Hard Times in New Zealand

The day I have dreaded for weeks has almost arrived.  Tomorrow at 1:00 in the afternoon we’re pulling Evenstar for a week and putting her on stands on the hard. Hopefully no more than a week.

We’re doing this for a few reasons, but mostly because we are getting the bottom re-painted and you can’t do that in the water. But we’re also replacing the chain, as the brand new chain we bought in 2012 is inexplicably rusting out and metal is coming off it in chunks.

What I am really dreading, though, is the time on the hard.

The Bad News on the Car

Via our Facebook page a couple of weeks ago we told people about our car being stolen. It was parked near the marina in Opua, New Zealand. We’d left Opua for a while and were anchored a few miles down the bay in Russell. I got a call from the Opua Cruising Club that the police were looking for me about my car.  Uh-oh.

How the Kawakawa police found our car

As it turns out, someone had stolen our mini van. Then used it to break into a Honda dealership and steal a motor bike, which they jammed into the back of our car for the getaway. Somewhere out on a gravel road then drove our car off the road, and into a ditch while hitting a tree.

New Zealand is lovely, but it’s not an easy place to get around with if you don’t have a car. We were deciding what to do with the car anyway when we went South, as cruising in a boat and a car is a bit of a nuisance. We’d figured to sell the car at some point, and had just put new tires on it. Now the problem is settled for us for the most part, since it looks like the cost to put the car on the road is unlikely to be recouped if we sold it later. We can rent a car when we need to, later.

Which brings us back to hauling the boat.

Living on the Hard

The last time we hauled the boat here in NZ it was on the hard for almost two months as various projects were done.  We had a car, and we rented a house out in a town called Kaikohe. We took the time to do some car touring and camping, and put a lot of Kilometers on the car driving from Kaikohe to the boat in Opua.

This time, we hopefully will be out of the water no more than four nights. We are planning to stay on the boat for this time.

The marina has bathrooms and showers, an outdoor grill and a kitchen with a microwave.

Our problem is on board we have so many systems that rely on being in the water. Our toilets bring in seawater to flush, though it can be done with fresh water there is no way to get them emptied or pumped out either. The refrigeration is cooled by seawater. So we have to turn off the fridge and freezer and empty them. We do not have any “Chilly Bins” (the Kiwi word for “cooler”). They are quite expensive to buy and impractical to own on a boat. All of the sinks drain straight out into the water. Now they will drain into the parking lot. The generator is sea water-cooled; we will have no way to charge batteries if we can’t plug in to shore.

And I’m in no way sure that we’ll be able to plug the boat in anywhere to keep the lights and computers on. Or the internet…

Practically speaking, we will have a difficult time washing things, cooking, eating, and storing perishable food on board. Using the restroom will involve climbing up and down a sixteen foot ladder.

In the Opua marina area there is one place that serves dinner – the Opua Cruising Club, and one Cafe that serves lunches and breakfast. Depending on the time of year, the club isn’t open every night. There is a little, rather expensive store with some basic supplies that also has some hot “savouries” (pies, sausage rolls, etc.) and pizzas some nights. Without a car that is all that is in reach.

To stay off the boat, we’d need to rent a car. To eat…we may have to rent a car.

But with the requirement to rent a car combined with the need to eat off the boat…all of a sudden adding another $100+ a night for a motel (on top of the $50/night to store the boat on land) and this exercise is costing $3-400 a day to happen. So we decided to tough it out and stay on the boat to save a few hundred bucks.

Since they spray the bottom paint on here, there is likely one or two days where we want to be nowhere near the boat, either. So we go touring or shopping.

It will be kind of like camping, if you couldn’t cook or wash and had to climb a small cliff to pee. They beds will still be comfy though.

To Do List

As always, there’s a to-do list. The first step is getting the boat ready to haul. We have to lower the wind generator and prepare the backstay for detachment so the travel-lift can pick up the boat. Take the engine off the dinghy so it can be pulled separately. Fill the water tanks and empty the heads.

The big project for the yard is painting the bottom, cleaning up the sides, and refreshing the Propspeed on the propeller. Propspeed is a coating designed to minimize growth on underwater “running gear” – propellers, shafts, and the like.

Our main project is the new anchor rode. This is a 100 meter (~330 foot) lenght of 12mm chain. Our old chain was sized in standard Engilsh sizing (7/16”) because we replaced it in the states. The original chain was 12mm, and we have secured the original hardware for this new link size.

100 meters of 12mm galvanized chain is heavy – 3.3 Kg per meter.  Over seven hundred pounds. And we have to get rid of a 300’ length of rusty 7/16” chain. The process is pretty simple.

1. Lower the old anchor and chain to the ground with the windlass.
2. Remove the old chain
3. Service the Windlass (clean, lubricate, etc.)
4. Replace the 7/16” “gypsy” with the original 12mm gypsy. This is the cylinder with grooves shaped to hold the specific chain link size.
5. Hoist the end of the new chain about 16 feet in the air though the bow roller
6. At 33’ into the chain, apply chain markers measuring 300’
7. Slowly bring the chain up to the boat
8. Stop every 25’ and apply chain markers. We use “Osculati Chain Rainbows” to mark the chain. They are the only chain markers we put on in 2012 that are mostly still there today. They were the only method that was still reliable after a year.
9. Re-attach the anchor
10. Figure out how to dispose of a 600 pound pile of rusty chain

Chain markers. The markers, and the chain, get grotty pretty fast but they don’t fall out.

Along with the chain, we have a few other things to do. We’ll be replacing all the sacrificial zincs, and cleaning off the dinghy bottom. And just doing spot checks on everything under the water to make sure it’s all good.

The chain choice involved a fair amount of research. In 2012 we went with what was regarded as the de facto standard for top quality anchor chain in the U.S. at the time. We were shocked when it started to rust a year later, and when chunks started falling off it. Being in New Zealand, a metric country, 7/16″ isn’t easy to come by. We’d had problems with our original 12mm gypsy in the states with the 7/16″ chain and had to replace it. We didn’t think we’d be buying new chain for at least another decade, so we dropped the old gypsy off at Marine Consignment of Wickford to sell.

And here is where they earn a HUGE shout-out. In the months leading up to our departure I was over at Marine Consignment of Wickford weekly dropping off carloads of stuff we wouldn’t use or didn’t want that was still worth something. Over the following years I’ve been in touch with them from time to time and they’ve sent us occasional checks for items sold. It’s how they work, they will hold stuff for years and track your credit, it’s better than some of the dodgy home goods consignment stores we dealt with that want to claim your stuff if they don’t sell it fast.

A couple of weeks ago I called them in a panic; a new 12mm gypsy looked like it would cost something like $900 or more. So I decided to check and see if they had sold my old gypsy. With one phone call and about five minutes, they were able to find the gypsy and tell me it was still available. And they owed me more money. I sent them a NZ address, and they mailed it out the next day along with a check for my sold items less the cost of shipping the gypsy. So it cost me about $48 to get my old gypsy back, and I ended up net positive since they sent me a nice check to boot. I can’t say enough good things about dealing with these folks. They have a wildly eclectic mix of old and useful boat stuff in their inventory and I’ve found a few things there I couldn’t get elsewhere too.

In the middle of this work, we also have to get passport pictures taken and apply for our visa extensions.

It’s going to be a busy week.