More photos

Nanny standing nice and straight!

Heading back into the water under the watchful eye of James...

'Stingray Bay' last night...

Clean machine

Ancient Pohutukawa

Urupukapuka Bay

Nice place to play!

Sailed, motored, satisfied

A day and a half was all that was left after the maintenance schedule, but too nice an opportunity to waste.

In short:  

Left 1330 hrs Tue after splashing back in 0830 and motored to Tapeka point then gently sailed into Waipiro (Stingray Bay) for the night.  Quiet as!

Off early today and sailed to Urupukapuka Bay, went ashore (to get phone coverage!), Polished the stainless and did a few other jobs then sailed off the anchor and headed out towards Brett in a light NE breeze.  Turned around 1t 1500 hrs, breeze dropped so motor sailed toward Tapeka where the breeze kicked in again for a delightful sail up the estuary to arrive back in the marina 1815 hrs just on dark. Engine performed admirably, though still has a few vibrations at certain revs - may be the nature of things!  Easy to pick a 'spot' where it smooths out and chugs along.

All in all a good shake-down cruise with a very slippery mistress courtesy of the shiny topsides and new bottom paint.  I'll post some more pics later... time for dinner!

Re-propped, Re-aligned and Resigned to wait...

A warmer night with temps barely dipping below double figures but still the early starts with a rattle below before 8 am signifying the arrival of Marty from JB's to re-fit the cutlass bearing and drill a larger hole for the new inlet valve. Reassuring to see the hull is nearly 25mm thick along the centre - and solid fibreglass with no filler or foam!  




Bit of fiddling to get the new brass cutlass bearing in and then discover that the engine alignment was 'out', perhaps causing some of our alignment issues.  All good by lunchtime and I was able to re-coat the prop and shaft with "Prop-One" - an alternative to the more expensive and patently useless "Prop-Speed" which became the barnacles 'food-of-choice' this past summer... we shall see!




Unfortunately the painting meant that I couldn't 'splash' back into the water until tomorrow - best to make sure it is properly dry.

Lovely afternoon and decided to walk over to the Marina and retrieve 'Karuna' the tender for a row on a windless estuary.  Checked the mooring out - lots of slime! and then rowed back to the hardstand, lifted the dinghy out and hoisted it onto the deck. 

 The plan is to get back in the water tomorrow and keep going out into the Bay overnight, with a NE predicted Wed afternoon to blow me home... clean up Thursday (rain and 35 kts) and up early Friday morning for the 0815 bus south...

The Marina extension is on track with new berths being ready before the end of the year...lots of mud and sludge as the excavate and deepen, dumping the excess into the reclaimed hard area.

Hauled, Blasted, Scraped, Sanded, Polished and Painted!

Friday 1st July

Friday dawned cool and clear as I prepared to haul my Beloved from the security of her berth to the hard climes of hardstand...

Low tide at 1030 and still waiting for the Canny to arrive from Jaffa Land.  1100hrs and we needed to be there, so Greg and Judy jumped on board and very competently we manoeuvred our way into the waiting arms of the travel lift.  Out of the boat and onto the dock while the 'boys' waterblasted the bottom.  Not much slime but literally hundreds of baby barnacles meant a re-think as to the way to proceed.  It looked very much like the warmer water temps had produced a bumper crop of attached marine cretins. Unfortunately each one leaves a calcium remains when detached, and the only way to get that off is to scrape and sand... Disappointingly, even the prop with its fancy coating was coated with the tenacious little blighters!

 So... we decided to bite the bullet and re-antifoul now rather than in six months as intended.  We were not Robinson Crusoe on this one either so we were told.

As you can see - the spotted disease had infected everywhere - right down to the bottom of the keel, which is usually relatively clear

After a couple of hours of very slow scraping and wet-sanding, the yard boss wandered over and asked if I knew the new regulations forbade the nefarious practice of wet-sanding and I was required to only use a vacuum sander - conveniently they could supply one at a nominal fee of $60 for the afternoon (+ 10 sanding pads @ $2.50 each!)

Meanwhile JB Marine turned up to suss out the prop/drive-shaft rattle and it looks very much like the culprit may be a worn cutlass bearing in the strut could be causing the problem.  A new bearing is planned to be fitted Monday, meanwhile...

By now it was 1445 hrs on a Friday afternoon and the yard would be closing at 1645hrs (and re-open Monday).  With little choice remaining we, with some alacrity, took up the offer and worked like little trojans for two hours flat out scraping and sanding until at 1644hrs we declared the spotted menace defeated!

A wamish shower and some warmer curry meant an early night for the intrepid duo... 

Saturday was another day...

Saturday July 2nd

...which dawned cold and misty, about 3 deg outside and a little warmer inside as the blessed heater kicked in!

Onto the next task as we waited for the temp to rise sufficiently to at least allow paint to flow rather than glug, we set to cleaning and then waxing and polishig the topsides, a three stage process that took us through until mid-afternoon as we acid-washed, machine and hand-rubbed the white bits.  A huge improvement!

 By mid-afternoon the sun had warmed things sufficiently to allow us to mask and begin the rapid application of two coats of anti-foul.  an hour and a half later the tin was empty and two lovely black coats were on! 

Clean up and a long hot shower followed by a quick trip to Paihia Countdown then back to the Club by 1830 hrs for the Mid-Winter Christmas Dinner with mulled wine, ham, pork, roasted veges etc.  We met Phil and Kelly, ex-Brits in their early 50's who had had enough of the Auckland rat-race and recently moved to Opua with their 40' yacht.  Had a nice evening chatting but by 2030 we were flagging and the Canny is long asleep back on board as I finish this epistle and head that way myself with the Coalition having its 'noses in front!@