed osmosis blisters. Fortunately not many and not serious, but grinding them out, drying them & refilling them took a few more days. Never mind, always wanted to describe myself as a pox doctor, even if it was boat pox. Thanks to our neighbour Luke for the pox doctoring supplies & advice. The next bit of excitement was the discovery of a damp spot in the corner of the cabin top where rot had previously been removed. Fortunately the rot hadn't regained a foothold and we could dry it, cover it in wood preserver and seal it properly. Unfortunately the same could not be said for our rudder, which when the cheeks were removed to check a small area of rot, turned out to have severe rot through the top half. Unlike Westsails, our boat has a rudder of mahogany and weighs a huge amount. Fortunately we had a forklift available to take it off for repair, but many thanks to the guys who helped us to put it back on when it was fixed. Cheers, Ben & Wayne! The guys in the boatyard have been great, particularly the ones from Marine Spraying, who gave us lots of moral support & good advice, and let us use their loos, tearooms & trestles. I'd really recommend this as a good place to haul out, they are very friendly & helpful, and all the chandleries are close. And while I'm doing the bouquets, the helpline technical support people at Altex have also been brilliant. Bruce has spent many anxious minutes on the phone to them and their advice has always been clear, helpful & spot-on. So, after the primer, the primer undercoat & 2 coats of topside (or, beneath the waterline, primer, primer undercoat, primer again & 2 coats of antifouling) she is looking very spanky & is ready to go in the water. The mast has 14 coats of varnish and is positively glowing and today our goalposts (targa pushpit) turned up, ready for installation before we go back in on Tuesday morning. She is looking like a new boat, but we are definitely still of the teak should be grey & brass should be green school of yacht maintenance. We have rented or house, and have 2 weeks to get out, which is concentrating the mind wonderfully! As soon as the boat goes in the water, we'll be cleaning, building deck railings, packing & moving. ARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 October 2005 Well, my first day of unemployment, and I must say it isn't bad!* Well, except for having to be at the boat at 6.30am to take it around to the floating dock to have the mast pulled and then to the travel lift to have the boat hauled out on to a cradle in the boatyard so we can repaint her. Of course all the memories of sailing are coming back as the engine failed to start ( a pox on Ovlov Marine and their continual failure to turn up to check it out - hisssss) so we had to tie our neighbour Luke's dinghy alongside (big props to Luke for the loan of that, it was a godsend!) and head over under dinghy power. Nothing is ever simple! The guys at Mast & Spar Services were brilliant - highly recommended! They were very helpful & we got the mast down & stripped in quick time. We got to the travel lift & hauled with a minimum of drama (and a maximum of amusement for a ferryload of school children), and cringed waiting for the results of 4 years of non-antifouling to become apparent. But what a miracle - all hail the mighty powers of Altex paints! There was some unsightly fringing on the bottom of the keel where she has rested during the last repaint and had missed being coated, but apart from that and a couple of intrepid oysters, the hull was pretty clean & most stuff came off with the waterblasting. (question aside: why is it that the yard guys can waterblast a boat & not get even remotely wet, while every time I pick one up I am soaked to the skin in nanoseconds? Which then brings me to the cover of the International Yacht Paint catalogue. For those lucky people who don't have it as their constant companion, the woman on the front is painting a yacht whilst wearing a WHITE T SHIRT! The only way I'd have a white t shirt while painting is to start with a black one and then paint my boat white! I know this hasn't happened to her because she doesn't have white jeans, white hair, white sunglasses and white skin.) The afternoon was spent getting the stuff we needed to do a repaint. What we didn't need was the guy at the paint wholesaler telling us it was his biggest sale in the six months he had worked there. Ahhhh, boats. * I would like it noted that I recovered quickly from the effects of my celebratory leaving martinis with Justin (Borders GM) on Friday night, contrary to speculation from others: I just didn't feel like alcohol on Saturday night, that was all!
18 October 2005 I have been shamed into this entry by queries from California (you know who you are!) so here goes. Work on the boat has been progressing well since Bruce has been working on it full-time: the new seat in the saloon has been completed, and a work of art it is too! I was well impressed - Bruce's woodwork skills have improved beyond belief in the last couple of months. The galley cupboards are now approaching completion, which just leaves the finishing of the table, some fiddles and some painting to do below. Oh, and the cushions. I have discovered another must-have for the boat - a piece of 4 x 2. Bruce is stressing about not working and is wandering the house during the small hours much to the annoyance of the cats & myself, and he also gets up at 6.30 am to work on the boat. I have a sneaking suspicion he is going to be like this for a while on the boat before he finally calms down. So, I reckon if I hit him over the head each morning, it may slow him down enough to make him bearable. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. I finish work at the end of next week, so will be able to get the home jobs done as well as working on the boat. I am the queen of Trade Me at present, and have been selling stuff left right & centre, but you can hardly see where anything has gone! And then there is one house to sell & this one to rent out, and we won't even mention the geriatric kitties, apart from to say that one is having weekly near-death experiences which wreck us emotionally, and then bounces back after each one - "Ha! I'm not dead yet!" We have a shed booked down at a boatyard for the week after I leave work, and we are pulling the boat out to strip & paint her. Ordering books never looked so good... In the meantime I am raising paranoia to an art form by collating the contents of our grab bag & first aid kits. Talk about MASH, except we'll be a mobile amateur sailing hospital. One thing I'm not sure about is the recommended inclusion of a pack of cards in the abandon ship bag. I can't see how being beaten hideously in a card game in a liferaft is going to contribute to anyone's extended survival! So, it is coming together - there will be a while where we install systems and try to teach ourselves the care & feeding of radar, SSB, watermakers, wind generators, which should be a fun experience for anyone in the surrounding berths!
3 October 2005 Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh! It is getting closer! Bruce finished work on Friday, so we are now in the position where we have to get the boat ready to move on to soon, in preparation for the day we are a no-income family. This weekend was written off to experience after Bruce celebrated his retirement well but not wisely, but after 15 years at Moana Pacific he needed to honour that time, and he certainly did that! It was quite emotional to say goodbye to everyone there, and he was most touched by the cards, gifts and best wishes from everyone. 11 September 2005 Well, we haven't got the mast pulled yet - the Moana workshop was full, so no news on whether it still goes! Progress is occurring slowly elsewhere - I am having a fit of varnishing and the ceiling and cabin sides are starting to sparkle. There is a joint effort in recaulking the teak decking in the area around the back of the cockpit which we left when we recaulked the rest of the teak a few years ago. Now that the pushpit is away having all the new attachments added it seemed to be a good time to do it. I had forgotten what a bastard of a job it is! Even worse than sanding! Bruce has prepped the area behind the stove for a cupboard. I've purchased more stainless steel plates, so we have a dinner set of them now. A quote for reupholstering the boat shocked me into having delusions of competence in this area so I have bought the fabric, and will just keep my fingers crossed that it turns out OK. Bruce has just picked up our new furling head sail, the cut down old one and a spinnaker sock from Rick Royden's sail loft and I have bought an EPIRB, so we are slowly getting provisioned. I have got to the waking up at 4.00am stage and panicking about all the stuff to be done. Rory Burke from Pacific Voyager came in to see me at work last week and very kindly bought me a copy of his book Bluewater Checklist. It is a great book which lists all the things you need to do/buy/consider before heading off. So, now I've got 90 pages of things to worry about, but at least I know what they are!!
21 August 2005 Well, less a blog than a general low-pitched whining noise. And the thought for the day? I hate bloody sanding! Hate it hate it hate it. Never mind though, nearly finished the interior sanding. Ah the joys of owning a teak mine. The boat is starting to come together inside, we've:
Next week we are pulling the mast and revarnishing it as well as repairing some fitting at the top. That will be the first time Daemon has left the slip since Easter 2003. I wonder if she (& I) still know how to sail? We are planning to move aboard in December and do sea trials around NZ until the season for going north (April/May) kicks in and we can head off. So much to do, so little time to do it. Eeeek! |
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Last updated April 08, 2010
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