So here’s what we have been up to:
First of all it has started to get a little cold over here, and being a 240v 50Hz boat we are not able to run any of the 4 of our very expensive 18000BTU reverse cycle air-con units without running the generator, so one of the US cruising couples we has met here (John and Jerri – Ahyoka) took pity on us and gave us their electric heater as they have just installed their reverse cycle air. (Nancy and Judy on Makara had also offered us an air-con unit but as we were getting colder and had nowhere to really store it so we had to decline).
Well that was fine and dandy, but of course this meant I had to run a dedicated 110v circuit within the boat so I could run it and the chargers without running extension cord through open doors or windows (sort of defeats the purpose of a heater), so two days later after 2 trips to Home Depot, lots of grunting and swearing as I pulled wires from the back of the boat to the front, and one worrying moment as we flicked the breaker, we now have heating on the boat and loving it. Cheap, at only $50 in wiring and fittings.
We also successfully negotiated a outcome with our water-maker manufacturer – Dessalator to replace our pressure vessel ends and fittings at a much reduced price even though it is well out of warranty – so spent a quick thou’ there. Bought the new membranes and now have to try and put it all back together.
As we started to get ready to depart, we turned the Freezer back on and started having problems with it over night, like we did in Grenada. “Low voltage” kept dancing through my brain and I had a nagging suspicion that our batteries, which we wanted to get one more year out of might be dying. Well with a bit of investigation (open circuit voltage testing, load testing, capacity testing) with help from Nancy from Makara my fears were realised – batteries were shot. With a bit of research and phone calls I managed to get a good deal on 4 Lifeline 4D batteries effectively doubling our capacity for only a grand and a half! Yeah! Then of course there was installation which you would think would be straight forward – throw out four old batteries and put in four new ones....
Well not quite... The terminals on the Lifelines are not the same as my old Exides, so new lugs are required and to fit them in and do a neat job, I need to build a new harness. Not too hard. Nancy and Judy had all the good gear (crimpers etc) to do the job and recommended the appropriate lugs. Nancy also recommended to up the wire size to 3/0 for the long leads and 2/0 for the short runs to optimise charging. Fortunately for me I found out that when Lagoon did the conversion they left a long length of 3/0 for the inverter in place. So with a day’s work, I rewired the inverter and saved myself a couple of hundred dollars in wire. But the lugs seemed elusive... everywhere I ordered them from came back a week later and said they were out of stock. Meanwhile Nancy and Judy are preparing to depart and take the good tools with them. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for them, they had a water leak just outside the channel and had to return to Brunswick and I got a reprieve. The batteries finally installed and charging beautifully!
We bit the bullet and decided to replace the dodger/clears as they were basically falling to bits and had been restitched once already. We got Jeff and Ruth (Stitches by Ruth) down to the boat, discussed a few ideas and signed up for another quick thou’ and a bit. They are back on the boat, integrated into out cockpit enclosure and look and work great – three more smiles on the boat and little flaps over our genoa sheaves! There’s a thou and a bit out of the old wallet!
I also learnt about repairing fibreglass – had to repair the narcelle (middle pointy bit on the boat) where the trampoline anchor bolts had vibrated and cracked off chunks of fibreglass. To access this I had to remove the anchor roller (which also had cracks around the bolt holes, so I had to repair them and also two bonus holes where it had obviously been drilled incorrectly at the factory??!!) Before I could do that however, I thought I should stitch the few small holes in the trampolines so I didn’t fall through while working on the fibreglass. Half a day later I have stitched the port trampoline. We need to get another year out of this.
So I start dismantling the tramp supports, lying with my feet on the repaired tramp and I feel movement – a new hole forms around my big toe, so I move it and another hole forms. Didn’t even get another day out of the tramps, so Karen’s research was ramped up and new tramps were ordered, measured and delivered by Mum’s birthday 5th December! So looks like we aren’t leaving in late November!
Anyway I started work on the narcelle and the anchor set up. To ensure this didn’t happen again, in consultation with another Aussie, Tim on Dominion, I decided to screw stainless steel plates on the front of the narcelle and wrap them around the side and have the tramp attachment eyes captured by it. This was a slow process, rebuilding the fibreglass, shaping and polishing it and then installing the plates and reassembling.
While I was doing that I also redid the anchor set up to cope with the larger Rocna anchor we had bought in Grenada. In the end it was a nice job with a new scratch plate for the anchor chain that Karen ordered from Amazon.
Meanwhile the new Tramps arrived from Sunrise Yacht Products in Florida and we got our first door to dock delivery from Sherri, the dockmaster – I think she was trying to convince us to come back next year. It did not take long to get the new tramps on and the boat was looking good.
A couple of other things we did, that I don’t think we mentioned was to put a TV on the boat – yes after 5 years of watching movies and TV series on my computer, we succumbed to the draw of the United States of Retail-land and put in a gigantic Naxa 12v TV DVD combo measuring a whopping 22inches! Yes Andie, if you are reading this, my new TV is only half the size of the one you bought off me back in Elsternwick – oh how I have come down in materialism!
The installation of the TV was no mean feat! We often watch movies in the cockpit but in the colder weather we like to snuggle up on the couch in the salon and watch in there. It also had to be connected to the stereo (yes not surround sound with a big sub-woofer like back home) so we could hear it over the sounds of the anchorage or marina. It also had to be hard wired to a switch in the control box as well as be out of the way and secure underway. Easy huh! So after a while Karen suggested to mount it on the ceiling in the doorway and we found a mounting bracket on Amazon for $14! After a couple of days swearing as I was running wires through the ceiling, under the floor and from one end of the boat to the other it was installed and working brilliantly!
We also built new book cases in the owners cabin. Very similar to the ones that are offered as standard on the 420 replacement the 421. We spent weeks trying to source timber from France through the local Lagoon dealer, who was very helpful. In the end we found a local veneer and got it laminated in Florida and shipped to Brunswick. The packaging was extensive on the 8x4ft piece of laminated marine ply – so much so I used it on several projects, as templates for the construction of the cabinets and on jobs on other boats on the dock. In the end, the timber matched well, but we have not yet found a matching finish and we are not sure we ever will, but we are very happy with the results.
Anyway back to the story. We finally get everything done, new mixers on the exhausts and engines serviced etc and it is just the watermaker to put back together. The new controller is in – tick. It is almost Christmas by now and next I get the pressure vessels apart and start to plan the installations of the new membranes. When I start to reassemble with the instructions from France I notice one of the end caps is cracked. Luckily at this stage I had not opened the membrane packaging so they were still good. But now we had to get the replacement endcap from France replaced by France. Dessalator, once they got back from the holidays and understood the problem, were as usual very quick to sort out the replacement to be shipped from France but we are having a Georgian Christmas! And guess what I got (apart from more boat problems)?
Ok a couple of things you might notice about this pic, yes we still get up early to open the pressies, hence the messy hair and the closed eyes, yes we still have champagne with the pressies and yes I am wearing long sleeves – it if bloody cold in Georgia at Christmas. For a while I thought we might have a white Christmas. Oh and I got a Guitar that I now need to learn how to play.
We also had the pleasure of watching the Christmas boat parade in Brunswick, which include a lot of local and a couple of cruising boats as well as the local coast guard boat! The winner was a floating Christmas Tree!
So Happy New Year everybody – it is now 2013 and we wait about a week for the replacement part and successfully (we hope as you can’t test the watermaker in the marina) so it is looking like a mid-January exit from Brunswick right? No I got another Christmas present. Karen was doing a stock-take of supplies under the floor (yep that’s where we store stuff – not in the double pull out pantries of old) when she noticed water. That’s right one of the holding tank’s thru hull fitting was weeping, not taking on heaps of water but enough to not want to go too far in too rough conditions. Of course we are too tall to take advantage of the Inter-coastal Waterways so we do have to put out to sea so now I have to find a yard to haul us, organise temporary repairs, figure out how to replace the thru hull fitting and with what and with what dimensions (being in an imperial country with a metric boat).
On the advice of the local Lagoon dealer, we find a yard in Cape Canaveral. I do a lot of research on the web and talk to as many people I can, including Tim from Dominion I figure out what to do. I have to make backing plates and epoxy them, I am replacing the Marelon (plastic) thru hull fitting with 2” bronze fittings and hope like hell that this matches up with the 50mm existing piping to the tank and I order everything to be shipped to Brunswick. Meanwhile I get the local dive guy, Lee, to put epoxy putty around the current fitting to get us through to Canaveral (a 2 night sail from Brunswick).
We get the parts and spend a couple of days making the backing plates with embedded nuts to mount the sea cock to and wait for weather. We make a couple of trips to the shops and then pack up the van to leave in Brunswick and we plan a mid January departure. Then I look at weather and that mid January departure is today –so we say goodbye to one of the few people still in Brunswick, pay the bill, give up on getting my boat licence from Aus and slip the lines! We really are leaving Brunswick!
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