You know I always write behind. I like ideas to foment and percolate for a bit before I put electrons to a screen. And now, for me this is hard. I don’t know why. I feel like a man without a country. While I understand day to day existence in the US for most of my friends has not changed much, the feel we get from international news and US news is that the US is no longer the land of Lady Liberty. That and the two hurricanes: Harvey having already laid waste a large portion of Tx and Irma rearranging many places we’ve been and creating damage and havoc to the people we love and care about. My feelings are best described in another post written by a fellow cruiser who has followed us across the Pacific and is now in Australia (Escape Velocity).
As a child I was never effected by the cold. Skiing, tobogganing, hiking, hunting, etc all provided adventures during the winter months. As an FYI, in NZ it is winter now. And while boat work continues this is not an adventure.
Simon is our painter. He’s been doing an excellent job but I do find some things don’t go as I foresaw them. In the end those may well be to our benefit as he is the expert and I a lay person. He and his crew removed all the paint from the deck. He removed much of the hardware from the deck. YUCK! Some primer remained and then he re-primed everything and sanded. We had a mis-communication which may result in our new non skid not looking the way I envisioned. We’ll see. W/ and I now have a new process to deal with contractors. W/ will take notes. I will send the key points to the contract check to ensure they are in the contract. In the end, nothing effects the integrity
of the paint or the work. It is only an esthetic change and most likely I will be the only one noticing. But; when you pay a bucket of $$’s to a contractor you want it done right first and if possible your way second.
We’ve ordered new LifPo Lithium batteries for the boat. I do hope they will be delivered this month. BJ on Evenstar has a thorough discussion on them. Along with that we’ve contracted for an arch on the stern. Here we will add solar which will free us up from needing to run the generator day and night in the tropics. When helping Quixotic with their refrigeration I was able to secure a larger holding plate for the freezer. I hope I can get 24 hour hold over but will be satisfied with 18. We will have two of the largest hold over plates Seafrost makes in the freezer. In the cooler waters of NZ I expect we will get 24 hours. In the tropics we’ll see.
We’ve contracted with Calibre Sails to repair our sails and make a new main. Dave looked them over and felt the Yankee Jib and staysail just needed some repairs, a new Sun Cover a couple of patches and stitching replaced. We did order a new Tanbark main sail. It will be flatter, have full battens, a loose foot, and hollow roach as well as being a 40 cm shorter in the foot. To do this we’ll cut the main boom down. This will protect my head as well assist in balancing and driving the boat better. Besides a sail maker Dave is also a sailor. He built new sails for Serge and JoAnn on Spirare. Serge is a pickier sailor than I am so with his recommendation at this point we are quite satisfied. And too, remember we tore up our mainsail track coming down here. We have the replacement track and after painting the mast will install it.
All of this work is occurring while we are off the boat. W/ has been great finding house sits for us using Kiwi House Sitters. We’ve had 4 sits so far and I doubt we’ll do more. We plan on moving back aboard in 2 weeks. We’ve cleaned and inspected the rigging of Elysium. We’ve painted the spreaders. We sewed about 2/3’s of the new dodger. Here I screwed up and didn’t order enough fabric from the states. None was available in NZ. Now we wait while I order and have shipped some more. However, it is all coming together and I am looking forward to getting back on a bed that rocks me to sleep.
While much of this is going on we’ve worked hard on getting fit. We’re members of Anytime Fitness; one of the best gyms we’ve been associated with… ever. There are 2 caveats: 1) I miss the Nautilus machines and 2) having all the weights measured in kg makes fine adjustments especially for W/ difficult. As we get stronger we’re to increase the weights 5% but often the 10 kg or 22 lb’s is way more than the 5% increase needed.
We’ve worked in a comfortable tennis schedule too. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. For the most part our games are back on track and the play for W/ is excellent. She fits right in the middle of the play and it provides her a lot of opportunity to grow and learn. I’m hoping in the next couple of weeks to join a mens group having been playing mixed doubles. Finally I’m about 100 % healthy, and slowly losing weight.
I was up to 230 lbs once back in the states and that SCARED THE HELL out of me. Currently I’m at 205 and still want to loose 10 more lbs. I think 195 will work fine. 🙂 Just think how much faster the boat will be with all that weight gone. 🙂
Go Slow
Sail Far
Stay Long