Author: richwest3

May 7, 2013 in Tauranga, New Zealand

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

May 7, 2013 – Tauranga, New Zealand

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

April 30 – May 6, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

May 3, 2013

We haul Legacy out of the water annually to do maintenance, repairs and add another coat of bottom paint. We used to stay on the boat, but now we treat ourselves to a hotel. It’s so much nicer when you can work during the day and come back to a warm (or cool depending on the season) clean room, take a long shower, and collapse in bed for a night of TV.

The big project for this year’s haulout was fixing the rudder shaft. Plus we were, once again, looking at peeling paint on our keel. Whenever we haul out the boat, we always have big patches of paint gone on our keel, no matter what measures we take to prevent it. Our yard owner, Bruce, took one look and said we had too much zinc. He brought over the “sparky” (the electrician) who agreed we definitely had too much zinc. We’d never heard of such a thing and wondered why none of the yards in America had suggested this as it seemed completely obvious to everyone in New Zealand. They recommended something called the Maddox system, a special alloy used instead of zinc. It’s made in Australia and lasts about a year instead of the three months we get from zinc.

(Note from the Rich who lives in the future – 2014; We put the Maddox anodes on then, and replaced them a year later. We’re thrilled with how well it works. I don’t know why we’ve never heard of this before. New Zealand is a good ways ahead of the US when it comes to some things boat related.)

Here’s a link to the Maddox manufacturer’s website.

In all, the haulout went great. Everyone was so helpful and had that magical combination of knowledge, creativity, and skill that can create solutions to puzzling problems. Best yet, the prices were more than fair. The yard at the Tauranga Bridge Marina has definitely become our go-to boatyard.–Cyndi