March 2015 - New Zealand - Page 4

23 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
We've not heard anything from the insurers about replacing the upholstery, so we just got on with more jobs.  I finished off wiring in our new AIS transponder, which works fine and other boats can now see where we are.  The unit comes with a dedicated GPS antenna which I've temporarily installed inside the boat.  Really it should be outside on the stern arch, but I can’t face the trauma of running the cable and fitting it on the arch.

Glenys dragged out her sewing machine again and did a few sewing jobs.

24 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
We received an email from the insurance company, who offered us a settlement for the cost of the lowest quote to replace the upholstery.  I rang them up and tried to negotiate up to Palmer’s higher quote, but they wouldn't move.  They eventually said that they would pay us the cash up front including the sales tax of 15%, so I accepted the offer because we can then get on with our lives.

We’re now waiting for the material samples to arrive at Palmer Canvas, but no sign of them at the moment.  We paid the 40% deposit and Palmer Canvas has said that they can start next week, when they have the material.

I bought a new SIM card and a year’s prepay subscription for our satellite phone.  We’ll sailing up to Vanuatu by the end of April and out of Internet range, so we’ll be back to obtaining our weather forecasts via the satellite phone.  

I spent the rest of the day on electrical jobs.  Our battery monitor gauge stopped working a couple of months ago, so I've bought a replacement.  It’s an intelligent device that has a shunt wired into the main battery circuit which allows it to monitor the current in and out of the batteries.  The device came with a new shunt which would be a day’s work to re-wire, but fortunately, the manufacturer told me that I could use the existing shunt and wiring, so I was done within an hour.

Having recently installed our new chart plotter, radar and AIS systems, it was time to sort out the NMEA 0183 wiring, which is a small network linking the various electronic devices together.  It’s obviously been added to over the past years and was a right mess.  I had read a lot of manuals and draw circuit diagrams to work out what all the connections should be, then took a big breathe, cut all the wires and rewired the whole thing.  Amazingly it all worked and the devices all talk to each other – I've even managed to connect my laptop into it all.   

25 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
First thing in the morning, Glenys went to Palmers Canvas and the wholesalers still haven’t sent any samples up.  Obtaining the upholstery material is now on our critical path.  If we order exactly the same material from Hallberg Rassy, it will cost £50 per metre plus shipping from Sweden, with a long time delay.  Our best bet is to get some material from Auckland, but it’s going to take days to sort it all out at this rate, so Glenys is going to catch a bus down to Auckland tomorrow and chose a material.

I pottered about sorting through my spares, throwing out old stuff and deciding what I need to buy.  Over the past four years, I've collected an eclectic set of tools and spare parts. I'm very reticent to throw anything away, but Alba is definitely sitting low in the water and we need to lose some weight.  I did quite well, throwing away old blocks and rigging screws, pieces of aluminium plate, old cans of paint, old electrical cable and lumps of wood.  Unfortunately, my To Buy List has grown substantially.

26 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
Glenys caught the bus into Auckland – it turned into a long day and she didn't get back until late in the evening, but she’s managed to select some material which should be tough as well as fitting in with the mahogany woodwork.

I spent most of the morning working in the front heads.  I chopped out two pieces of mahogany trim next to the sink which have rotted – apparently mahogany doesn't like fresh water.  It then took me a couple of hours to make two new pieces and glue them in place.  I then applied new white silicone sealant to edges of work top and shower tray.

We've bought a set of wheels for our new dinghy.  We've been struggling over the past year because there are large tides in the Pacific and it can be a long way to pull a heavy dinghy over the beaches at low tide.  The wheels fold up out of the water normally, but can then be dropped down when we land on a beach allowing us to trundle the dinghy and heavy outboard up the sand.

Unfortunately, the AB dinghy comes with two towing points welded onto the transom, just where the wheel would fit, so I had to spend a couple of hours cutting them off and grinding away some of the welded plate to give enough clearance.  I’d had the forethought to put down some protective sheets, but even so, the deck was covered with aluminium dust, which took ages to wash down with the hose pipe.

27 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
It was cold in the morning, so I stayed inside and fitted a new flux-gate compass to the autopilot.  For the past year, the autopilot has been intermittently changing course every so often, even causing an unintentional gybe a couple of times.  I'm not totally sure, but I think that the flux-gate compass is jamming in rough seas, so I've bought and fitted a new one.

I carried on with fitting the wheels which turned into even more of a mission than yesterday. I've bought a model of wheels that have a very neat way of attaching and removing the wheels.  There are four cylindrical fittings over which slides a mounting plate for the wheels.  Small levers then lock the plate into place. 

It’s a very nicely engineered solution, but unfortunately, it only works if the cylindrical fittings are accurately positioned and square to the mounting plate.  The transom on our aluminium hull is not flat, so the cylindrical fittings are definitely not parallel and the mounting plate doesn't slide on and off as intended.

I ended up making some packing plates out of ½ “ plywood, but still had to mess around for ages to pack behind the plywood to get it to lie flat.  By the end of the day, I’d only managed to fit one and I’ll see how it works tomorrow after the sealant has dried.

Glenys spent most of the day working on a cover for the dinghy.  It’s a complicated three dimensional projects and she’s making a template out of an old cotton bed sheet to work out how many panels to make and where the seams should be.

28 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
Glenys beavered away working on the dinghy cover and has just about finished the templates.

I woke up with a burning urge to find out where the hell we’re going when we leave New Zealand.  The grand plan is to get to Malaysia by November.  We know that we’re going to join the Sail Indonesia Rally at the beginning of August, but how are we going to get to Indonesia?  It’s about 4,000 miles to cover in three months.

I spent all day slaving away at my laptop, looking at web sites and blogs.  There’s a huge area of islands in New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea that all call out to be explored.  Unfortunately, with all the miles that we have to sail, we’ll only have eight weeks to do any actual cruising, so after a lot of agonising, we've decided to concentrate on two areas – Vanuatu and The Louisaides in the south east of Papua New Guinea.

Vanuatu has been devastated by Cyclone Pam which ripped through a few weeks ago, so we’re planning on taking lots of supplies to help the villagers, who live a very basic lifestyle.  After a month there, we’ll sail 1,000 miles west to the Louisaides, which are an isolated set of islands to the east of the main land of Papua New Guinea. 

We need to be In Port Moresby by the middle of July, so that we can get our Indonesian visas and still have enough time to sail the remaining 1,200 miles through the Torres Straits to Indonesia. 

So the plan is as follows:

We’ll then stay in Malaysia and Thailand for a year to explore South-East Asia by sea and land.

29 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
I did some more investigation work on Papua New Guinea.  It looks like there’s nowhere to clear into the Louisaides and I'm a bit worried that the authorities in Port Moresby might give us a hard time if we spend a month in the Louisaides without clearing in.

I've managed to find out that there’s a Health Officer in one of the islands (Misma) that may be able to do the Quarantine, but the nearest customs and Immigration are 150 miles further west and we’re definitely not spending two days bashing upwind back to the islands.  It’s a dilemma.  I need to do some more work on this.

In afternoon, I pottered about doing a few jobs and gave Glenys a hand for a few hours.  She’s still working on the dinghy cover which is turning into a nightmare.  All of the templates that she’s made from bed sheet material are stretching as she works and each time she does a fitting, something moves, but by the end of the day we had a set of templates.

In the evening, we went to a bar to watch the Cricket World Cup final.  Australia were playing New Zealand, so it was an intense match.  I expected there to be a load of Kiwis in the bar, but it was quite a subdued affair apart from a rowdy bunch of yachties, including Australians, Kiwis and Americans, so was interesting night.  Unfortunately, New Zealand lost.

30 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
I finished fitting the second dinghy wheel.  It looks like my plywood backing plates will work, so all I need to do now is to paint the plywood with some decent paint to stop them rotting.

When I last serviced the engine, the primary fuel filter looked like it needed some tender loving care, so this afternoon I removed the whole filter assembly.  It was a right old mess.  I’d never opened the drain screw in four years and it was seized solid. There was at least an inch of dark brown “crud” at the bottom of the bowl and the water separator was almost completely blocked.  It was a wonder than the engine’s been running.

I took the whole assembly along to Geoff at Whangarei Marine Services, who suggested that I replace the aluminium bowl with a see-through glass one and gave me a refurbished water separator part.  I really like Geoff, he’s very practical in his advice and doesn't try to sell me expensive replacement parts all the time – a new filter assembly is hundreds of dollars.

I spent the rest of the afternoon scraping, wire-brushing and cleaning the filter parts, so it’s now ready to put on the new glass bowl when it arrives next week.

Glenys cut out some panels in Sunbrella for her dinghy cover and started to sew the front end.  Unfortunately, nothing worked and despite unpicking and redoing it, she couldn't get it to fit.  It looks like the thin material she used for the templates is stretching and it’s accurate enough.   She’s now in a state of depression, has lost the will to live and temporarily abandoned the job to get on with some other things. 

31 March 2015   Whangarei, New Zealand
We both had a day off jobs and went shopping in morning.  I ran around to various hardware stores and chandlers, buying spare parts.  I also treated myself to a new six foot fishing rod because my old one has broken rings.

In the afternoon, we went to see a doctor who specialises in travel health.  Having all the blood tests last week made me look at our immunisations and I discovered that our Hepatitis A and Typhoid injections have expired.  Unfortunately, there’s only one guy in the whole of Whangarei who does travel injections, so we went to see him – that three doctors that I've seen in three weeks.

The consultation lasted an hour, while he comprehensively ran through all the possible diseases that we may be exposed to in our travels to Malaysia and Thailand.  It’s all quite scary.  Typhoid, Tetanus & Hepatitis A is everywhere;  Malaria is a high risk in every country that we are visiting;  Rabies is a very high risk in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia; and there’s loads of other mosquito borne diseases to worry about such as Dengue, Japanese Encephalitis and the strangely named Chikungunya.

We had our Typhoid and Hepatitis A boosters which will protect us from Typhoid for another three years and we’re now vaccinated against Hepatitis A for life.  There are no vaccinations available for Dengue and Chikungunya, while Japanese Encephalitis is very expensive and we haven’t got time to take the whole course.  Basically, we've spent the past four years in places with these diseases and will just have to keep trying to avoid mosquito bites.

We had a long discussion about Malaria and we've decided not to take any preventative medicines because we’ll be in malaria-ridden countries for the next three or four years and there are some unpleasant side effects with almost all of the drugs.  Instead, our strategy is to carry four self-test kits for malaria and four courses of Malarone tablets, which is a treatment we can take if we test positive for Malaria.

The doctor was insistent on telling us the full horrors of Rabies.  We’d been vaguely aware of Rabies and have been keeping away from dogs and wild mammals, but I hadn't realised that if you contract Rabies and don't get the correct medical attention quickly, then death is almost inevitable.  I found these interesting facts on the Internet:

99% of infections from Rabies are caused by dogs.  Early symptoms of Rabies can include fever and tingling at the site of exposure.   These symptoms are followed by one or more of the following symptoms: violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, fear of water, an inability to move parts of the body, confusion, and loss of consciousness.  

From the wound, the virus travels quickly along the neural pathways into the central nervous system eventually reaching the brain.  After the brain is infected, the virus eventually migrates to the salivary glands, where it is ready to be transmitted to the next host.

Once symptoms appear it nearly always results in death, usually within two weeks.  The time period between contracting the disease and the start of symptoms is usually one to three months; however, this time period can vary from less than one week to more than one year.  The time is dependent on the distance the virus must travel to reach the central nervous system.

There is a vaccine for Rabies which involves three injections over a 28 day period, so we don’t have time to take those injections.  In any case, the vaccine isn’t a cure for Rabies; it just gives you a little more time to get to medical aid and means that you only have to have two injections if you get bitten instead of five without the vaccine.  

We've decided to be very cautious about dogs in Indonesia and we might get the Rabies injections when we get to Malaysia (before we start travelling inland).  In the meantime, if we get bitten, the advice is to clean the wound with soap and water for fifteen minutes to remove as much of the rabies virus from the wound as possible and then douse it Povidone Iodine or ethanol which kills the rabies virus.  Then we have to get to the best hospital in the area within 24 hours…

In the evening, we cycled around to Norsand Boatyard and had a barbeque with our friends Paul and Monique from “Full Circle”.  They're also travelling to Vanuatu and have been raising money to take aid up to the islands.  We’re going to keep in touch and we might be taking some of their aid up to Vanuatu as well as all the stuff that we’re starting to accumulate.