January 2016 – Two At Sea

Caution – Work in Progress

January 31, 2016

Legacy came out of the water last Wednesday for a bottom job.

Legacy hauled out at Tauranga Bridge Marina Hard Stand.

And by Wednesday night, she was wearing a dress…

Actually, she was tented off in preparation for water and garnet blasting to remove all the old coats of bottom paint. The paint had become too thick and was falling off the hull in pretty good size patches. We also had quite a crop of osmotic blisters.

Blisters ground away after blasting off the old bottom paint.

We’ve been grinding the blisters away for two days now and are almost done with that phase.

When I’m done with this, I swear, I’m never lifting my arms above my head again (not that I’ll be able to!).

What the blisters lack in depth (they’re pretty shallow), they make up for in quantity!

Next steps: filling, barrier coat, and bottom paint. I’m also hoping to wax the topsides (I know, I’m a dreamer!). -Rich

Update, February 2, 2016…

We thought the boat would look good with Play-Doh applied liberally to the bottom.

Actually, it’s Jotafair by Jotun. It’s a two-part epoxy fairing compound. We put about three and a half liters in the ground out spaces. Tomorrow, we’ll sand about three quarters of that off!

It’s nice to be done with our deconstructionist period and moving in the right direction. (Plus, I really like the color of the filler. I wonder if it tastes good?)

Update, February 4, 2015

Red, Dirty Red, Gray, Gray with Acne, Gray with Play-Doh, now Barbie-with-a-Bad-Tan Skin Tone.

That’s the first coats of epoxy barrier. If the rain holds off tomorrow, maybe she’ll be ready for bottom paint after yet another NZ holiday!

Update, February 12, 2016

The work is done and we’re back in the water! It took 6 days longer than planned, mostly due to the frequent NZ national holidays and the even more frequent bad weather, but it’s done and I’m so happy with the results.

The new bottom paint is Hempel NCT 8190M. It’s an ablative paint that’s mostly used on big ships. It uses some very interesting new technology. They have guaranteed it for three years. We’ll let you know how it does.

We did all this work at the Bridge Marina Travel Lift. This is our third time hauling out here and we love it. Bruce, Brian, Merrick and Antonio are terrific – professional, helpful, friendly and very knowledgeable. They’ve solved several of Legacy’s long-standing problems over the years of hauling out here (Maddox Anodes, Rudder Bushings). I really think that it’s crazy to do boat work anywhere else in NZ.

It also has the advantage of being in one of the best spots on the North Island. Both Tauranga and Mt. Maunganui, the nearby towns, are wonderful. We are always finding new and amazing places to eat and shop. It’s heaven for boat parts as well. Example: if you need a fastener, there are at least four fastener stores on one street alone, one stocking nothing but stainless. Again, it’d be crazy to go anywhere else! -Rich

Blood and Coffee

January 26, 2016

Yep, if there’s blood… There must be boat work!

We’ve been working away on the boat for the entire three weeks or so that we’ve been in Tauranga. I think today was our first day off. We took it off because we finished some major engine work including a new rear main oil seal and new engine mounts.

Tomorrow, Legacy gets hauled out of the water for bottom painting. But first, we’re going to water and garnet blast off the old bottom paint, 27 years worth.

Here’s what we’ve done…

Installed a new heater for boat and hot heater
Installed shower WarmerUpper
Replaced anchor chain
Relocated extra anchor rode
Replaced boom vang spring
Rebuilt windlass
Replaced broken stereo
Moved stereo speakers
Installed a new fresh water pump
Added an indicator light on fresh water pump
Re-plumbed head sink
Fixed sticking head drawer
Moved refrigerator temperature sensor
New glasses for both of us
Moved data to new hard disks
Placed stateside (Amazon) order
Updated cruising information pages on our blog
Replaced engine fresh water pump
Installed new engine mounts
Replaced leaking engine rear main oil seal
Remounted rudder sensor

And yet to do…

Find and fix fresh water leak

Dentist for Cyndi

Skin doctor

Eye doctor

Visa extension

Lanyard for Espar heater exhaust cap

Rewire Espar heater connector

Tie up Espar air intake

Get chain test results

Straighten and secure spreaders

Carpet companionway steps

Final check of engine alignment

New autopilot pump connectors

New toilet seat

Outboard engine fuel vent

Outboard carb, clean jets

Clean outboard fuel tank

Install refrigerator fan relay

Replace secondary refrigerator fan

Install 220 volt inverter for printer

Install new bilge blower

New engine vent hoses

Fix deck leak over stereo

Fix head door latch

Seal stanchions

Update sat phone firmware

Replace water maker pumps

Replace autopilot hydraulic pump

Remount watermaker pumps

Lube extra bow roller

Glue old faucet holes

Clean bilge

Install new bilge pump and pump switch

Replace Seagull filter hoses

Make refrig shelf

update and test mailasail

hf radio noise issue

Bonding wire to arch

Seal solar panel wire holes in Bimini

deck chip on port by cockpit

Battery hold downs

Epoxy overboard pole

New offline wikipedia copy

Get DANBoater policy

Fix stripped propane cover screws

Check cutlass

Wax hull

Lube prop

Check prop freeplay

replace head houses

replace head thru-hulls

Replumb sink drain, new thru hull

Ain’t boating grand!? Or ten grand!? Or fifty grand!? -Rich

Update… We went out for a test spin on the way to the boatyard and what a difference the new engine mounts make! The engine is much quieter, very smooth and there is very little vibration transmitted through the hull. I ran it up to full throttle and Cyndi said it all: “There’s no drama!”

Is Simple Better?

January 20, 2015

It’s a common question that’s probably been around as long as boats. Is simple better? Does the KISS principle have any place in boating?

My friend Tom sent me an email the other day. He’s an old-school boater. If he had his way, he’d be cruising in a hollowed out ancient growth log using petrified woolly mammoth hair for rigging. Here’s his email…

I just looked at your recent blogs. It makes me wonder about all the odds and ends that require power, maintenance time and worry. If all the gadgets were to fail, could you still get from point A to B? Do you practice Celestial Navigation? Do you carry a handheld GPS that’s not dependent on external power? Spare bateries for the handlheld? Does your windlass have a hand crank in case your batteries fail? Am I being a pain? These are the kind of things I think about when sitting around, waiting [at work].

Some think simple is better: less cost, less to maintain, less to go wrong, and so on. On the other side there’s Legacy. We have what we feel we need to be comfortable, even though that means more maintenance and cost.

Here’s our argument. For us and most of the people we meet out here, this is a way of life, not a day sail. We hope to be out here for years, not days, weeks or months. We wake up every single morning on the boat and go to sleep at night here as well. We spend the majority of our waking hours on Legacy. This is our home, not a kayak we’re paddling down the Amazon to set the record for most or least of something or another. For us, part of enjoying day-to-day life is comfort. Don’t we all want comfortable lives? Adventure and novelty is also very important to us. What could possibly be better than exploration and adventure in comfort?

If this was a limited-time “mission,” we could make do with fewer luxury items. For example, if our goal was to sail around the world in 18 months, we’d know that all the comforts of home life were waiting. In our case, those comforts could still be ten years away. We could make do with fewer luxury items if we had to (and we do when things break – at least until a fix or replacement is available).

During a passage to Hawaii, our alternator broke. Our solar panels couldn’t keep up and we lost all the boat systems, one by one. We were taking saltwater showers, all the electronics we depend on were turned off, and, heaven forbid, we were even doing watches with our eyes while sitting in the cockpit like a bunch of barbarians! (We usually keep watch below decks using radar.) We called this “Pardeying” after Lynn and Larry Pardey, the cruising authors who advocate an extremely simple boat, even forgoing electric lights and an engine. While we survived this and got to Hawaii safely, we didn’t enjoy it and would definitely not choose it as a way of life.

When I was younger, I seemed to need less comfort. Maybe I was tougher? Maybe I just didn’t know how good a comfortable life could be? Whatever the reason, it seems like a good idea to cruise on a simple, smaller boat while young, before you need larger and more complex boat. That ship has sailed for me (sorry). I’m older now… I know better.

Couldn’t I ask the same about a house? Why isn’t simple better there too?

Why do you have a refrigerator when an ice chest would work just as well? Stop for a block each day on your way home from work. A toilet seems frivolous when a hole in the backyard would do the job. And a Sun Shower would alleviate the need for some of that troublesome indoor plumbing.

We’ve had houses. They’ve required constant maintenance. Expensive maintenance. Worry and stress about paying for that maintenance. We’ve had to replace dishwashers, refrigerators, heaters, plumbing, wiring and more. (Don’t even get me started on the constant work the yard required.) We were even required to do a very expensive earthquake retrofit. It would have cost much less, and been far simpler to level the house and put a nice tent on the slab. Simple. No worries (and no comfort!).

The best case I can make for simple is going with what you can afford. The complexities (luxuries?) are expensive. I could do without a lot if it meant the difference between cruising or not. (Hey, kind of the same with a house. Can’t afford a house with two bathrooms? We make do with one. No dishwasher? No problem. Maybe the house I can afford doesn’t have the kitchen I want, but I can still cook Pop Tarts in it.)

I find boat maintenance far more enjoyable than house maintenance ever was. I like making the boat better, more convenient, and more comfortable, along with more seaworthy. Problem solving on the boat is a creative outlet for me. What else am I going to do? Scrimshaw? And I like being compared to MacGyver for fixing a problem at sea with a paperclip, an old toothpaste tube and some dental floss. Keeping all the systems purring is a point of pride for me.

I also feel I need to keep the most important system on the boat purring. Cyndi! (I’m going to try to do this next bit without sounding sexist.)

I think that often, the cruising dream is stronger in one partner than in the other. Sharing this experience with the one I love is priceless. Anything I can do to make this better for Cyndi is well worth it for me. We’ve seen too many people out here without regard for their partners needs. You know what they’re called? Single handers!

It turns out that my partner’s wants are very much in line with mine, but if I needed to install a watermaker, or a luxurious hot water shower to keep her happy, I’d do it in a flash. (The truth is, I might enjoy the hot water showers even more than she does!)

To address Tom’s other points, we do have backup GPS devices. Many. Our phones not only have GPS capabilities, but complete navigation systems including charts. Even our cameras have a GPS. We could take a picture, and get our latitude and longitude. We are so confident in these back up systems that we got rid of 20 pounds of paper charts the other day. We gave away our sextant last year. I hadn’t touched it in three years.

And, yes Tom, you are being a pain, but that’s what you do, and I appreciate it! I think the best friends are ones that make you think. -Rich

Shower WarmerUpperer

January 19, 2016

After the addition of our new, wonderful, amazing, incredible, fabulous hot water system (post here), we made another incremental improvement. We added a valve to send the cold water left in the pipes back to the water tank, to make way for the luxurious hot water without wasting a drop (fresh water’s precious on Legacy!).

It’s the valve near the bottom of the picture. It takes hot water from just below the shower faucet and has a hose that runs back to our main fresh water tank. You can feel the valve get warm after just 10 or 15 seconds. Then turn off the valve, and the shower’s ready.

I’ve always wanted to do this. Normally, we start with showering our legs or feet – areas of the body that don’t convulse or go into shock when hit with cold water. Now, even those parts don’t have to suffer.

On a related subject, that garden sprayer in the picture is our shower head. We had the typical one that doubled as a sink faucet, but some fool decided that they couldn’t be allowed to shut the water off completely else the badly made rubber hose would explode. This constant dribble of water isn’t very good for those of us trying to conserve water.

Enter the garden sprayer. It has seven selectable spray patterns and does shut off completely while you shampoo. We use the “mist” patter as it gives a forcefull rince while using very little water. When we’re in a marina with lots of fresh water nearby, we use the “shower” pattern for a very satisfying shower experience. The “jet” is handy for cleaning. We really, really like this even though it might not look all that classy. (Our friend called it our redneck shower head.) I’d even do this if and when we return to land life. -Rich

120V to 230V Boat Conversion

January 18, 2016

I see boats sitting at the dock with the engine running for hours at a time, making noise, making diesel exhaust fumes for their neighbors and using up expensive engine lifetime, all for no reason. Oh, they’d say it’s to charge batteries. They’re always US or Canadian boats. They have 120 volt systems, while the rest of the world uses 220 to 240 volts.

They’ve often been told that they’d need to spend thousands to rewire their boat. They’d need to comply with a multitude of regulations and get a Warrant of Fitness (NZ) every year at a cost of hundreds of dollars. Wrong-o-buck-o! There’s a better way.

Maybe we stumbled into this blindly, or maybe we’re just cheap, or maybe just lucky, but what we did for under $200 has been working so well for us.

When we first got to Opua, New Zealand four years ago, we bought and “installed” a very inexpensive, 10 amp charger (ours happens to be made by Victron Energy but there are many to choose from). We cut off the alligator clips and wired the output side into our 12 volt system. I put “installed” in quotes because we left the NZ AC plug intact.

We plug the charger into an inspected (WOF’ed) power cord and leave it on all the time (or at least we did, before we had more solar power than we know what to do with!). Each year in NZ, we need to get our cord inspected, but that’s $25 or so – much less than getting the all the boat’s wiring inspected.

I’ve called this a trickle charger, only because of the low, 10 amp charging rate, but it’s not a typical trickle charger. It’s actually a sophisticated, 4 stage charger that won’t harm batteries if left on indefinitely. Ten amps isn’t much, but multiply it by 24 hours and we’re talking 240 amp-hours. That’s more than we can use, especially when supplemented by even moderate solar or wind power.

For AC, at least the US and Canadian 110 volt flavor, we use our inverter. We plug our little 230 volt space heater into a Y connector, plugged into the power cord. That’s also how we connect or New Zealand purchased power tools.

Done. That’s it. No rewiring. No excessive engine or generator hours. No annoyed neighbors. No hassle. -Rich