Worth all the while

Only a quick update as the Internet is poor. Ardea is cruising again! Even the fact of lousy overpriced internet is a boon to me as I feel like a free outdoorsman again since leaving the brackish basin of Whangarei. Though the mangrove-lined shores there certainly brought me nostalgia of my swamp-studying days in Panama, little could compare to the majesty of the natural landscapes we've seen in the last three weeks.

First, a trip to the fjord lands of the South Island where Charlie, Dianna and I hiked the Routeburn track and camped among the alpine parrots and massive fruit doves, drank the pure mountain water and soaked in views of high-altitude lakes, snow-capped peaks, and the unique and spectacular flora and fauna of New Zealand.

Then we returned to Ardea, spent a day finishing up projects and provisioning and started a three-days meander to the coast from the long and winding channel that ends at Whangarei Town Basin. We dove for scallops and saw glorious dorid nudibranchs with bright yellow gill-like plumes wafting in the current. I have been no less than mesmerized by the abundance and variety of life in the cold water here. The rocky intertidal and mud flats are the most obvious, but a snorkel and mask reveal the amazing world of kelp forests and the vast plains of the benthos. Molluscs and crustaceans seem to dominate, but much more is there as well. The discarded shells of dead scallops might house dozens of invertebrate species ranging across many phyla. Really, one doesn't have to look too closely to be impressed.

After Dianna set the at-anchor fishing record in pulling up three red snappers at once using a jig rig and some old salted tuna (from a yellow-fin in Mexico... my how the time flies), we headed off to Great Barrier Island, 45 miles offshore. We had a brief stop at Taranga Island for lunch but the holding was poor. We sailed past sundown and anchored in beautiful Katherine Bay.

We spent three or four days there enjoying clear water full of life, fine beaches and views of native scrub and forest along the surrounding hillsides. The weather has been warm amd sunny, the NZ sun still nuclear.

We moved to Port Fitzroy and enjoyed one of my favorite cruiser outings, the waterfall hike. Dianna departed today leaving Chuck and I, and Ardea, of course. We will move to Smokehouse Bay after this foray with the interweb and enjoy an old fish-smoking facility converted to wood-fired bathhouses for the use of passing sailors.  Perhaps there was a consensus at some stage on this Island that we all need a bath (we bathed at the waterfall, though!).

Pictures to come some time.

Cheers,

Connor

Play Time

It has been a pretty solid couple of weeks since I returned to the southern hemisphere. My boat work is complete, or at least to that stage of near-completion that seems never to be surpassed; Xeno's paradox at work. It was as all that boat work is: frustrating, exhausting, invigorating, challenging, rewarding... a roller coaster in many ways. But it went, and Ardea has masts again. The cockpit is strong and supported far better than before. The main mast step has been replaced along with the plank beneath it. I also ended up fabricating an arched piece to support the timbers that hold up the main mast on the interior of the cabin. It is bolted into the bulkhead and, though it eats up a little bit of headroom, it should provide some added support for the deck there where the main mast is stepped.

New support beam. Needs varnish, but it's in.

Main mast step before.

Main step after. Original half-dollar back in. A kiwi
two-dollar coin went under the mizzen, chosen
for it's heron on the tails side.

Re-stepping the masts was a bit more exciting than I would have hoped. As usual, I let it all come down to crunch time. I had the crane coming at 1600 and by 1400 was ready for the masts to go on, except for the wicked mess all over deck and cabin as well as the fact that I couldn't start the engine to move to the crane slip. I had removed the primary fuel filter back when I was demolishing the forward part of the cockpit as it was bolted to the interior. In order to take it off, I had to remove four screws thus detaching the plastic bowl from the upper filter element. I had two hours before the crane was to arrive and thus the big money clock began to tick, but I only could find three of those screws. I tried to jury-rig it but couldn't get a seal. I tried to run the engine with the bleed nut on the secondary filter open to avoid pulling air to the injectors, but no luck after a few minutes eating up whatever fuel was already in the downstream portion of the delivery system. I just couldn't get any fuel pressure. So, with the help of neighboring sailors (more on that later), we pulled Ardea bit by bit to the working slip.

Already in a hectic frame of mind, I was given another stressful curveball when the main mast settled onto its step. The aft lower shrouds wouldn't reach their chainplates. It was such a shame to have that moment of truth fall through. I couldn't believe it, actually. I knew I had increased the thickness of the timber beneath the aluminum mast step, but I had checked the turnbuckle screws and thought I could accommodate it. I realized later that I had replaced Ardea's rigging back in 2011 with the deck compressed, and the new set-up not only had a thicker piece of timber, but had the deck brought back up. Woops.

Cockpit ready for paint. I failed to photograph it
with the step in as things were getting a little hectic
around then.

We shackled the toggles to the chainplates and moved on. The mizzen went in without a hitch. Finally, crane and rigger left, their pockets full, as I sat lamenting my mistake though happy no less to have sticks again. We pulled Ardea back to a normal berth and I set about cleaning and winding down.

The next day, thankfully, I was able to get all of the rigging in without having to use any shackles. Once I tensioned the backstay, the aft lowers reached fine, though there is not a lot of turnbuckle screw left over. I think time helped the problem as well, since the bedding compound wasn't set when the sticks went in, so I gained a little vertical space on having saved bedding the steps until only a few hours before stepping the masts. Now the rig is tuned and looking good. The genoa is back on the furler, the booms are on. And, I've cleaned and cleaned until my space is starting to look liveable again.

I've opted not to sail to Auckland because the weather is bad and it is just too big of a rush and I've been working too much to have the energy to single-hand the coast in the rain. Ardea is back on a pile mooring in Whangarei. I will take the bus down to meet Charlie and Dianna in the morning and we'll crash for a night on Cap's Tres with my Spanish friends before flying to Queenstown for some trekking in the fjord lands. In a week, we'll be back. After a couple of days of finishing up some projects and taking on provisions, we'll take off. On the list are Waiheke Island, Great Barrier Island, Poor Knight's Island, and Doubtless Bay to the North. We'll see how it works out... I'll be back on the cruiser's clock and Chuck and D will soon discover how easy it is to while away the time at a fine anchorage eating fresh snapper and kingfish and scallops. Surely it's those thoughts that keep one motivated on the long days in the yard.

This is the second time on this trip that I have been in a boat yard, the last being in La Paz, BCS, Mexico. Though very different experiences in many ways, they were both wonderful parts of this whole boat-ownership thing. It's tough to be there gutting your vessel and working and bleeding cash, but I have always found wonderful people in the yards, and I owe them a great debt of gratitude. This time around, my endless thanks go to Len, captain of the schooner Mary Harrigan. Len became not only a dear friend, providing a reliable source of moral support, but also lent me a great deal of help. He has a workshop that any tinkering soul would envy just a few minutes up the road from the yard and he saved me countless hours of sanding and hacking by letting me use and teaching me techniques with his planer, router, band-saw, and so on. Len was the founder and owner of a business in the States called Stoney Point Decoys years ago; his skills as a craftsman, which so benefit him as the owner of a classic wooden schooner, were honed first as he hand-carved and painted bird-hunting decoys and later as he designed and built machines for their manufacture. I felt a keen sense of pride as I hand-planed my main-mast support with the very plane with which he built his first wooden duck, in spite of the prevailing opinion that he couldn't possibly succeed with such a business. He saved me a lot of grief and was good company in those tired evenings when beer can't get down the gullet fast enough and sailing stories are all that one wants to hear; when reminiscing is the only seafaring possible as long as the vessel is under the knife.

Len's long-time Kiwi friend, Mark Webbey, is another upstanding character. He is a boat-builder and craftsman by trade and, though he made it clear that he disapproved of plastic boats, it was very nice to have him give my new cockpit design a once-over. Both he and Len gave freely of their off-cuts of hardwood, which is also dearly appreciated by this ever-poorer sailor.

New mizzen support design. I think I'm
the only person that can decipher that.

But there's more. I wallow in the small-worldness and the next-level coincidences that seem to continue to grace the open mind. After a few days in the yard, a boat named Chesapeake pulled in next to me, her port of call none other than Berkeley, California. The first boat from Berkeley I've seen since leaving, and excellent neighbors for my time there. Not long after that, another boat pulled in a few slips over (and this is a small boatyard!). It's name: Chautauqua. I asked, of course, and indeed it is named for the small lake fifty miles or so southwest of Buffalo, New York. The lake that I have visited with my family nearly every year of my life. The place in which my siblings and I, who moved around a fair deal as kids, found a sense of grounding, that continues to be our place of sanctuary. Yes, indeed, these folks were from that small place in the world. They had cruised the oceans on the current Chautauqua, but the first Chautauqua they owned was moored in Bemus Point, the village that my family has called home for generations. It seems so hard to believe...

My short time in Whangarei has been full of positive interactions, of new and wonderful people. I sit now quite happy with the renewed state of my vessel, and though I will continue to work on her, I could not be more excited to be a cruiser again, a vagabond and a wanderer. I am asked often what are my long-term plans and I still don't really know. Cyclone season ends in April along with my visa. I don't know where I'll go, where I'll work, what I'll do. I've got a few leads, though, and I feel quite certain that things will work out just fine.

Just needs a little paint when the sun comes out.

Pretty much done.