Wellington

Weather here in New Zealand, was hot if you can believe it, and the Capital turned on the sunshine.

I caught the ferry down to the top of the South Island.

And we chartered a Carpenter 29 which is very similar to an H28

Then we used the walker Bay to check out the beach.

Did some fantastic sailing in Queen Charlotte Sounds but the fishing was terrible.Caught one lone Dogfish.

Sydney Harbour Sailing

Stopped off in Sydney for a few hours and tasted the salt down under

Perfect day for Sailing and many boats were out making the most of it.

Of course, if you have to go to work instead, there are options.

Firehose and tangs

An order came in this week from Bud Taplan in California. He was a Westsail supervisor when my boat was being built back in 1974 and he sent me a CD with hundreds of Westsail documents and pictures. Also I needed some Teflon washers to stop the rudder from banging up and down while at anchor and brass nuts for the pintels on my rudder while the tangs from my boomkin were rusted significantly.

All of it arrived in less than 3 days courtesy of the US postal service. Nice! I also ordered some Bebi lights from Fiji for my tricolor and Anchor light. Spoke to Kasa on the phone in Suva about them and they should be here in a couple of weeks. I also bought 68 Dremel metal cutting disks from Home Depot today for cutting my bronze thru-hulls. Brought them home and tried cutting some steel and was disappointed with the results. I need to go back to the drawing board and perhaps look at a much bigger disk. Lastly I was gifted some old fire hose during the week.

This will be cut up and placed around the ropes on deck for chafe protection.

Another Westsail

I went this past weekend to view another Westsail. It was interesting looking at the differences. For instance it has these polycarbonate doors on the companionway that look really neat.

And now I know what a real dynaplate should look like. Mine are corroded away. These little babies for your SSB are $600 a pop!

Take a look closely at this next photo of the chainplate in the top left side. You can just see a crack in it. Now I know what to look for on mine.

Why you need a good camera

Imagine my horror when I was going through the 200 odd photos I had taken of the boat and came across this one of the top of the mast.

Look closely at the clevis pin holding the back-stay in place. Notice that there is a cotter pin or split ring missing from the pin. That means that the mast is being held up by a prayer. The topping lift is helping but the main sheet is quite loose and wouldn't be enough to hold the mast. Because the bowsprit is broken and there is no fore-stay attached to the bow, I tied the main halyard to the stanchions. I am running out of options because the spinnaker sheet is missing too. I will need to tighten down the main sheet and swap the main halyard to the boomkin.

Meet some Kiwis

Just before I left the marina to come home, I ran into some Kiwis. They were a family of 5, with Mum, Dad and 3 daughters, taking 2 boats back to NZ. They said I was the first Kiwi they had met in a year of cruising. They were busy outfitting their boats to head off to the coconut milk run.

Sailor's exchange

Took a drive, Friday afternoon to a second hand marine store 20 minutes away in St Augustine called Sailor's Exchange. Talk about a HUGE, fantastic place to buy sailing stuff. They had loads of stainless steel there for a fraction of the price of new pipe. I bought a Rule 1500 gpm bilge pump there for $15. They had it marked for $20 but when I went to pay for it, the guy only charged me $15. I will definitely be going back.