Category: Uncategorized

First Aborted Trip?

December 23, 2021

How are you all doing?

Here are some pictures of New Zealand’s Christmas tree, the pōhutukawa, from our recent aborted trip due to mechanical issues (and only aborted trip in the 20 years we’ve owned Legacy, if memory serves).

Legacy floating behind this beautiful pohutukawa tree at Waiheke Island.
They are called New Zealand’s Christmas tree because they bloom each year in November or December.
We’ve heard that every other year is a bigger bloom and this year is a doozy.
We didn’t get back to the marina until about 11 PM. Even that had its perks. (The Skytower is lit up in red for our current Covid-19 traffic light system. We’re hoping for orange in a couple of weeks – though that won’t make much difference to us as we don’t usually go to large gatherings.) BTW – photo by Cyndi!

How are we doing? Not so great (but not that bad either, really). We got a few days free and left Monday to go out to the Hauraki Gulf until Boxing Day (the day after Christmas when the crowds out on the water really get bad – and stay bad until early February). In addition to the six gallons of fuel we had, I added 20 gallons to the tank from jugs before we left. By the time I checked the fuel gauge at Waiheke Island, about 3 hours away from our berth, we were down to 5 gallons in the tank. Huh?!?! WTF?!?!

We opened the bilge cover and found the missing 20 gallons of fuel! I looked at the engine while it was running as I was sure it was our problematic engine fuel filter but I found no leaks. There were no leaks from the engine at all. Must be the tank, right?

We headed back to our berth Monday night. The next day, I transferred what fuel was left to our bladder tank and filled the fuel tank with water and fluorecein dye (a bright green dye that is really easy to spot even in low concentrations). After six hours, there was no green tint to the bilge water (which we’d cleaned the diesel out of already – yuk). Must not be the tank, right? Oh well, it’s an engine leak I didn’t spot.

I cleaned out the tank and transferred the fuel back from the bladder tank. The next morning, we found five gallons of fuel in the bilge. OK, it must be the tank! (Cyndi was not happy when I told her we needed to clean the fuel out of the bilge, AGAIN!)

Yesterday, we pulled the tank out and while it could have been worse, it wasn’t fun getting the tank out. There were a couple of paper labels on the bottom of the tank that had probably been wet with salt water for Legacy’s entire 30 years. Under those labels were small corrosion holes into the tank.

So here we sit, with the tank out and probably no way to get it welded until mid-January. Things really close down for the holidays here. Oh well. I’ll add pictures and updates as the repair progresses. -Rich

Curved AIS Position Projections?

December 14, 2021

When we were last out, I saw something strange on our Simrad NSS9 EVO3 chartplotter – a curved projection line…

Notice the curved AIS course projection line in the upper right quadrant of the screenshot?

The projection line is set to show the vessel’s projected position in 30 minutes at it’s present course and speed. I’ve never seen a curved line before. Feature? Bug? Any ideas anyone?

Rich

Update:

steved replied on cruisersforum.com with the following:

Rate Of Turn (ROT), usually expressed as degrees per minute. (in this case a minute being a minute of time, not a minute of angle !)

AIS Class A vessels (aka big ships), include a ROT value in their AIS transmissions. In this example, the ship is obviously turning and thus the projected course appears as a curve.

Road Trip Part 11: Mokau (North Island, New Zealand)

March 08, 2014

We headed north from New Plymouth towards a small coastal town called Mokau. Mokau is best known for its river, or more specifically the fishing and whitebaiting that draw visitors here.

In general, the term whitebait refers to juvenile fish of various species that travel along coasts and into river estuaries worldwide. Once in a river, they can be caught with nets, which is known as whitebaiting.

To protect dwindling fish populations in New Zealand, whitebaiting is seasonal, the period being about 3 months. They can be frozen, but the best way to have whitebait is fresh. Since New Zealand happens to have a particularly delicious species of whitebait and a short season for procuring them, they are considered a delicacy.

Whitebait are very small; so the entire fish is eaten, usually stirred into scrambled eggs or made into an egg-based fritter to be sold at roadside stands . They sometimes appear on menus of restaurants specializing in seafood, too. It’s been awhile since I’ve had whitebait, but I do remember it was delicious and thinking the flavor reminded me a bit of lobster.

(Note: As I write this post, we’re in lockdown in Auckland, but as soon as we come out I’ll go to a restaurant that serves whitebait and update my impression of it.)

As we approached Mokau, our coastal road went somewhat inland and dipped down to a low bridge over the wide Mokau River before angling back up to the town. The scenery was striking with light colored cliffs, native bush, and large flat rocks near the mouth of the estuary. Just outside this area was a huge rock monolith that looked like an elephant, aptly named Elephant Rock.

We made a stop at the Whitebait Inn, famous for its whitebait fritters. Unfortunately we were still full from breakfast and opted to just get coffee. I regret this now—it would have been better to have one of their fritters just to taste it even if it meant having to discard most of it. But not wasting food is so ingrained, both primally and culturally, that it’s easier said than done. I usually make myself feel better about this sort of thing by sharing my food with whatever birds are around, but this isn’t always appreciated by the locals.

So coffee in hand, we got back on the road and headed towards the glow worm caves at Waitomo. –Cyndi

Things We Miss

November 15, 2021

There is a lot about land-life that we miss:

Infinitely long hot showers
Flushing toilets (with just the push of a lever)
Space to keep stuff
Space to cook stuff
Bath tubs
A dishwasher
Our own washer and dryer
a big-screen TV
And more.

But the one that’s been weighing on me a bit lately is that we can’t really have pets with our lifestyle.

One of our Dog Gaughters – Zia from Windfola.

We’ve been lucky enough to get to know a couple of dogs pretty well here in NZ. Above is Zia. She’s sailing with Elana on Windfola. She’s been hanging out a bit on our boat and it’s so good to have her energy aboard.

People do cruise with pets happily but it’s expensive and kind of limiting. It can cost as much as $4,000 or $5,000 to get a pet into New Zealand. There are some countries you can’t enter with a pet at all if you’ve been in certain other countries. There are also horrible quarantine periods in some countries. It can be as bad as trying to travel during a pandemic!

When we stop this cruising nonsense – if we stop this cruising nonsense – there will be dogs and cats in our future. Maybe a goat too! -Rich

P.S. Don’t get the wrong idea. That’s not Zia’s wine glass in the background.

Road Trip Part 10: Final Morning in New Plymouth (Taranaki, North Island, New Zealand)

March 08, 2014

After another great breakfast at the hotel (salmon eggs benedict), it was time head north. But first we wanted to stop by the Customs Office near the harbor and ask if it were possible for a cruising yacht to check into the country here. We’d looked online and hadn’t found a clear answer.

So we headed over to find the customs office, entering a surprisingly large, modern, corporate-style building. In fact I’ve never seen a customs office in a building like this before. We went to the receptionist to ask our questions, and before we knew it she was arranging meetings and offering to make us coffee drinks. We felt a little intimidated in that we didn’t want to make this “a thing;” we just wanted to ask a question! But we accepted the coffee offer and soon someone came out to interview us before leading us to a different office.

We talked to the people there, and they weren’t sure what the current status was, looking into the rules and finding them unclear. This wasn’t something they were doing at that point, but according to their rulebook, maybe they should be . One man said he’d look into it, and when we decided to return to New Zealand, we should call and ask the status. We assured him we would. In all this was almost embarrassingly formal for such a small thing–I’m surprised they didn’t call the prime minister. They were all very nice, but I was just as glad to get out of there before this turned into a board meeting with corporate higher ups.

After our customs visit, we went to get a good look at an iconic New Plymouth sight: Paritutu Rock. This rock monolith marks the SW corner of New Plymouth, with Port Taranaki/New Plymouth on its north side and the beginning rural/wilderness beaches stretching down from its south side. At 500-feet high, this impressive rock is actually a piece of an ancient volcano’s rim, while small islands just offshore are other remnants of this rim. Of course one can climb Paritutu Rock, but we already had enough on our plate for the day and decided to head on.

Below, photos of Paritutu Rock, the view looking out form the lobby of the customs building, our excellent hotel breakfast restaurant, and a few more New Plymouth murals (click on any photo to enlarge).

Our final stop before leaving town lay near the north end of the Coastal Walkway, an 8-mile walk along the waterfront of New Plymouth. This area of the walkway follows a river through an estuary thick with grasses and bushy plants. It’s lovely, but the key thing to see is the Te Rewa Rewa Bridge. Depending on your perspective, the bridge design can represent whale bones, or a breaking wave, or evoke a sense of wind. It’s also meant to honor the spirits of those who have passed and are buried nearby. If you walk across the bridge, you can turn and see Mount Taranaki perfectly framed under the arch of the bridge. Unfortunately it had gotten too cloudy to see the mountain but we did enjoy looking at this masterful piece of art.

In all, the grasslands, river, and bridge evoke a sort of thoughtful, almost wistful feeling, respectful of things which lay beyond the veil, whether it be spirits, God, unresolved sadness, or dreams yet to be born. It’s sort of a strange intersection of past, present, future and something else. It’s hard to put into words, but it’s not a bad feeling and in fact I could imagine enjoying walking here if we lived nearby.

After the bridge, it was time to head north and return to Tauranga via Waitomo, the Disneyworld of glowworm caves. Below, to add some color to this post, I’ll put in some flower photos from Pukekura Park that Rich took with our newly-acquired smartphone. Frankly, it was disconcerting to me at times that the quality of his phone photos sometimes surpassed my camera.