Tiffany in the park just down from the marina here in Whangarei:
Well I’ve been in New Zealand for about a month and I’m already falling behind on the blog posts. For the most part I’ve just been taking care of lots of little projects for the last couple of weeks making the boat more livable. The engine is back in with two of the motor mounts replaced, a rebuilt alternator and a new water pump. It seems to be running as well as it ever has. I also added 2” of Styrofoam to the walls of my fridge and 4” on the bottom to try and keep it from running 24 hours a day. It’s now running a little less than half the time which means Jason now gets cold beer and fresh veggies when he’s done working for the day.
New motor mounts and cleaned up coupling waiting for my Suzie diesel to go back in:
My newly insulated fridge:
Weekend before last Arek and his buddy Adam drove up from Orewa for the weekend. Arek and Iwona have been living just north of Auckland for the past year spending all their free time working on a free classified ad site for New Zealand: www.ulist.co.nz. Everyone over here uses a site called tradme, which is similar to ebay in it’s fee structure and is quite infuriating. Infuriating enough that Arek has become obsessed with getting the craigslist model running successfully in this country. Well Ulist was talked about, music was played, rum was drunk and catching up was done and in the morning we took off for the Bay of Islands in Arek’s car. I skipped the Bay of Islands when I sailed into NZ last year […]
Below is an excerpt from the january to february log on the s/v Blue Sky Website. To read the whole thing follow the link at the bottom of the article to their website. . . . Bon Voyage Asia, January to February 2009 Shopping for a major ocean crossing is always an insane event. We are “buying low” because we learned in French Polyenesia the hard way of not stocking up. The water line is suffering, but it’s consumables so it can only get better. Cardboard is never allowed on board, as cock roaches lay their egss in the glue, and it is the number one way boats get infected. Once we bring everything down to the boat we have to take it out of all the packaging, throwing away the cardboard and plastic. The fun part is finding places to stow everything, and remembering where you put it. I write everything down now. We will be two months in Chagos which is an uninhabited island. After Chagos it’s off to the Seychelles and that is where we can expect resort prices. Malaysia basically has everything that one expects at home. Chilean wine, Austrailian cheese, New Zealand lamb, English chocolate! So it’s stock up realitively inexpensively now or pay big in the Seychelles. We are not expecting much in Madagascar so instead of stocking up for just a couple of months we are loading the boat to get us to South Africa. That’s about eight to nine months from now.
Above is our version of Costco, we found the wherehouse that supplies the grocery stores, perfect for buying bulk.
Drake is like a kid in a candy store…Oh wait he is! Purchasing our six month supply of chocolate.
As you can tell by the post title, things went well this weekend
On Saturday I went out to Inglis to see Windsong. I had three friends in tow and a list of things to accomplish. First off was to give the engine its oil change. I had replaced a few parts on the oil change pump and got it pumping water in a test run. But once we got to the boat the pump wouldn’t suck out any oil and eventually burnt out. So now instead of repairing this thing I am going with advice of some other boat owners (readers of this blog, thanks!) and get a manual pump. So the oil change didn’t happen, but that didn’t stop us for the day. I also replaced the hose on the Whale Gusher manual bilge pump and was able to use it successfully for the first time. I love knowing that it works now, great sense of security especially since my primary electric bilge pump is still on the fritz. After the bilge pump we had to secure a leak on a water hose on the engine, then we were done with the needed chores of the day.
I had planned on taking her out and about in the river for the day, but with the encouragement of my friends and the weather cooperating we decided to take the trip out of the channel and hoist some sail. I was nervous because I still haven’t upgraded a lot of the safety things (flares, fire extinguishers, etc.) that I wanted before we went out of the river, and the engine still makes me nervous, but we were feeling whimsical and went for it anyways. First off we had to turn the boat around in its narrow channel. We were […]
Winter was a slowing experience. The mast step repair was finished, a beautiful job by Todd at Charlot Marine. He found the rot to be more extensive than thought, extending up into the compression post a bit. The shower pan was cut out, the old fiberglassed mast step was removed, the bottom of the compression post was trimmed off and the new fiberglass wrapped mast step made to fit. The new post was tabbed to the floor, the shower pan was re-fabricated and a brand new, very cool piece of sole was created for the entire head. Gorgeous work and very well done.
Pursuing my favorite job of disassembly I removed the fuel lines for replacement and the engine cooling hoses for the same. I have a shaft/packing seal situation in that area, that’s a job for later.
In the garage some serious sanding occurred during the cold months. All the ceiling strips were sanded and re-stained. The brightwork was sanded and triple coated with Cetol Natural Light. the bowsprit had the same treatment. The handrails looked OK but needed quite a bit of sanding to shape the mounting holes damaged from fatigue combined with the bung removal.
Jon disassembled the Butterfly Hatch, sanded all the parts and we reassembled with 1/2 Plexiglas windows. Used the old gaskets, maybe it won’t leak. But I’ll make a Sunbrella cover for when it rains.
Snow fell and the temperatures got quite chilly. The diesel heater took some of the chill off.
For more adventures with Amathea please visit http://www.amatheia.net/
Once again the children proved to be our little ambassadors. Playing at the park in the Yacht Club they met some wonderful children. In return we met the parents who have been very helpful and generous. One family, the Davidson’s took us out to their property at Dick’s island, where they raise goats and cattle. David took us on a tour of the lake where we saw a massive crocodile above, the photo does not give it justice. The lake is choaked with water hyacinths, which the city is trying to get under control, Phoebe and Thomas plough the way. The children spent the majority of the day building a tree house, while we relaxed under the trees and were treated to a braii.
Phoebe and Drake had the opportunity again to attend a local school, Grant Leigh. This was a more formal school than the one in Mayotte, and they had a good experience seeing what other children are required to do. They both still think it is all about socializing, but they did well listening to the teacher and following the instructions.
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */ Karyn, Phoebe, Carolyn, Drake and Kyle, driving around Laura Donna, Matteo and Leo Mattioda John and Karyn Weller Phoebe, Drake and Caroline with giraffes at Tonevale. baby giraffe Shannon and Caroline from Rhode Island, off s/v Some Day Came. his shots from 100 meters out. Not bad Matteo coaching Jim Drake holding a rifle Phoebe holding a baby ostrich wet elbow installed Progress Empangeni […]
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