The list is getting short and so is the time. Not only is it getting cold here but our visas expire on June 6th and so it’s a good thing. The few remaining tasks on the to-do list should be done this week and we’ll start looking for the perfect weather to sail to Fiji (or at least marginally acceptable!).
You might notice that we made the list more manageable by creating a “should-do” column. The chances of that stuff getting done are getting more and more remote. Oh well. This is a big improvement over our last list (at the bottom of this post). -Rich
Imagine spending $388 just to have your bills delivered. That’s about what we just did. We get our mail sent to a mail-forwarding service in Florida. They save it all up for us and send it periodically. FedEx on this round cost us $388! Ouch. I’ll never complain about junk mail again if that’s the price of free mail delivery. (OK, it wasn’t just bills that were delivered. We got a few boat parts and some face cream also!) -Rich
We’re back in the water after a very successful yet fairly stressful haul-out. The bottom’s painted, the rudder play is fixed, and a ton of other miscellaneous projects are all done. Now it’s time to provision, fuel up and find a good weather window to get this act on the road to Fiji. -Rich
While we were hauled out, we treated ourselves to a stay at the Trinity Wharf hotel in Tauranga. It’s a nice place right on the water of the inner harbor. Our stay started out well; we liked our room and the water view. Unfortunately they’d taken to using perfumey cleaning products, which meant we had to air out our room upon arriving back after a day in the boatyard. It was fall, the night air was chilly, and after a couple of nights this was getting old. We asked if they could use something unscented, but no, they could not. With that, we decided to move to the Oceanside Resort in Mount Maunganui.
The Oceanside Resort turned out to be a nice place to stay. I wouldn’t say the hotel is special, but they were very nice and the location at the foot of the Mount is terrific. It was nice to take a walk to the beach in the evening, and we enjoyed visiting the nearby Coffee Club for breakfast and watching sheep graze on the Mount.
Above is a gallery of our hotel time. The first two pictures are from the Trinity Wharf, and the rest are from Oceanside Resort and the surrounding area. –Cyndi
May, 2013 while hauled out in Tauranga, New Zealand
One of our major projects while Legacy was hauled out of the water was to fix the excessive play in the rudder. The play caused two problems. The wobble pushed the packing (the material that is supposed to keep water from coming into the boat from around the rudder shaft) away from the rudder shaft. In rough seas, our bilge pump was running thirty times a day! The second issue was the noise. When we turned to port, the rudder would squeal. When we turned to starboard, it would sound like a cow. At the end of a ten day passage, I felt more like a farmer than a sailor.
Rudderless Legacy
The rudder bearing on the Catalina 38 is just a fiberglass tube over the rudder’s stainless steel shaft. After about 40,000 miles (22,000 sailed by us, the rest by the previous owner) the fiberglass tube was badly worn. There isn’t much room for bearings or bushings and it was a tricky fix.
More than up to the job were the guys from Marine Diesel Services. They took a day to think about the issue and came up with a great solution.
Malcom and his great boring tool.
Malcolm designed and built a boring tool for his drill. It had a round guide that would ride in the fiberglass tube to keep the tool centered and cutting blades behind the guide.
Bored out rudder tube.
Above is the result of a few minutes of drilling with Malcolm’s tool. Gordy used the same tool at the top of the rudder tube.
Gordy boring out the top of the rudder tube.
They then made bushings to glue into the bored out tube and the result was a nice, tight rudder with virtually no play.
I’m so glad we found these guys! In general, the boat workers here in New Zealand have been incredible – much better than most I’ve had experience with in the states. We heard a lot about the high cost of boat work here but in my experience, I think it’s comparable to the prices in the US and a better value as the work gets done right and done right the first time. -Rich
