The winch that is.
Yup, it’s winch maintanence time. Glad I did it. Several of the mast winches showed signs of clogging from dried salt. There’s nothing like strapping in to go up to the mast in 30-plus knots of wind and high seas at 0330 on a “dark and stormy night” to reef the main only to find the winch is jammed. Hopefully we can avoid that with a little preventative maintanence.
Winch cleaning day!
Boat project wise, that is. The long list is almost done.
Page one of two. Almost all are crossed off. Now we just need a weather break to go for a shakedown. Rain this weekend and next. Maybe after that.
On another subject, we were delighted to have lunch today with Bright Angel Bob and Linda! They were up from Gulf Harbor where Bright Angel is getting new teak decks. So great to see them and catch up!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.