Author Archives: admin

Making Progress

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A good day.  Well, any day not spent grinding fiberglass in the bow is a good day, but we ARE progressing.  Ann is one day away from finishing polishing and waxing the hull!  Yay!  Charisma is looking beautiful.  It has taken almost an entire can of Carnuba wax so far.  That’s a lot of elbow grease.  And that’s after she went over the entire hull with polishing compound to remove the oxidation.  Wow.

For my part I did some miscellaneous stuff today, but it was nice to get a LOT of things going that are actually on the list!

-Ordered spare oil and fuel filters for the engine and a spare alternator belt

-Got the wood shop to cut plywood backing for the lazarette hatches off of the pattern I made from some scrap cardboard.  I have already primed the backs of the plywood and will epoxy them on to the teak hatches on Sunday.  With any luck the hatches should be as good as new in a few days.

-Ugly job alert.  I spent a couple hours down in the lazaratte digging out old packing from the stuffing box.  Sorry there’s no pictures to describe this-it’s just a really terrible job jammed into a small space under the cockpit.   There’s really no extra room to take a pic. Contortionists would love the project.  It’s definitely a three Tylenol job.  BUT, I got all the old packing out and put three new pieces in.  Basically this is the thingy where the propeller shaft goes out through the hull.  The packing is a kind of wax/hemp combination (looks like square piece of rope) that when “stuffed” into the stuffing box, has a tight enough fit that it keeps water from coming in through the prop shaft hole.  At least not much water.  The ideal according to most experts is that you tighten the gland that compresses the packing just enough so it drips about one drip/30 seconds when the engine is off and one drip per 10 seconds when the shaft is turning.   OK, got that?  I didn’t think so.  Forget it unless you own a boat, then very important to figure out.   😉

-While I was in the lazarette, I greased and exercised the through hulls (don’t ask) and greased the rudder bearing.  Very easy to ignore these things, but they will “bite” you if you do.

So, tomorrow, we’re going to do more work, but in the morning we’ll take a bit of a break and walk over to the Saturday Farmer’s Market.  Then on the way back stop by the cruiser’s swap meet up on the bridge.  We’ll try and take some pics to explain.

So that’s it for today.  Oh, also, Shane, one of the boatyard guys who we gave our old foulies to, brought us a beautiful Red Snapper this morning.  It was really one of the most fresh, gorgeous fish I have ever seen and I put it on ice until dinner when we filleted it and wrapped it in foil with some veggies and tossed in the BBQ for a delicious dinner.

That’s all from the boatyard for today…

A Good Boatyard Day

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Today, I finally felt like we were making some progress forward instead of just getting buried deeper in projects.  Some stuff actually started moving forward and we got stuff done.

 

But first, I have to say how lucky I am that I got a wonderful Valentine’s Day card from Ann with my morning coffee.  I only wish I had been as harumph, er, ah…proactive.  Well, I took us to a nice dinner as my contribution to Valentine’s Day.

 

So, now that the bobstay project is moving forward and in the machine shop, I decided to move on to a new project.  The lazarette hatches.  These are teak with plywood backing. They have been leaking and I knew they needed work, so I took them off and starting working on them.  I’ll make this long story short and let the pictures show that the plywood backing was rotting and almost all of it had to be scraped and sanded off.  But…the project’s still going well.  I got them down to the last bit of laminate, was able to put two coats of primer on them and tomorrow will patch them up with some putty.  Then I will either fiberglass the backs or epoxy a piece of plywood back on-I’m not sure which at this point, although I have cut some cardboard patterns should I decide to go with the plywood.

 

This is the top side of the hatch cover

 

Found some rot in the corners

After scraping some of the bad wood out, I found it was more extensive than I thought

Nice to have my new grinder (Christmas present from Mom and Dad)

Two hatches on the workbench almost ready to prime

On another note: the holes for the bobstay bolts had some "voids" in the fiberglass. We plugged them with dowels and filled them with epoxy. I'll drill them back out in a couple days when the epoxy dries. The new fitting is done and I'm picking it up tomorrow.

In the mean time, the one thing going according to schedule is Ann's work on cleaning and polishing the hull. Just check out the shine...!

Page one: our partial list for the boatyard folks...

Page 2 is the list of stuff we're supposed to do.

 

So…some progress.  Feels good to get something done other than just grinding away at the same stupid hole looking for the mystery bolt.

 

Hopefully more progress tomorrow as well and we’ll be working through the weekend hoping to catch up a bit from our slow start.  Would be nice to finish up so we can do some land cruising, but since we’re paying for the boatyard by the day, it’s important that we get all the needed work done so we can “splash” back in the water.  Some of our list can be done later when we’re back in the water, but there’s still a few things that can only be done while on the hard.

Getting Ready to Head Home For The Holidays

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Our New Zealand ride

The view from one of the hikes we've done. This is near Cape Bream. Across the bay to the right is Marsden Cove.

We’re winding down this season.  Doing some boat work, getting things set for us to leave for the States for six weeks.  Then we’ll be back for another year of cruising, probably up into the Fijiian Archipeligo.

In the mean time, we’ve been touring in the car we bought and doing some hiking.  We’ll do a lot more of both in February when we’re back and the weather’s better.  Right now it’s late Spring down here and it’s been a bit rainy/cloudy.

Today we closed with Doyle sails on new sails for Charisma.  She’ll be right happy to have new clothes.  The old sails were 25 years old, way past due as the sailcloth and stitching deteriorate in the sun and we can no longer trust our lives to sails of that age on the open ocean.  If we were still in SF Bay, no worries-but out here you have to have some confidence that the sails can routinely withstand 40 knots of wind or more.  We already had a mainsail seam blow out and were lucky we didn’t need it to finish that leg.

So, we’re doing due diligence on cleaning up Charisma-checking that the bilge pump is working well, turning off the propane, closing the through hulls,  turning off the big electrical draws (like the fridge) and in general making ready to leave.  We have two more days, then Sunday we’re heading to Aukland for a couple days before flying out on the 12th.  Looking forward to seeing everyone back home.

We’ll be posting from time to time including a “what worked and what didn’t” for those who will be following in our footsteps.  Then in February we’ll get cranking back up again.

So, have a great holiday and new year and thanks very much to those of you who have been following our blog and commenting.  We’re having fun and we hope you have been too!

Woohoo We’re in Whangerie!

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Gets your heart going to see a bridge that isn't on the charts. This one is being built across the river. We had to go through a very skinny pass between the unfinished sections.

Made it! At the guest dock at Whangarei Town Basin

We got a pile mooring for the first week, then we're moving to a dock.

Not a bad view from our mooring.

Yay! We’re finally here. Gnarly time getting here. 30 knot winds, made just getting out of our slip in Marsden an adventure. Also we’re waaay upriver now. The last bit to get here the water depth went as low as 9 feet and that was at high tide. They are also building a new bridge that will eventually be a drawbridge, but for now it was a very narrow slot between two half bridges that we had to thread through. But we’re here!

Tomorrow, we move from our nice “guest berth” in from of the marina office, down about 150 yards to a “piling mooring”. In other words we will be tied between two pilings in a line with other boats along the bank of the river. The only way off the boat will be by dinghy. The good news is the dinghy dock is only about 30 yards away and our car is parked just up from that. But it will be a new adventure.

In Marsden Cove

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Left Tutukaka this morning for a little bay just inside Cape Breem (can’t remember it’s name), but after two tries in 20 plus knots of wind we couldn’t get the anchor to set. First failure ever! So we went another 3 miles to Marsden Cove and are snug in a slip for the night (with showers!).

Nice day, sailed all the way, about 25 miles, in 20 knots on the nose. Really nice sailing. Still pinching ourselves that we’re sailing down the coast of New Zealnd.

We might stay another day, but then we have about 7 miles up river to Whangerie where we’ll stay a while.

Tutukaka

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Moonrise as seen from Charisma

We’re sitting here looking at a beautiful, almost full moon, rise over the cliff on the other side of this little cove. The horizontal orange streaks of sunset are fading into the blue-soon to be indigo-of night. So peaceful.

Aretha is singing in the background and we just finished a grilled steak and sautéed mushroom dinner. Not bad.

I’m now seeing the glistening, glittering, silver stripe of moonlight reflecting off the water behind us.

The Gannets are diving all around us and Ann is searching the water for sight of a blue penguin. No sighting yet, but we’ll let you know. She has seen a Kiwi, so she’s one up on me so far (not including card games in which she is two up).

Tomorrow-a little cove just out side of Marsden, then up river to Whangerie on Thursday. That’s where we’ll stay until April. In the mean time, home for the holidays, then back to NZ for some boat work and then land cruising.

Fangamoomoo!

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New Zealand customs don't mess around. But they were very nice.

Well, that’s the phonetic pronunciation for where we are. From here we go to Tootoocaca. OK, the actual spellings are; Whangamumu and Tutukaka.

Almost as amazing is the fact that my niece Missy has been to all these places before us! When I told Ann that Missy posted on the blog and asked what her first sentence was, Ann responded; “When I was in…”. Ding, ding, ding, correct! Missy, you’re a true world traveller.

So, we left Opua today at 1130. Sad to be gone, it was such a wonderful place. But we’ll look forward to coming back in April as we head up towards Fiji. We sailed through the Bay of Islands and then out into the Pacific and around Cape Brett, then south to Whangamumu. Got in here around 1700. Dropped anchor in a lovely bay that looks somewhat like we’re in a lake in the middle of Petaluma. There are beautiful green hills all around us, some with sheep and cows on them.

We also had a surprise greeting from some five black clad folks (head to toe, including helmets) in a “Protector” (a type of very high speed motorboat). Turns out they were Customs officials. We got interrogated. Very friendly, but they are seriously looking for something/someone as the questions were very pointed and in several cases sneaky. Ann asked if she could take a picture of them and to my surprise, they said OK, so we’ll get that up in a few days. It had to do with the boat that drove up on the reef in Tonga with a bunch of cocaine and a dead body. We’re guessing they are looking for whomever was supposed to meet that boat.

Nice Day, Great Walk

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The hike started with a ferry boat ride across the bay

You know you're hiking in New Zealand when...

Giant Ferns...

Well tended trails...

A boardwalk over the swampy bits...

 

And after a six mile hike, the reward....!

Finally we had some sun today. We suspended all boat work and went for a walk. Not just any walk. A 6 miler. We took the ferry boat from Opua to Okiato (across the bay a ways). We asked the ferry pilot how far to Russell, which is the little town on that side of the bay. His eyes got a little big and he said; “Oh mate, that’s about 9 kilometers!”. We said that was OK, we were out for a good walk.

He gave us a little map that made all the difference. It showed the trail system and we had a delightful walk (trek) across country. The path went through trees, hills and the most memorable parts were on a walkway built over the swampy land across the edges of some of the bays along the way. We were literally walking across the mangroves and saw all the wildlife of the area. At one point Ann even saw a Kiwi bird.

We didn’t get into Russell until about 5 PM, so we stopped at a cute little spot for pizza and beer before continuing the journey. Once suitably fortified, we went looking for the ferry from Russell to Pahia. Found it and after a short wait crossed another bay over to Pahia where we called a country taxi for the ride back to Opua. It’s about another 2 hour walk and we were running out of both light and strength. Having been on the boat so long, the 6 mile walk was about all we had in us for the day (full disclosure: actually Ann went for a morning walk with one of her friends and they were gone about an hour so I’m guessing they put in a couple more miles for the day) so the taxi looked pretty good!

A fun day. We’ll leave this nice area on Monday, weather permitting, for Whangerie. The Black Dogs have already taken our car there, so it will be waiting for us there.

New Neighbors

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One of the things that is so fun about this cruising life is meeting so many great people. Tonight was typical. We went up to the cruisers club for a cocktail and to just see who was there. But once there we ran into about twenty of our good friends and three hours later finally stepped back outside with big smiles on our faces from the camaraderie of it all. So fun!

Then on the way back to Charisma ran into several other friends who have been out touring for a few days and had a nice chat on the dock with them.

Then…upon getting back to Charisma we found we had new neighbors. A new boat pulled in next to us and we’re sitting in our respective cockpits-in the dark-chatting about who we are, where we’ve been, recommendations on places to go, etc, etc. Delightful people and we haven’t even seen them yet. Just heard them. In the dark. Across the water between our two boats. We just know their names; Don and Priscilla.

This is the same reason it takes Ann about two hours to go up to the bathroom (or take a shower). She runs into folks we know, gets into a conversation (“where have you been, what have you been doing…”) and two hours later she’s back.

Cruising and making great friends. We’re loving it.

Thanksgiving

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Yup, we just had our Thanksgiving dinner, since we’re a day ahead of you all. A really nice turkey and fixins dinner at the Opua Cruisers Club. We enjoyed good food, with good friends in a nice spot overlooking the marina. Would be nice to be home with family, but this comes a close second.

So happy turkey day to everybody! Enjoy.