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.