Yesterday, we pried ourselves out of the comfort, beauty and protection of Port Arthur for the twenty mile trip around Cape Raoul to Nubeena. Here’s what we left…
Ladies Bay in Port Arthur
Cape Raoul is famous for it’s scenery and it didn’t disappoint (though our camera was a little disappointing – even with Photoshop, these pictures don’t do it justice).
The ship “escorting” us around the cape is the Lady Nelson. That was quite a sight as she passed close by our port side.
It was a little tough to anchor in our new home here near the town of Nubeena. As is often the case, moorings take up a good bit of the prime anchoring area. We fixed them though. We anchored right in the middle of the bay! Here’s a picture from our boat of the big city. -Rich
Jellyfish are of special interest to us here in Australia, a land where it seems everything’ll kill ya. Our first year here, we asked about box jellies and were told by the officials checking us into the country “That’s not what you need to worry about mate. You gotta look out for the Irukandjies!” We learned that they’re about the size of your thumbnail and just might kill you. “And oh yea, look out for the blue bottles and the man o’ wars also.” (OK, I guess the blue bottle and man 0′ war are the same animal but I didn’t know that before I got this app!)
That’s one of the reasons my ears perked up when I heard about The Jellyfish App (Android and iTunes stores). I installed it and I’m impressed, (and a little dismayed).
The app will tell you what might be in your area and all about the creatures, especially how stingy there are.
It even gives you alerts – warnings of what might be in your neighborhood.
The Jellyfish App – Alerts
Above, you can see why I said I was a little dismayed. We thought down here we were south of all the nasty stuff. Nope. Blue Bottles! Yipes! Oh well. It’s not like we were going to go in the water here – the water’s way too cold!
Nice app – very well done. So far, I’ve found everything I’ve looked for in the ID guide. If you don’t, there’s even a feature to send a photo to a marine biologist who’ll help you with the ID.
We often (usually) see jellyfish in the areas in the tropics where we swim, snorkel and dive. It’s nice to see just how much pain we’re letting ourselves in for. -Rich
We didn’t go to Hobart by boat so we could avoid the wooden boat show crowds. We went instead by bus from Port Arthur. We’d heard that the crowds started to thin out immediately after the show closed. We thought we’d give it a week or so, and then sail to Hobart.
What we didn’t count on is that we are directly in the path of the exodus of the hoards!
Boats with AIS heading this way.
Even our little, quiet bay has turned a bit crowded. Not too bad, but still, we’re used to having it to ourselves.
Legacy is the furthest north little purple square.
And that’s just the boats with AIS. As an example, our little bay (Ladies Bay) shows only us here on AIS. There are, in fact, six boats here including Legacy. If we apply that same ratio to the bigger bay just outside of where we’re anchored, there might be as many as 30 boats passing through. And one of them is this…
The Golden Princess anchored right outside our bay.
The Golden Princess carries up to 2600 passengers and 1100 crew. We assume they’re visiting the landmark, hostorical penitentiary in the next bay over. We’re glad we went last week!
Every two years, the Australian Wooden Boat Festival hits Hobart. We’d hoped to be in Hobart in time for the show but the cursing wonder and beauty of Tasmania got in the way. Plan B: take the bus from Port Arthur. That’s what we did. And here’s what we saw…
It was a pretty amazing show with lots of boats (and lots and lots of people in attendance). Besides boats, there was food, grog and boat gear. What more could we want?
From the bottom left corner and around the table clockwise: Cyndi and Rich from Legacy, Don and Deb from Buena Vista, Louise and Ivan from Brio and Adam and Cindi from Bravo.
We also had a wonderful cruising family reunion. We’d met all these people in the Tropical Pacific in our first few years of cruising. We all kind of keep tabs on each other via blogs, facebook or YIT.com.nz. We were all in the neighborhood and the boat show made the perfect rendezvous. It was so good to catch up with these great people! -Rich
One of the things people tell us they like about twoatsea.com is our honesty. We’re not afraid to complain about the hardships and discomforts we encounter. We do that hoping that it will help others avoid the negatives we encounter. Also, it just feels good to complain sometimes!
It’s not all a box of fluffy bunnies out here. For example, we carry a stack of bibles so that, at least once during every passage, I can swear on them that I’ll never do another passage again. (And after every passage, I forget about my holy promise and we do it all over again!)
One of the biggest hardships for me (Rich) is the broken stuff. It’s not so much a physical discomfort, like passages, but rather a psychological drain. This year the list is pretty short but what’s on it is troubling. Here’s what’s very un-fluffy-bunny-like right now on Legacy.
Raw Water Pump
The troublesome Johnson pump on our Yanmar engine.
Our Yanmar 3YM30 engine has a Johnson sea water pump that’s always been marginal. A couple of months ago, it got some air in it and wouldn’t self-prime any longer. I thought I knew the cause – the cover plate was badly scored by a little over 4,000 hours of use. I believed that this would allow water to escape around the sides of the impeller blades. I took it off and spent hours sanding it back to perfection. I decided to check the impeller before reassembling. It had nicks on the blades. I checked the inside of the pump and found that compared to this, the scoring on the cover was nothing. There were deep, eroded pits and valleys on the surface that the impeller blades ride on. More sanding and grinding were called for.
After a interlude with my Dremel tool and some more sand paper, I’d done all I could. The damage was too deep to completely remove, but I reassembled the pump and hoped for the best.
Nope. The pump still won’t self prime. After it gets air in it (and it will if the seas are rough enough), it quits pumping. Luckily, before the engine overheats or the exhaust system melts, the engine gets a throaty, muscle car sound. When I hear that, I turn off the engine, disconnect the hose clamp on the pump, and suck the air (and at least a few mouthfuls of salt water) out of the pump before we’re good to go for another day or three.
Needless to say, the pump needs replacing. I called the $Yanmar$ dealer in Hobart (where we hope to be in a week or so) and inquired about cost and availability of a new pump. They could have one overnight and for just twelve hundred bucks! Ouch. This is especially painful considering pumps online in the US are $360 or so.
OK, I’ll order one from the states and have it shipped to me.
Wait. Since the lovely people at Yanmar have what I consider a price fixing, protectionist scheme in place, I can’t have a pump from the online dealers shipped to our mailing address in Florida as it’s out of their territory. To get one, I’ll have to have it shipped to a friend in North Carolina or Colorado and impose on them to forward it to me. Thanks Yanmar!!! That’s what I might do, or I might look for a better pump by another manufacturer and adapt it to fit our $Yanmar$. We’ll see.
Depth Sounder
The above image shows what our depth reading looks like most of the time recently. I think our depth transducer is going bad. It doesn’t want to read over about 30 feet. “No problem, I only care about it in shallow water” I tell myself. But now it quits reading when we get too shallow as well – 12 feet or less. I’ve tried all the diagnostics I can think of and even updated the transducer’s firmware (what a crazy world when even the depth transducer runs on software!).
In the colder climate here the left arrow button on our Simrad chartplotter stops working (a real problem if you want to change the autopilot’s course to port). After it’s been on a while and warms up, it’ll work again. Maybe it’s the cold water that’s causing the problem with the depth transducer? Whatever the cause, that’s another thing we’ll have to replace in Hobart. Anchoring by feel is hard on the keel.
Other Stuff
There are other things that are eating at me a bit. Our instrumentation has a few other glitches like sudden, infrequent and random disengagements of the autopilot.
The alarm we see when our autopilot suddenly disengages. Exciting!
And strange, noise spikes that set off our radar guard zone.
We thought after exchanging our radar dome three times, we’d had this problem licked but it’s back. Oh joy!
There are other minor issues as well. Here’s some of our current to-do list…
To do
fix barbecue hinges – we ripped them off in a not-so-graceful departure from the wharf in St. Helens a few weeks ago.
Add air drain valve on engine water filter
New raw water pump
Outside chart plotter – fix button
New engine door hinges
Rebuild engine oil pressure regulator
Outboard service
Broken manual bilge pump bracket
Replace some HF antenna standoffs
Mainsail repair – two small tears
Check traveler – why’s it so hard to move?
Defrost fridge
Simrad autopilot error
Simrad radar noise
Wax red stripe on hull
Wax and clean hull stains
Lube steering pedistal
New shift cable
Order new battery for computer
Rebuild small cockpit winches (did the large ones – ha!)
Install New high bilge water alarm
Secure companionway
New toilet seat
Move gybe easy aft
New cockpit speakers maybe
Carpet steps
Clean clears
Cockpit rust stains
Replace cockpit harness bolt
New Seagull filter hoses
non-return on galley hot water
Check Spinnaker pole
Lube bow rollers
Add anchor wash down pump
……….. Someday ………..
hf radio noise issue
Heater fan control relay
Or Heater fan thermostat
Deck chip on port by cockpit
Epoxy overboard pole
new wikipedia download
Back up for weather computer
Autopilot pump connectors
Better battery hold downs
Add Main furler drum bearings
Bonding wire to arch
Glue old faucet holes
Chips on bow
Seal bottom of rudder sensor
Granted, some of these items are just maintenance, but it all weighs on me.
See? This cruising life isn’t all a box of fluffy bunnies! -Rich
