Author Archives: bob

Rigging Check And Other Stuff

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Rigging check day.

Brian, a local rigger went up the mast for a check and to oil the halyard sheaves. He pronounced everything in "excellent shape".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Down below, Ann is working on one of her most disliked tasks. Vacuum sealing food for the voyage. This is a very convenient way to have portion-sized food easy to access with reduced volume and packaging.  It also protects the food from spoilage.  It’s very tedious though and the packing machine is temperamental.

Portion size, freshness and reduced volume.

A few of the packages showing sizes and bay leaves inside, which are purported to keep bugs at bay (no pun intended).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the boat work front, progress is still being made. I’m on the last coat of epoxy to fill the wood rot, then will varnish tomorrow.

The patch getting fitted (as seen in a previous post).

Patch in place and coated with a final coat of epoxy. The hardest part has been lack of proper woodworking tools.

Wooden Surprise

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One thing we pay very little attention to on Charisma is the boom crutch. It’s not a major structural thing, it just holds the boom when the sail is not up.

The boom crutch on the deck after I took it down for maintenance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine my surprise when I took it apart and found this!

Bummer! I guess water had seeped down some screw holes and rotted a part of the wood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New wood rough fit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh well, another day, another unexpected project. I’m squaring up the hole and fabricating a piece of wood to fill the void and will sandwich it with an epoxy/micro-balloon slurry which will dry stronger than the original wood. Then trim, sand and varnish and it’ll be good as new and ready to go back together.

Happy Anniversary To Us!

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Ha, our second anniversary. Wow, have we had a lot of fun and good times.

Just like tonight. Freezing our a&&3s sitting out a wind and rain honking cold front bringing arctic air up from the south.

It’s deep in the Fall, almost winter down here and starting to get cold. So, tonight we started up the heater for the first time in at least a year, maybe longer. Neither of us could remember.

All we know is the Pukeko had to move.

The little heater in action.

Oven’s In The Cockpit

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Yup, another project we’ve been wanting to do is redo the propane fitting on the back of the oven so it will gimbal properly. The fitting broke a couple years ago in Tonga and I installed a straight one because I couldn’t find a 90 degree angle. The result was the oven/stove worked fine, but at fairly high angle of heel, the fitting banged the cabinet. Found a 90 degree one, so today the oven is in the cockpit getting a new fitting and a cleaning. I actually didn’t think I would ever take this thing out, but it was actually fairly easy. Now getting it back in…

Had to rotate it 90 degrees to get it to fit out the companionway, but did it with inches to spare

Now Ann can get behind it to clean. First time we’ve been able to reach back here.

Without an oven, we could put in a new nav station.

Gone Quilting! (By Ann)

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I am sure that after reading about all of the ugly jobs Bob has been doing you are wondering what I have been doing. The answer is lots of little things that are not as horrible to do but necessary. We are 80% provisioned, our hull is sparkly clean and our stainless could blind you.
But today I got to go quilting. There is a new quilt store in Whangarei just across the river from us. For $5 you can bring your machine and sew all day and “talk shop”. So tempting, but my machine is the wrong voltage so how can I do this? Enter Janette, friend from Riddlesden.
Janette offered me the use of her sewing machine. Lovely idea. But I came up with a better idea…what if I just come quilt at your house, Janette, and enjoy your company! And so the plan was set…I spent the day at Ridelesden (one of my favorite places in Whangarei) with the wonderful company of Janette and Margaret and made a quilt for a new baby in Fiji. I am smiling!

Margaret and Janette display the finished product!

Happy Birthday (still) To Me

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Ann went to our good friends Janette and Alistair’s house today to do some quilting. Janette’s good friend Margaret was also there and the day will be the subject of another blog, but I just wanted to post my lovely birthday present from Janette and Alistair.

My present, a lovely antique biscuit tin. It has chocolates in it, but the tin is so lovely!

The Other Handrail

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Yes!! I finished the port side rail!

I’m so happy to have finished this, I wrote a song, to the tune of Norwegian Wood (by the Beatles) that, by the way, I can play on my Ukulele.

“I once had a leak, in my handrail,
It, was a big leak, such a big leak, I had to fix it.”

…and so on and so forth…

The discerning reader may sense that I’m writing this after a celebratory rum enhanced cocktail or two and she would be correct!! This is a big day, as it marks the end of the official “most ugly of projects”. Just have a look at how ugly this one got…

Oh, the ceiling had to come down in both the head and the shower (not shown).

Yup, this is just some of the trim boards that had to come down to get at the handrail bolts.

Of course it wouldn't be a true boat project unless at least one of the bolts was fiberglassed in, requiring me to chisel the glass fiber away to access the bolt which was virtually inaccesible

So, after many hours and much swearing, it is over – we can now get onto more fun projects and are closer to being able to leave for a shakedown cruise.

Tomorrow, I’ll work on some misc projects, and Ann is going to spend the day at Janette’s doing a quilting project for some friends who had babies this year up in Fiji. We hope to send the finished quilts out to the islands with cruising friends headed that way this season.

Broken Screw

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That’s today’s fun.

I’m rebedding the chain plates on the starboard side and got to the last one. It’s always the last one. One of the screws holding down the cover broke off. Grrr.

What do you do? You have to enlarge the hole around the screw and then in this case, dig it out. It was too small for a screw extractor which sometimes works. So, a two hour job is becoming a two day one since I have to epoxy the new bigger hole, let it cure and then drill it to fit a new screw before I can finish the project.

Also on today’s agenda – painting some wooden deck plates. I’ve never touched these since I’ve owned Charisma and Ann noticed the paint was getting fragile. So…Ann taped them and we sanded them for prep and a coat of paint today and another tomorrow (if it doesn’t rain).

Here's one of the deck plates taped, sanded and ready to paint. There are seven of the little buggers.

View From Above

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We received an interesting opportunity from our British neighbor here in Whangarei.  He has a new Quad-Copter (i.e. “drone”) with a camera.  I asked him if he could take a picture of the area that included Charisma.  Well, here are the results.

Charisma with the blue deck, sandwiched between a 50- something foot Amel (above) and a 40- sometime foot Jeaneau on the lower part of the picture.

Besides the cool perspective, what’s interesting is how small we are relative to many cruisers these days.  Twenty years ago, Charisma (a Tayana 37 – a 37 foot boat) was a good size cruising boat.  Today, we’re one of the smaller boats out here.  Most of our contemporaries are sailing 40 to 50 foot boats these days.  It’s nice to have all the extra room, but the complexity and cost of sailboats goes up exponentially with size, so we’re happy with our 37 footer even if it means that on a voyage of a thousand miles we get in a day or so later than our friends.

Another advantage of the Quad-Copter is the stunning view of our area.

A look upriver to the town basin and center of Whangarei.

And, downriver toward the new (from last year) drawbridge.

And, while we’re at it here, we’ll report that Bob completed another chainplate rebedding (two out of three), and Ann finished polishing all the stainless and waxing the final bits of the cabin and deck.  We’re getting down to one more chainplate and the port side handrail as the last ugly jobs – then just some miscellaneous stuff and we’ll be ready to head out to Barrier Island for a few days on a shakedown cruise.  We need to find out what’s not working and importantly get the water maker cranked up since it was last “pickled” before we went home in December.  You’ll see from last year’s archives about this time that Barrier Island is also fun!  Fishing for snapper, oysters off the rocks, etc.  Yup, we’re looking forward to it.

Another Ugly Project

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I’ve been avoiding this one perhaps more than the others I have learned to avoid. But, we have had a persistent and increasing leak in the forward cabin and I can’t put this off any longer. The dreaded handrails.

Doesn’t sound like a big deal. But, the first three connections of the rail to the deck leak and when we’re going kinda upwind – as we’ll be doing a lot of on our trip back to the U.S. we bury the bow into the waves a lot. The result is a lot of solid water going over the forward cabin and – yup, right down the loose bolts on the forward part of the handrail.

What makes this project not fun is that to get at the bolts you have to take down the overhead in the cabin, which means unscrewing about 30 screws, pulling the carefully fitted and varnished wooden battens down, then levering the false ceiling off (complete with multiple brass tacks holding it in place). Looks really pretty when it’s all in place. A big pain the the @ss when it has to come out to get at the bolts.

THEN, you have to go topside and drill out the wooden plugs that hide/protect the bolts that hold the darned thing on. After drilling the plugs out you go back down below and tap out the bolts, except when you tap them with a hammer you hear a funny “tinkle” on the deck. That sound is the top of the bolt falling off. Turns out they rust out, which is why they loosen and leak.

Here's one of the three bolts that broke off.

OK, so there’s lots of other detail about putting it back on like like sanding, taping, cleaning, followed by applying the goo that seals it all back up that I won’t bore you with, dear reader.

Once it’s bolted back down after carefully taping, gluing, etc., then down below to put the overhead back together (i.e. 30 some screws, wooden battens, etc) and finally cleanup of all the fiberglass dust and crap that falls onto the shelves and floor that needs to be swept up.

Tomorrow, epoxy and teak plugs get glued onto the outside bolt holes, then when they are dry I chisel and sand them flush and apply several coats of varnish to seal them.

Then… we’re not done, I get to do the same on the port side!

Oh, boat work is such fun!