1 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
After our travel medicine advice yesterday, we dug out our medicine boxes and did a stock take. We have four courses of Malarone to treat Malaria, which is good, but no test kits, so I've ordered four kits on-line. We've got some Povidone Iodine and Ethanol for disinfecting a wound as protection against Rabies. We also have over 100 Immodium tablets and various antibiotics to help if we get a serious bout of Diarrhoea, so we’re pretty well set up –fingers crossed.
I did more research into the clearance formalities for Papua New Guinea and decided that we’ll be in a much stronger position, if we already have visas in our passports. So I began to fill in a visa application form which went fine until I discovered that I needed a passport photograph for both of us, which we didn't have.
Fortunately, I’d ordered a small Canon Selphy C910 colour photograph printer, which arrived this morning, so I had an excuse to play with it. What a brilliant bit of kit. At only 8” by 5”, it’s a very compact printer and produces 6” x 4” postcard-sized prints using dye sublimation technology which makes the colours last longer and there’s no ink cartridge to dry out. It produces great photos very easily by plugging in an SD card from my camera or wirelessly from a PC, camera, phone or tablet. I'm looking forward to being able to print colour photographs for local people that we meet over the next year.
By the time that I’d printed the photographs and cycled to the Post Office to send our passports off to the New Guinea Embassy, it was mid-afternoon, so gave up for the day and chilled out.
Glenys returned to the drawing board and started again on her dinghy cover. This time she’s using some bright yellow, rubberised material that was left over after she re-covered our horseshoe buoy. It’s a lot thicker than the bed sheet material and doesn't stretch, so the templates should be more stable. She’s getting sick of this project now and is starting to have sleepless nights thinking about it.
2 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
We’re hoping to leave Whangarei at the end of next week (heard this before?), so I need to get us ready for sea and the first thing is to get our propane tanks filled. Back in December, I tried to get our USA propane tanks tested and refilled but they wouldn’t do it, so we bought a cheap NZ tank. I've got one empty tank and one half full, which need to be filled before we leave New Zealand, so only option is to decant the propane from the NZ tank to our USA tanks.
Steve from “Scott Free” gave me a lift in his car to get our New Zealand tank refilled. I bought two POL fittings to screw into the tank valves and I've made up a hose to connect the two tanks together. The idea is that I’ll hang the full tank upside down and the liquid propane will run by gravity into the empty tank below.
I've never done this before, so I spent an hour or so reading up on how to do it and working out what the markings on our propane tanks mean. I'm going technical now, so you can skip this next paragraph…
Our tanks have two significant codes, TW=13.2 lbs and WC = 47.6 lbs. These mean that our tank weights 13.2 lbs when empty and can hold 47.6 lbs of water. Propane weighs 42% less than water for the same volume, so our tank can hold 47.6 * 0.42 = 20 lbs of propane. Therefore to avoid overfilling, I need to check that the tank weighs no more than 13.2 + 20.0 = 33.2 lbs when full. Interesting, eh?
Having worked all this out and set up the rig, I bottled out because there was no wind and I'm scared that if there’s a leak, the heavier-than-air Propane will collect in the bottom of our boat and Alba will explode when Glenys lights her oven tonight. So, I'm waiting for a windy day.
The first batch of our upholstery turned up today and it looks well made, but it looks very strange after living with the old material for four years. Glynn from Palmer Canvas gave me an hour’s warning that they were coming, so that I’d have time to remove the fixed seat backs, but that wasn't long enough. By the time they arrived, I was completely at a loss on how to remove the last two.
Glynn gave me a hand and we eventually had to take a knife to the upholstery and cut it open to see how they were attached. It turned out that the seat backs are actually screwed to the wall through two small holes cut into the sides of the cushions which were hidden from view. I’m not looking forward to putting it all back together.
Glenys carried on struggling with the damn dinghy cover. The local residents walking back and forth from their boats on this dock must wonder what the hell we’re doing. By mid-afternoon, she was still struggling and totally demoralised, so I took over the job for her.
I first put some masking tape on the dinghy to give me some reference datum lines and then started to tape the templates accurately in position, cutting them to an exact size with the edges of the templates being the sewing line. It’s amazing how moving one panel a few millimetres throws everything else out. By the end of the day, I’d done the front three panels – they look okay, but we’ll only really know when Glenys starts sewing.
3 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
I actually ticked a job of my To Do List today – I went up the mast and replaced the front deck flood light with a new LED lamp, then I was then back on the damn dinghy cover.
After four hours slaving away, I now have one side done apart from a long straight bit that should take me an hour tomorrow. It must have taken me two hours just to do the semi-spherical end of the tube – what a nightmare. Anyway, it looks like Glenys may be able to start sewing tomorrow.
Glenys got on with some sewing jobs, making various flaps and a tensioning strip for the dinghy cover. This job is consuming both our lives and we’re weary of it – perhaps we should have paid for someone to do it for us.
4 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
Winter is coming. It’s consistently cold in the mornings - I'm having to put on socks and a fleece and then turning on our Webasto heating system for half an hour to take the chill off the air.
I had another day working on the damn dinghy cover. Now that I've made all the templates for the port side of the dinghy, I removed them and stuck them on the starboard side, just to make sure that the dinghy is symmetrical. I found that the first panel on the starboard side had to be a slightly different shape, so I made a separate panel for that.
All the others seem to be a mirror image of the port side, so we can reverse those templates to get the shape for the starboard panels, although the handles and row-locks are in different positions. Later in the afternoon, we made a little prototype of the seams and worked out how we’re going to attach the 3 mm line which will keep the outside edge of the cover tight. It’s a labour of love.
Glenys went to try to get some Vanuatu currency, but failed miserably. Only the Post Office seems to be able to provide the currency and they need a passport to be able to change over $1000 NZ dollars – our passports are still away at the Papua New Guinea embassy. Typical, this is the first time in two years that our passports have been out of our sight and we now need them…
5 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
It was the end of a tax year in the UK, so I did some administration in the morning and brought our accounts up to date. We've completely blown our budget over the past year, mostly because we've spent so much money on the boat here in New Zealand. Going to the UK and spending three weeks travelling around South Island was expensive too. Ah well, this next year should be a little bit cheaper while we’re travelling through Indonesia
Glenys most of the day working on the dinghy cover. She cut out the first three panels from sunbrella and then sewed it all together to make the actual cover. It all went very well and it looks like we might have cracked it. Unfortunately, she discovered that she hasn't bought enough sunbrella, so the job ground to a halt mid-afternoon.
6 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
Glenys had a day off the dinghy and went out to so some serious shopping - it’s Easter Monday and it’s the end-of-summer sales. With the boat to myself, I continued looking through my tools and spares, throwing out useless or duplicate things and adding to the list of things to buy before we leave Whangarei.
I went out in the afternoon to do a bit of bargain shopping. I wanted a shorty wet suit and a new pair of sandals, but I struggled because those things are summer items and the main stores have run down their stocks. I eventually found a wet suit, but couldn’t find a decent pair of Keen sandals – I was cursing myself for not buying them a couple of months earlier.
7 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
We had another shopping day, I managed to find a pair of sandals – they’re not quite what I wanted, but there’s not much choice left in the shops. I then spent most of the day running around buying spare parts to top up my stocks. Glenys had a great time buying things to take up to Vanuatu for the cyclone victims.
Paul from “The Beguine” has arranged for a local guy to fill one of our propane tanks, which is completely empty. So I only have to fill our half empty one and we’ll be sorted out.
In the evening, we went out for a pizza with “The Beguine” and “Grasshopper”
8 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
We’ve been living on Alba for exactly four years today, so I worked out a few statistics. In the past twelve months, we’ve sailed 7,736 nautical miles bringing our total to 19,951 since we moved aboard. However, we’re only 126 degrees of longitude to the west of Grenada, meaning that we’ve only done 35% of our around-the-world voyage. In four years, we’ve run the engine for 1,831 hours, which at 5 knots equates to 9,155 miles, which (surprisingly) means that we’ve spent 45% of our time motoring – I guess all the motoring in the USA and going down rivers has bumped that up.
It was windy this morning (for the first time for four days), so I set up my propane decanting rig and filled our second tank. It already had 10 lbs of propane in it, so it was half full. I was quite pleased with the process because after 3 hours, I’d fully charged the tank with 20 lbs of propane - it seemed to go a little quicker when I soaked a towel in cold water and draped it around the lower tank. This lowered the pressure of the receiving tank and increased the flow.
Our passports arrived yesterday with our Papua New Guinea visas, so Glenys went into town and ordered $2,000 NZD worth of Vanuatu currency. We’ve promised to take some money out to Vanuatu for Katie from “Tenaya” and hand it out to some of her friends there.
9 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
It was not one of the smoothest days. I started to reassemble the engine diesel filter and wanted to blow it out with compressed air, so I pulled out a scuba tank and a regulator, which free flowed, so I now have to get that fixed. I fitted the diesel pump and while testing the engine, noticed that the water pump was leaking, so I had to remove that and take it to a mechanic to get fixed. That’s one job off the list and two more added.
Our time here is turning into a blur now. We get up in the morning and walk to the shower block to do our ablutions, then work all day on jobs or running around town. After dark, we walk to the shower block for a shower and then have a meal while watching a movie – it’s time to go…
10 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
The second load of upholstery arrived back today and the rest was taken away – hopefully, we’ll get them all back on Monday 13th. I spent all morning putting screwing the seat backs in place. It all looks good apart from two seams on adjoining seat backs that don’t line up. It’s a very noticeable defect, so I’m going to have to remove everything again after the weekend, so that Palmer’s can rectify them.
Glenys ran some errands in the morning and then got on with the dinghy cover in the afternoon. She’s nearly there now, it looks good and she’s just fitted the lower draw string, but it threw it down just as she finished, so we’ve not had chance to fit it. I did a few more small jobs in the afternoon and picked up our repaired water pump - I’ll have to fit it tomorrow morning.
In the evening, I rewrote my To Do Lists. We’re aiming to be out of here on Wednesday 15th, so I’ve (once again) split the jobs into those that need to be done before we leave Whangarei and the rest, which may or may not get done before we leave New Zealand.
11 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
Over the past week, we’ve been in touch with other cruisers on boats who are sailing up to Vanuatu and also want to help the islanders after the devastation of Cyclone Pam. There’s a lot of discussion about what to take and whether one should go under the banner of an official aid organisation. Our friends on “Lil Explorers” are currently sailing from Fiji to Vanuatu with 2 tonnes of supplies including medicines and large quantities of food, which has been coordinated by an organisation called Sea Mercy.
We’re not big enough to carry such a large load, so we can only take a small amount of aid. Our current thinking is to put together packages of supplies, each of which is enough for one family –clothes, 5 kilos of rice, 2 kilos of beans, fishing line & hooks, a hammer, a saw, nails, toiletries, buckets, bowls, etc. We’ll then hand a few of these out in each village that we visit. It will be hard not to hand them out in the first island, but then we’d have nothing for the rest.
We spent the morning running around town buying a few things for our aid packages and checking out the best prices for the remaining things on our list.
In the afternoon, we got on with jobs again. We fitted the dinghy cover and tensioned the string on the outside and it all fits beautifully. Not too tight and not too slack – brilliant. Glenys now has to sew tape around the outside and inside edges and around 11 handles – she’ll still be at it for a couple of days.
I stripped the carburettors for both our 15hp and 2.5hp outboards and both now run smoothly. It’s starting to look like we might actually be ready to leave on the 15th or 16th and even the weather looks good.
12 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
It was a Sunday, so I had no distractions and nowhere to go on errands, so I had a good day and ticked a few jobs off the list. I replaced the sea water pump on the engine, then drained and flushed the fresh water system on the engine. This allowed me to remove the two valves in the engine cooling system that heats the hot water tank. They’ve been leaking for about a year now. I’ve sealed them with an expensive Loctite high pressure sealant and fingers crossed it will do the job.
Most of the afternoon was spent pulling apart the teak grating from the floor of the front heads. It’s made from thirty-one, one inch pieces of teak precisely machined and held together with screws, but over the years the teak has worn and it’s now more like a trampoline than a floor. I pulled it all apart and then had to clean the 228 lap joints with acetone, apply marine epoxy and screw it all back together. It was a mission, but hopefully it’s a good enough job to last another 12 years.
Glenys had a less productive day. She spent most of the morning peeling off the masking tape that we’d used to mark out datums on the dinghy tubes. Unfortunately, the dinghy cover job has taken far too long and the adhesive on the tape has gone really sticky, so she had to use white spirit to clean the surface of the tube and then scrub it all down with washing up liquid to remove the white spirit.
She then spent the rest of the day working on the dinghy cover – she’s now making Velcro flaps and sewing them on to fit under the 11 handles on the dinghy. This should look neater and will help to hold the cover in place.
13 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
It was a miserable cold showery day, so Glenys hunkered down below and slaved away at the dinghy cover. By the end of the day, she’d put the edging tape on the inside & outside edges and finished eight of the handles , so she’s hoping to have it finished tomorrow. All we’ll have to do then is to stick some tie-downs onto the inside of the tubes.
I removed the seat backs and Glynn took them away for a bit of adjustment. He brought everything back in the afternoon, so we now have all of our lovely new upholstery in position and it looks fabulous.
I had another day of running around and doing jobs. I took our dive regulators in for bench check and the guy tested the pressures and adjusted the octopus regulators all for free - nice guy. Back at the boat, I ran our dive compressor and re-filled our two dive tanks – I'm pleased that it ran okay.
14 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
It was very cold last night and it was difficult to get out of our warm bed this morning – it’s definitely time to head north. We’re planning on leaving Whangarei on the 16th – most of our major jobs are done and we now just need to do some tiding up and running around for a couple of days.
I downloaded some GRIB files and it looks like there will be good weather in the local area until the 21st and then another low sweeps across New Zealand. This low will slowly move to the east and then there should be south winds for a few days – possibly a good time to leave New Zealand for the tropics. So, at the moment, it looks like we’ll slowly head up to Opua and then clear out to Vanuatu on the 25th or 26th April. We were planning to go down to Great Barrier Island, but we've simply run out of time.
Glenys was determined to finish the dinghy cover and jumped straight onto her sewing machine after breakfast. By lunchtime, it was all done – Hurrah! After nearly three weeks of messing about with it, she’s very relieved. She went off into town in the afternoon to do some therapy shopping.
It was a horrible day with showers coming through every ten minutes, so I hung around the boat, running outside between showers and ticking lots of small jobs off my list. I sanded the teak grating that I glued together a few days ago; ran the generator for 30 minutes and was relieved that it worked fine; lashed the safety lines onto the deck and finished off applying silicone sealant to the work surfaces in the front heads.
My final job was to try to get the bilge pump working. We have a pneumatically operated level switch that is supposed to switch on the bilge pump when there’s a few inches of water in the bilge, but it hasn't worked ever since we moved onto the boat. It’s down in the bottom of our filthy, oily sump and my hands were soon covered in a black, oily slime. I needed to get some silicone sealant, which is in a box behind our saloon seats, so I diligently washed my hands, before touching our new, light beige upholstery.
I leaned over and found the silicone sealant then saw to my horror that I had oily slime on my elbow, which I had smeared over one of the cushions. Don’t Panic Mr Mannering! It took me 30 minutes with some spot cleaner, dabbing it with clean paper towels repeatedly. Thank goodness it seems to have come off and Glenys couldn't see the mark when she came back.
Paul and Celeste invited us over to “The Beguine” for a farewell dinner – they're staying in New Zealand for another year before heading off to Indonesia.
15 April 2015 Whangarei, New Zealand
We’re gearing up to leave tomorrow, so we spent the morning finishing off jobs. I got the bilge pump and automatic switch working, but there’s so much crap at the bottom of the sump that the pump filter keeps clogging up. After cleaning the filter ten times, I gave up. The problem is that the sump is only 2 or 3 inches wide and is two feet deep, so I can’t get my arm in there to dig it out. This afternoon, I bought a second hand dessert spoon from a charity shop and my grand plan is to lash it to a stick and dig out the sludge a spoon at a time – I'm not looking forward to it.
Our afternoon was spent in a shopping frenzy. I had a list of spares that I still needed to buy and Glenys was focused on provisions and more things to give and trade when we get up to the islands. We both did a couple of runs to the local supermarket to stock up with enough drinks and food to last us a week while we sail up to Opua.
We've sold our bikes to “The Beguine” and will drop them off just before we leave tomorrow. For £40 each they've been a fantastic asset here in Whangarei, but they’re too big to take with us (and will just rust away), so we’re selling them – I’ll miss my daily bike ride.
In the evening, we treated ourselves to a night out and had an Indian curry – probably our last one for a long time.
16 April 2015 Whangarei to Urquhart Bay, New Zealand
We were up early doing our last minute jobs. The boat still looked like a bomb had hit it with stuff everywhere, but we had a few hours to sort it all out because today’s tide meant that we couldn't leave until two o'clock in the afternoon.
We first fitted the dinghy cover, put all the velcro flaps in place and tensioned the outer string. It looks great, but it’s been a lot of work – I estimate about 60 hours including our abortive first attempt at the templates. Now that we've done one, it would probably still take 40 hours to make another from scratch, so I pray that this one survives for the rest of our cruising life.
Glenys sorted out all of the bags and bucket loads of stuff that we bought (and been given) to take to Vanuatu. She's stowed most of it in the back heads shower, with the rest in a few big bags in the front cabin. We've still got lots of space to take more clothes and food.
By one o'clock, we were pretty well shipshape with the dinghy up on the davits, the decks cleared, the engine tested and everything stowed away down below. We then had an interminable wait for an hour until we had enough depth of water to move.
At two o'clock precisely, we dropped our lines and motored out of Whangarei Town Marina, through the lifting bridge, past Norsand Boat Yard and headed down the estuary. We've had a great 4½ months in Whangarei, which is a lovely town with all the facilities that a cruiser could want within a one mile radius. The people have been really friendly and helpful – we will miss the place, but our credit card will be grateful not to be used for a while.
The trip up the river was uneventful, with a pleasant (but cold) 15 knot wind from the south east allowing us to pull out our genoa and motor-sail down the winding channel. We arrived in Urquhart Bay at five o'clock, just in time to anchor and have a cold beer before the sun went down.
17 April 2015 Whangarei to Urquhart Bay, New Zealand
We had a lovely calm night, with just a bit of gentle rocking, so it was a pleasant re-introduction to sleeping at anchor. There was no rush to leave, so we had leisurely breakfast before heading off to sail the twenty miles to our next anchorage.
After we rounded Whangarei Heads, we had a good 15 knot wind, mostly on the beam, all the way to Tutukaka Harbour. On the way, I took advantage of the calms seas to potter about on deck tensioning the halyards on all three sails and stowing the ropes away. Everything looks to be working fine, which is a relief after four months without use.
We were tucked up in Tutukaka Bay by one o'clock and had a lazy afternoon, reading and napping – it’s a long time since we've had time to sit and stare. This harbour has a lovely, snug anchorage and we’re planning to stay here for a couple of nights to weather out a low that’s forecast to pass over tomorrow.
18 April 2015 Tutukaka Harbour, New Zealand
The low arrived with squalls and occasional strong winds, so we chilled out, hunkered down below. I did some administration and caught up on my blog, while Glenys did a few small sewing jobs and surfed the internet.
I looked at the long range weather forecast and there doesn't seem to be a clear weather window to get up to Vanuatu for the next couple of weeks, it just seems to be one low following another, so we have some time to relax and take it slow getting up to Opua. The weather looks good to head north tomorrow when the wind should turn easterly.
19 April 2015 Tutukaka Harbour to Whangaruru, New Zealand
We left just after eight o'clock and motored out into a two metre swell from the east. It was a little tough getting out of the narrow harbour entrance, with ten minutes of motoring straight into the waves. I wouldn't want to try to get out if there was a big swell.
Once we cleared the headland and had turned north, we had a nice 10-20 knot wind from the east putting us on a broad reach. We decided to go into Whangaruru rather than Whangamumu because we were worried that the east swell might make its way into Whangamumu. What a good choice because we anchored in Puripuri Bay, which is very pretty and, even better, there was no swell at all.
After lunch we went ashore. There’s a camping ground with a walking track that wanders around the peninsula and our plan is to do that tomorrow.
Our new dinghy wheels got their first outing. We've done without wheels for the past four years, but sometimes it’s been a struggle to get our heavy dinghy ashore when there are big tides which expose a lot of beach. The wheels worked well when we pulled the dinghy up onto the hard packed sand, but the seabed shallowed very slowly and the wheels hit the bottom a long way out, so we ended up having to wade further than we would normally. We’ll have to have to refine our approach and maybe sometimes only deploy the wheels when we’re actually beached.
We invited “Pebbles” over for sundowners and for once it was actually warm enough to sit in the cockpit. Dean and Janie are locals from Wellington and are just starting their first long distance cruise to Tonga and Fiji – they’re very excited.
20 April 2015 Whangaruru to Paradise Bay, New Zealand
Glenys woke up with a niggly ache in a tooth. A few months ago, she had an inflammation in the tooth and the dentist in Whangarei thought that he might have to give her a root canal. He gave her some anti-inflammatory treatment and the nerve seemed to calm down after a few weeks, so the dentist left the nerve in there and crowned it.
It’s been bothering her for a few days and she’s now worried that she’s going to have problems with the tooth, which would be a nightmare if we were in the outlying islands. We decided to get to Opua and organise a dentist appointment as soon as possible.
We upped anchor just after nine o’clock and had a pleasant trip over to the Bay of Islands. The wind was very fickle and we only had a few hours of sailing, having to motor sail the around the impressive Cape Brett and all the rest of the way to the Paradise Bay. This is another lovely anchorage with a few yachts already anchored here. I suspect that they’re all cruisers waiting for a weather window to head north, rather than locals who seem to give up sailing after Easter.
Glenys rang the only dentist in Opua, but can’t get an appointment until the 24th – oh well, the tooth isn’t painful and we’re not planning to leave New Zealand for a couple of weeks.
I took advantage of the clear water in the bay to snorkel down and look at the hull. The water was very cold and I was glad that I’d put on my 3mm full length wet suit. The hull doesn’t look too bad. I was worried that we’d have a lot of barnacles after spending 2½ months in Whangarei Town Marina, but the antifoul seems to have done a good job, with just a light covering of green slime over most of the hull.
The propeller however, was covered in barnacles and a few oyster clams. Also, the bottom foot of both the rudder and the keel were covered in barnacles. It looks like we’ve been sinking into soft mud at low tide and this has reduced the effectiveness of the antifoul. I spent an hour diving down to clean the worst off the propeller and the keel, but I gave up after an hour, because I’m still leaving behind small white calcium deposits from the bottom of the barnacles. If I don’t get these off and reveal fresh antifoul, then we’ll quickly get more growth on these deposits. So, unfortunately, I’m going to have to don a scuba tank and go back down tomorrow.
21 April 2015 Paradise Bay, New Zealand
With a heavy heart, I put on my wetsuit & scuba tank and spent an hour scraping the hull. As well as scraping off the barnacles, I gave the hull a quick wipe down to get rid of most of the slime. I was very cold by the time that I got out of the water and it took a hot shower, a hot chocolate and an hour lying in the sun to get my core temperature up again.
In the afternoon, we went for a two hour walk on the island, which is lovely. We heard more bird song in this short walk than we’ve heard anywhere else in New Zealand and it’s a lovely island.
22 April 2015 Paradise Bay to Matauwhai Bay, New Zealand
It was a beautiful day, so we motored around to Matauwhai Bay, which is a secure anchorage, but visiting yachts have to anchor outside the large mooring field of about 100 local boats. The Russell Boat Club has a good dinghy dock, from where we walked ½ mile into the small town of Russell.
Russell has the distinction of being the first permanent European settlement and sea port in New Zealand. In the early 1800’s, it was one of the major whaling stations in the world and was a very rough place full of scoundrels, but now it’s a desirable district brimming with cafés, gift shops and B&Bs.
The Duke of Marlborough Hotel overlooks the bay and was the first officially licensed hotel in New Zealand, so it would have been churlish of us to not have a pint or two there. We had a fabulous boozy lunch and then retired back to the boat to sleep it off.
23 April 2015 Bay of Islands to Opua, New Zealand
Mid-morning, we motored further up the river to Opua Marina where we’d booked ourselves in for a week while we sort out Glenys’ tooth and get ready to leave New Zealand. Normally, we wouldn’t bother going into a marina, but there’s some bad weather coming in and the anchorage outside the marina is renowned for dragging, so I won’t be happy leaving the boat at anchor while we run around.
We spent the afternoon doing a few jobs running a few errands.
24 April 2015 Opua, New Zealand
We bummed a lift into Pahia to see a dentist, who took some x-rays of Glenys’ tooth. It looks like she has a small cavity at the bottom edge of her crown, so the dentist sent some notes and the x-rays off to the dentist in Whangarei. Unfortunately, it’s Anzac Day on Monday, so this is a long Bank Holiday week end and the dentist in Whangarei isn’t in his surgery until Tuesday 28th - this means that we’ve lost three days. Glenys made a tentative appointment to see the dentist on Thursday 30th.
We’ve now got no chance of leaving New Zealand until the 1st May, and that’s assuming that the dentist can sort out Glenys’ tooth in one session. There seems to be a reasonable weather window on the 29th, but I think that we’ll miss that and the next one won’t be for another week. We spent the rest of the day feeling depressed and pottering about.
25 April 2015 Opua, New Zealand
Glenys woke up with a bee in her bonnet about making a new bimini. Together with the various side flaps that attach, the bimini is our major protection against the sun & rain when we’re at sea. It’s been slowly falling apart for the past year and we’re worried that it might rip in the next bad weather that we have, which would make us miserable.
At 3 metres by 2.5 metres, the bimini is a large piece of material, so we ended up laying it out in the car park which is the largest flat surface we could find. It was a right mess, with lots of patches, so it was difficult to see the original shape. We unpicked some of the pieces and made a template of one corner assuming that the whole thing is symmetrical.
By the end of the afternoon, Glenys was busy sewing zips in place which hold the bimini in place on the 1” tube frame. Like the dinghy cover this is a three-dimensional object, with curves everywhere so I suspect that this job could turn into another epic…
26 April 2015 Opua, New Zealand
While Glenys worked on the bimini, I removed the main hose for the aft toilet. The toilet has been “chuckling” at us for the past couple of months – we pump it out, and then a minute later, we get odious air bubbles coming up from the bowl. I suspected that the 2 inch diameter pipe has become furred up with deposits, which is causing back pressure.
As always on a boat, it wasn’t easy. The pipe goes from the toilet through a bulkhead then loops through the engine room, up into the cockpit locker where it does a 180 degree turn back into the engine compartment and then down to the sea cock. It only took an hour to get it out; fifteen minutes of beating with a mallet to break up the furring; and then two hours to get the damn thing back in place.
During my struggles, I helped Glenys with the bimini. We had a couple of attempts to fit it, but our initial templates were either wrong or the frame is asymmetrical. Either way, she had to unpick most of her work and we’re now doing one corner at a time and having to repeatedly unpick and re-sew – it’s turned into a mission.
Paul and Monique from “Full Circle” have been collecting supplies for Vanuatu. Today they had a visit from a midwife from Keri Keri who dropped off a car load of things. We agreed to take some clothes, ropes and bedding to add to our collection.
In the evening, we went out to the Cruising Club for their excellent Sunday roast.
27 April 2015 Opua, New Zealand
It was absolutely horrible weather – a front came over during the night giving 3- 40 knot winds and driving rain. It was also a Bank holiday (Anzac Day) and everywhere was shut, so I lurked around in the morning messing about on my laptop. Meanwhile Glenys dragged out the new stuff for Vanuatu and sorted it all out, then painted a courtesy flag for Vanuatu.
In afternoon, the weather broke and we managed to do some work on the bimini, which is turning into an epic. Again all we have to do is move the material by 10mm and everything else is thrown ot of position. We managed to get the zips in the correct place for the front of the binini, nbut the back is still not right.
28 April 2015 Opua, New Zealand
Glenys received the good news that the dentist in Whangarei can see her tomorrow, so she booked a hire car for the 29th and 30th. The weather forecast looks good to leave on the 1st or 2nd, so as long as the tooth is sorted out, we’re aiming to leave in a few days’ time …
I talked to the customs office and submitted and advanced notice to leave New Zealand - I had already called them two weeks ago and they’ve received our pepper spray canisters from the arms locker in the local police station. I also submitted a request to the Vanuatu Customs to get permission to clear in at Aneityum, which is not a formal clearance port. Phew! It’s not easy getting out of here.
Glenys has been in touch with Shannon on “Lil Explorers” who is already in Aneityum in Vanuatu. She tells us that there is a nurse (Roger) in the village who would really love a Nebuliser and some Salbutamol (which is a machine and the drug to help asthmatic people breathe easier). Roger has six asthmatic people on his island and the Vanuatu government has ignored his requests for a nebuliser.
Shannon tells us that a few months ago, Roger had to watch an 18 year old villager die in front of his eyes, because he didn’t have a nebuliser, so Glenys did some research and found a company in New Zealand that can ship us one by Thursday. They only cost £75, so it’s a crying shame that someone died through the lack of one. I contacted Doctor Whitton in Whangarei and he has arranged to meet us tomorrow and seems willing to write a prescription for the Salbutamol.
We got in touch with a guy called Harry Fox, who lives in Kawa Kawa with his Vanuatu wife, Benesta. They collect clothing and other supplies for the Vanuatu people, so we offered to take some things over for them. Harry turned up with a huge van with ten boxes of school books, two push chairs, pots and pans and even a rolled up mattress. We had to decline most of it and ended up with two big boxes of school books which we have to take to Benesta’s mother on Tomman Island and two sacks of cookware for Benesta’s daughter in Port Vila.
After Harry left, Paul and Monica from “Full Circle” came and asked if I could look at their laptop which wouldn’t work with an internet aerial and a GPS dongle. It was Windows 8, so it was a struggle but after two hours of messing about and downloading drivers, I managed to get them up and working.
With all this running around and visitors, we didn’t make much progress on the bimini during the day, so we were working until half past nine to get it ready for another fitting tomorrow. This is now on our critical path – if we don’t get it finished them we won’t be leaving.
29 April 2015 Opua, New Zealand
We picked up our hire car and shot off to Whangarei. Doctor Whitton was our first call, who was brilliant and gave us the prescription for 80 doses of Salbutamol. He also gave us a prescription for three inhalers and donated four “spacers”, which are tubes to help young or weak people to use an inhaler. If Roger had one of these spacers than it may have helped the young man who died.
We did some running around in Whangarei, to get various things. It’s amazing how well we know Whangarei and can quickly find almost anything - it’s a great little city.
Glenys’ appointment with the dentist went well. She had a small cavity at the edge of her crown where some cement was missing and the gap between the crown and the next tooth was too thin resulting in a food trap and causing some inflammation of her gum. The dentist sorted it all out and she should be okay now.
We managed to get back to the boat before dark and collapsed with a bottle of wine and a huge plate of Spaghetti Bolognese.
30 April 2015 Opua, New Zealand
The weather forecast still looks good for the next seven days and we’ve decided to leave on Saturday 2nd. We’ll probably be motoring for the first day, but then should pick up ENE winds, which will put us on a beam reach for three days. A low pressure trough is then forecast to pass over us, which might give us unpleasant, 25 knot winds and rain for a day or so, but nothing too bad (we hope).
We spent a couple of hours on the bimini and got the hardest part finished. We now have to put on the edging tape and some zips for some side flaps to keep rain out of the cockpit. I reckon we’ve got a couple of hours more work and it should be done, which will be a relief.
We zipped off in our hire car to do some provisioning. Our first stop was at a liquor store where we ordered some duty free booze to be delivered to the boat after we’ve cleared out – 8 bottles of rum, 20 litres of wine and 84 cans of beer. There are regulations restricting the amount of alcohol that we take out of the country (which is a strange concept) and we had to fill in a form which will have to be approved by customs before we can leave.
The regulations state that the amount of alcohol depends on the number of days that we’ll be at sea until the next port. For each crew member, we can take 3.3 litres of spirits per 10 days of voyage time; one 750ml bottle of wine per day and six 375ml cans of beer per day. We’re expecting our passage to take 8 days, so we larded it up a bit and gave them a projected voyage of 14 days – well, it might be slow going….
This 14 day passage allows us to take – 13.6 litres of spirits; 21 litres of wine and 168 cans of beer, so we should be well within their limits. Reading up on the regulations, it would appear that the regulations are all about “Alcohol and tobacco products intended for passenger and crew consumption en route”. Well, if I drank 330ml of spirits, a bottle of wine and six cans of beer each day, I’d be dead by the time we arrived in Vanuatu.
With the alcohol sorted out, we headed into Keri Keri, where we loaded two huge supermarket trolleys with food, then headed back to the boat, where Glenys spent a couple of hours stowing it all away, hindered by the large bags of supplies for Vanuatu that seem to be everywhere.