It’s Monday here in New Zealand, which means (I hope) our last week on the hard.  We’ll see.

Today’s big event-Orcinius is back!!  Yay!  Nice to have John and Lisa back in town.  Had dinner with them tonight.  So nice to get back together.

My workbench.

Sanding the plywood backing before adding the primer coat.

The other events of the day include:  Ann started polishing the cabin.  She noted that it’s not fair that her one main project takes two weeks to finish.  So noted.  Well, she also has another job.  Painting the bowsprit.  Did I mention Ann hates painting?  I think I’m going to owe her when this is over….

Bob progressed on the lazarette hatches by priming the new plywood backing and repairing several of the lines of caulk that we cracking on the teak side.  He also replaced the dreaded raw water pump impeller.  Another bummer job.  This should be soooo easy, but the access is by taking apart the quarter berth and the trying to reach an unreachable area behind the alternator and in front of the starter motor.  We have an impeller puller, but it won’t fit in the space.  So and hour and a half of swearing, sweating and general misery later the damn thing finally came out (with the help of a screwdriver used as a pry bar).  But, stuff is being checked off the list.

Tomorrow…more work.

Five solid days and Ann is finally done polishing the hull!  Her reward?  Now she gets to paint the bowsprit!!

This was a brand new can of wax a week ago!

And after the bowsprit…the cabin top.  What fun being on the hard is.

For my part, I laminated custom trimmed plywood onto the back of the lazarette hatches using epoxy with micro-balloons to fill any voids.  Both hatches are sitting with weights on top of them on very flat surfaces “curing” overnight.  Tomorrow is the big day when I find whether it all works.  My hope is that the hatches still fit right and are not warped in some way.  I tried to glue them on a very flat surface.  We’ll see.

Also, finished greasing and exercising the through hulls.  Always fun (not).  Basically you climb up the ladder into the boat and close them.  Then climb back down the ladder and with a paintbrush stick some grease about three or four inches into the holes where the valves are and coat the outside of the ball valve with grease.  Then back up the ladder and down into the cabin to get at the through hull valves.  Of course all of them are in very hard to get to places under the floor and inside of cabinets.  Once you find them and get a hold of them, you basically open, close, open, close…about ten times to work the grease into the valve.  Usually they are pretty stiff so it is a bit of an exercise, somewhat like doing arm curls with 30 lb weights.  OK, check that one off the list.

We also put up some scaffolding under the bowsprit so we could sand it and tape the stainless in preparation of painting tomorrow.  The scaffold is about eight feet off the ground, so when you stand there you are a good 14 feet high with little to hang on to and only a 10 inch wide plank to stand on.  A lot harder than you think.

Some other misc stuff got done.  We’re thinking we’re about half way through our boat yard adventure.  I think we can “splash” a week from Monday (knock on wood).  While there are a lot of other projects on the list, many of them can be done anytime, including once we’re back in the water.  We are almost done with the big ones that can only be done “dry” with the exception of the bottom paint which should get done in the next couple days.

We did take a short break today with a walk into town for the weekly Farmer’s Market. Lovely that.  Got some nice veggies and some great grass-fed steaks for our BBQ this evening.  Stopped by the Inflatables shop to check in on our dinghy repair as well.  Turned out the problem (the keel tube “popped”) was a manufacturing defect.  Long story and well out of warranty, but interesting to know.  Also bought some of the best eggs around. The inflatables guy sells eggs from his chickens.  They are awesome.  He says they are “happy hens”.  The yolks are so bright they are almost orange.  Great to get such wonderful, fresh produce and such.

OK, tomorrow-painting and the big hatch unveiling!   Then time to install a new impeller. The last of my “most hated jobs”.  It means I’ll have to tear up the quarter berth, put the mattress and all the crap under it (mostly charts) in the main cabin then take apart the engine room soundproofing to get at the impeller.  THEN…using a mirror and pliers I pry the old impeller out.  Once done, you find a creative way to compress the new one’s vanes and fit it into the housing, all the while using a headlamp and only one arm since it’s down are back inside a limited access area.  It’s actually worse than that, but I’m too tired to think further about it.

By for now.

Ann's "art shot" showing the ladder down from our deck and the shadow of Charisma against the ground.

Worked all day to get the propeller and its mount nice and shiny so we can paint it with anti-fouling paint to keep the barnacles off.

Third day and Ann is now a little over halfway down the port side...

Our first "gotcha". This is the Bobstay fitting (no relation). It's one of the most important on the boat, holding the mast up. As you can see one of the holes has an odd crack. I have to take it off to check it for corrosion. Unfortunately, the bolts that hold it on the side of the boat are completely covered with fiberglass. Ouch!

We’ll likely be here a couple weeks, so ignore this for a while if boat yard stuff is not your thing.

Today (Sunday) Ann spent another day polishing the hull.  I spent another day sanding and polishing the propeller.  Ho Hum-boatwork.  Actually, I did get a couple other things done.  I overhauled the anchor windlass.  It had jammed and needed some TLC.  Nothing that a hammer, a little Acetone and a new coat of grease couldn’t handle.  Another project crossed off the list.

The one that wasn’t on the list but has now gone to the top is the Bobstay fitting.  No, not named after me.  I don’t know the history of the term, but google tells me it dates from the 1700’s.  Anyway, the bobstay connects from the end of the bowsprit down to the waterline and basically holds the mast from falling down.  So, quite an important piece of gear.  The piece in question is the fitting that sits right at the waterline.  At least it did before we started cruising.  A couple thousand pounds of gear later, it now sits a couple inches underwater at the bow and seems to be suffering from crevice corrosion.  When I cleaned it a strange “chunk” just broke off.  No Bueno.  So, I have to remove it to see what’s going on.  No biggie, right?  Well….as someone in the Tayana Owners Web Forum noted; “This is probably going to be the worst, most miserable job you’ve ever done”.  OK, thanks for the encouragement.

To get to the bolts you have to drop both anchors out of the anchor locker.  OK, not too hard since I can just drop them on the dirt.  I’ve been wanting to do that anyway to check the chain and such.  Next, take out the (very dirty) plywood floor.  Did I mention that at this point I’m jammed up into the very end of the Vee-Berth in the bow of the boat and trying to squeeze my very ample body into a very small opening?  OK, got the floor out.  No sign of the bolts.

Onto the Tayana Owners Web site, which has all kinds of good info.  There I find that the boat manufacturer, in their infinite wisdom FIBERGLASSED OVER the bolts!  You can only find them by licking your finger, twirling it in the air and pointing to a place in the inside of the hull whereby you start drilling away hoping you’ll find them-instead of just drilling right through.  Arrrrgh.  That’s why we do this kind of stuff up on the hard.  Dry land.  Good.

I also find that some manufacturers may have used asbestos in their fiberglass back in the day, so I’m waiting until Monday when I can buy a respirator to keep the material from clogging my lungs.

In any case, tomorrow I’ll be jamming a too big body in too small a space trying to drill a mystery hole into the hull to find the mystery bolts that hold the damn, possibly broken thingy in place!!  Welcome to cruising, we love this stuff.

Aside from that, we had a delightful evening.  Sunday nights here in the boat yard there is a potluck BBQ.  There’s a really nice gazebo-like structure over by the river with a BBQ and a bunch of picnic tables.  Everyone gets together at 6PM.  You bring a dish and some meat.  We brought ginger-garlic green beans (which were scarfed immediately) and a couple steaks.  We proceeded to have a great evening, meeting many of the other folks in the area who will also be cruising up into Fiji later this year as will we.

Lots of new friends.  Lots of boat work yet to do.