On April 3rd 2010, Saffanah started the second leg of her voyage from Marathon FL to Jacksonville FL where she will undergo the many remaining projects associated with her restoration. Her first leg from the keys to Ft Pierce in December was more entertaining than the recent trip this past week. This trip was pleasant and comfortable, incorporated great weather, lucked out in nearly perfect timing for winds, tides and moon light, and included a view of the last night time Shuttle launch – a spectacular event. And crew compatibility was definitely not an issue – my best friend, perfect sailing companion, and wife, Diane, was with me for the first time on Saffanah.
The shuttle’s exhaust trail being dispersed as the sun rose over Titusville – 4/4/2010
Unfortunately, as is the case most of the sailing time I have ever experienced, this trip offered little intrigue about which to write – no emergencies or heart stopping events, no great sea stories that can be further elaborated over time, just five days of five knot motor sailing in light air, under azure blue skies, punctuated with white puffy clouds and plenty of shore color provided by azalea, dogwood, and redbud blossoms. Is it not odd that the most idyllic passages offer the least about which to write?
When Saffanah arrived in Ft Pierce in December, we had new canvas made to protect the new sails we had purchased in the fall. And because Mack Sails is located in nearby Stewart, we elected to purchase a Mack-Pac (sail cover and integrated lazy jack system). While measuring the boom and mast, the Mack riggers discovered a badly cracked spreader and a damaged port stay turnbuckle. As a result, they strongly advised that we not […]
It’s been a little while since I last updated on our progress.The days are getting longer. And you, gentle reader, are possibly wondering what we have been up to.
So let me tell you. The cabin side process is crawling along. The sides have been sanded and coated with three coats of epoxy. They look great. Upon the go ahead from my attendant shipwright we’ll sand them smooth and prime and paint them. With that done we can finally install the portlights throughout and be one step closer to removing the tarp that shrouds Amatheia’s noble form.
David, in charge of this phase of the project, says that he’ll soon finish the stringers for the underside of the side decks. Then we’ll be able to cut and install the plywood that will cover the side deck underside. I can’t wait.
Jon went to work on the lockers, cleaning, priming and painting. They are now wonderfully white, clean and sparkly, and that makes me happy just looking at them. We used an oil based paint for these.
We’ve started on the galley. We peeled off the countertop laminate, filled the large holes cut in the counter by the previous owner, removed the icebox tops and will be ready to install new laminate, sink and seawater hand pump as soon as I scrape together the funds to purchase them. We’ll build new icebox lids or repair the old ones, haven’t quite decided yet. I’ve seen some DE 32’s with a cutting board lid for the forward icebox, that sounds like a good idea to me.
We cleaned the icebox interiors with good old acetone, they cleaned up well.
One last trip to the beach the morning Tiffany flew back to the states:
Well here’s another blog post in keeping with my current trend of infrequent unsubstantial posts. I’m finally back out cruising, but I’ve been in New Zealand so long and it’s so similar to my own culture that I’m not particularly inspired to write too much. When I last updated the blog, I had just got back to Whangarei with Tiffany. It was just a few days before Tiffany had to fly back to the states and she really wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate her time here before she left. So we checked out the two places in Whangarei, but had no luck. It was too last minute, but one of the guys recommended a place in Auckland. So the day before Tiffany flew home, we went down to Auckland with the idea for Tiffany to get a Tui tattooed on her somewhere. The Tui is a endemic bird of New Zealand with a striking white tuft under their throat, and a metallic blue, green, brown and black color scheme to the rest of them. They can mimic other birds, and we even came across one with quite the English vocabulary in Whangarei. Probably most impressive is that they’ve got a beer named after them. So it’s pretty fair to say that the Tui, not the Kiwi is the coolest bird in NZ and a fine subject for a new tat. Fortunately the artist in Auckland outdid herself and came up with a great design mixing in a bit of Maori design with otherwise accurate depiction of the bird. So Tiffany got her Tui, we stayed the night with Arek and Iwona one more time, hit a west coast beach on the way to […]
We were sitting in Tutukaka with the forecast calling for 40 knots of wind out of the east to southeast. The anchorage was pretty rolly and we had moved in to a pile mooring in the marina. So the question was do we stick around Tutukaka on a nice secure mooring, or do we sail north to find an anchorage to wait out the weather? We had already done the hike out to the lighthouse in Tutukaka and there wasn’t much else to do but spend money at the little store or the pub. Christian had also picked up two backpackers who didn’t much want to just in a marina, so we decided to sail north to Mimiwhangata with it’s long sandy beach and good 270 degree protection. There was even the chance that we’d be able to hike over the hill to a good surf beach on the other side of the spit. We had a great mellow sail with 10-15 knot easterlies pushing us along on our northeasterly course and anchored in 8 feet of water and blissful protection from the 6 foot swell running just outside the anchorage.
Fortunately we got up the gumption to go snorkeling and go ashore the first evening in the anchorage, as the weather came in hard about midnight. Torrential rain, 40+ knot winds and leaks I didn’t know about was the theme of my night and morning while we spent the rest of the next day hunkered down with the tempest roaring outside. A break in the monotony came when Paul on Surreal came into the anchorage just before sunset. He’d just singlehanded his 46′ catamaran down from the Bay of Islands in all that snotty weather that we’d been hiding from. There were a […]
My last post found me about ready to haul Bodhran in Gulf Harbour to determine whether or not I needed to replace my cutlass bearing. Upon hauling, my cutlass bearing was deflecting less than 1/16th of an inch, so it wasn’t the problem. I then investigated further and quickly found that two of the four bolts connecting my prop shaft to the transmission had come out and the other two were loose. Oops. Seems that when I put my engine back in in November and replaced those stainless bolts in the coupler with some mild steel ones I forgot to put on any lock washers and after a hard 4 hours motor sailing into 25 knot winds the nuts just vibrated themselves free. The fix took 15 mintues and $5 worth of hardware, this time including some $.15 lock washers. So I’ve got Bodhran hauled, Tiffany is gone for 10 days traveling with her mother, now what am I going to do? I’d been talking about building cockpit combings for Bodhran for 5 years or more and figured that now was a fine time to do it. Pat on Eeylos had lent me his transformer so that I could plug in all my power tools, Arek and Iwona lent me one of their cars to run errands in, the timing was perfect to start a building project.
Combings, for you non-nautical types out there, are a barrier built around the cockpit to keep water from the deck rolling back into the cockpit. They also normally serve as backrests for the cockpit seating. For one reason or another, the Downeast 32 was built with a wonderfully clear, clean deck that runs uninterrupted from stem to stern. In theory, any water reaching that deck is supposed […]
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