But the engine is bad. I'm beginning to feel like we've been very ripped off with the purchase of this boat. Nick told us he was a little worried about it, but the guy we paid to do the engine inspection said there was nothing wrong with it and it was fine. Well after a year and a half of constantly breaking, now it's dead. It kept popping the dipstick out over our Easter trip and filling the bilge with oil, which can't mean much other than it's pretty fucked.
We were hoping to nurse it until Australia, where I have a good friend who's a diesel mechanic who offered to find us a cheap engine and install it for free, because he's a darling. But I guess we haven't really done much with it since Easter, just so much time has passed that we managed to put it out of our minds. We paid a lot for somebody to look at it and then fix it, and that was the end of it. But I guess we just forgot that the engine hadn't really been tested since it had been fixed. We took it out the other day to calibrate the compass and the dipstick popped again, so we had it looked at again - the mechanic basically told us it was fucked. Our only option to nurse it is to stick a hose out the companionway onto the deck from the engine so the oil and vapours don't go in the bilge. Not exactly a viable option offshore in a storm.
We were hoping to nurse it until Australia, where I have a good friend who's a diesel mechanic who offered to find us a cheap engine and install it for free, because he's a darling. But I guess we haven't really done much with it since Easter, just so much time has passed that we managed to put it out of our minds. We paid a lot for somebody to look at it and then fix it, and that was the end of it. But I guess we just forgot that the engine hadn't really been tested since it had been fixed. We took it out the other day to calibrate the compass and the dipstick popped again, so we had it looked at again - the mechanic basically told us it was fucked. Our only option to nurse it is to stick a hose out the companionway onto the deck from the engine so the oil and vapours don't go in the bilge. Not exactly a viable option offshore in a storm.
So we've ordered a new one. It cost about the same as what we estimate 7 months of cruising will cost if we live a little loosely, so that's a big blow. Especially considering we don't have that much saved after all these repairs and maintenance. We're both going to work while we're in Australia, but we can't save too much in 6 months. We just have to take it, and be happy that it broke now and not while we were in the middle of the ocean heading to Fiji - if we'd had to fix it there we would have been in a lot of trouble, aside from the trouble we would have already been in having to get there without an engine.
We've been sorting things and writing our name on things and organizing stuff into stackable boxes so it all has a home. Everything used to have a cupboard it was supposed to go in, now everything has a box in a cupboard. So organised! Except the internal order doesn't seem to make any difference to the external chaos of stuff that hasn't found a place to live yet.
We've been testing out all our cool new sails too - the trysail is awesome, and somebody walked over to see what we were doing from the other side of the marina because its so blindingly bright and conspicuous.
We've masked the deck to paint the trimmings, and it looks awesome covered in blue lines. I kind of want to paint blue lines over it.
The sail is so bright you can even see the reflection of it on the solar vent and on the metal frames around where the dodger is supposed to be in this picture.
Garth has been getting really frustrated with the boat lately - he said we should have just saved up for another year, bought a fancier boat and been done with it. But I'm really glad we didn't - something would have gone wrong with it eventually no matter how pristine it was, and then we wouldn't have known what to do. This way we've had a lot of practice fixing things and maintaining everything, so when we have to do it later on we know exactly what to do. Everything will always break, at least now we're more confident about repairing it, which makes me happy.
We've been sorting things and writing our name on things and organizing stuff into stackable boxes so it all has a home. Everything used to have a cupboard it was supposed to go in, now everything has a box in a cupboard. So organised! Except the internal order doesn't seem to make any difference to the external chaos of stuff that hasn't found a place to live yet.
We've been testing out all our cool new sails too - the trysail is awesome, and somebody walked over to see what we were doing from the other side of the marina because its so blindingly bright and conspicuous.
We've masked the deck to paint the trimmings, and it looks awesome covered in blue lines. I kind of want to paint blue lines over it.
The sail is so bright you can even see the reflection of it on the solar vent and on the metal frames around where the dodger is supposed to be in this picture.
Garth has been getting really frustrated with the boat lately - he said we should have just saved up for another year, bought a fancier boat and been done with it. But I'm really glad we didn't - something would have gone wrong with it eventually no matter how pristine it was, and then we wouldn't have known what to do. This way we've had a lot of practice fixing things and maintaining everything, so when we have to do it later on we know exactly what to do. Everything will always break, at least now we're more confident about repairing it, which makes me happy.
We're almost all ready to go, aside from the engine situation. Almost everything we need is on the boat, thanks to Ian Burgess from Provedoring. I can't believe how helpful he has been - he's organised everything, spent hours and hours sitting down and talking with us about the stuff we need and chasing things up for us. He's running a trade store, so normally deals with big companies - so I don't think we're much to him as far as customers go. But he has spent so much time helping us anyway, just because he's a nice person. All of the little bits and pieces we need for cat 1 are pretty small individually, there's just a lot of them, and he's rounded everything up for us.
When the engine broke he'd found us a new one after just a few phone calls, and they're shipping it down tomorrow. And he knows so many people, his list of diesel mechanics to ring is huge - we wouldn't know where to start looking for somebody in our price range because all the good mechanics at reasonable prices don't have websites and aren't listed online - only the big companies are. So it's safe to say we wouldn't be leaving at all without him, or it would have taken us at least another year to save. Even stupid stuff like masking tape that I'd normally just grab from one of the chain stores, he has for literally half the price. I understand why people drive all the way across town for everything boat related, and if your'e ever in Welllington and need anything boaty I suggest you do the same - they're at 123 Port rd, opposite Seaview Marina. I say that mostly because the only people who will ever read this are people we know, and it would have saved us a lot of time and money if we'd known they were there from the beginning.
Garths dad has been amazing too, probably because he doesn't want us to die. He spent an entire day ringing around trying to find us a good engine and somebody clever to install it, and he did, but we had to sail across the strait to get it. Which we probably would have done if the boat had been more ready - we don't even have grit on the deck yet, and probably won't for a few more days. I keep slipping over on it in the sunshine while we're docked, so we definitely can't take it anywhere until it's been painted. That might say more about my clumsiness than about the boat though. The inside of it is definitely trashed, and it's going to take us a few days to fix before we can sail anywhere.
This is the walkway to the forward berth.
This is the walkway to the forward berth.
We've got a few new toys as well, namely this guy who Garth can't wait to hook up and play with.
And we've got 1000 of these to play with too, which are pretty cool. Now I can just hand them out instead of searching for a bit of paper to write down my email or boat name or whatever. The cool thing is that if somebody is trying to find us at a marina or somewhere, they have the name and picture of the boat as well as our names, which makes us easier to find. Except all boat accessories are now bright orange instead of navy blue, which really stands out from a mile away and will make us very attractive to pirates because we glow. Hooray.
We had the compass calibrated the other day (when the engine killed itself), and there's no deviation which is good - that means nothing is interfering with our compass and it reads accurately. We had to take the boat out into the harbour to do it, and I managed to fall in the water when we were docking. That was special. It was really windy, which wasn't helping us dock. We have a rope set up as a spring, so when we come in I jump off, grab the spring, and hook the loop of it over the winch. Done. The boat can't go anywhere or hit anything once that is on, and we've got time to put all the other lines on slowly. I jumped off, grabbed the spring, and reached to hook it over. The boat was being blown away, quickly, and in the course of a few seconds I thought "Oh shit, where is he going," as I was reaching to hook the loop over. I must have forgotten I was standing on a dock... somehow... and instead of throwing the line to the compass guy like a normal person, I kept reaching and fell in the water. I grabbed the side of the boat, hooking my arms over the lifelines and lifting my feet onto the toerail. So I kind of hung there for a while half off the boat, wet and embarrassed, while they pulled the boat closer to the dock. And then for a while longer, while they hooked the line on. And then for a little bit more, while they got the boat close enough to the dock for me to get off. So that wasn't ideal, and I have a giant bruise on my arm - I think it's the biggest bruise I've ever managed to get. Also my sneakers are still wet, 3 days later. I suppose I was bound to fall in eventually, I just hope I manage to not do it again. It's a bit awkward when you've just spent half an hour with somebody talking about how you're going overseas on a boat, and then you're too retarded to even manage to dock the damn thing. He probably thinks we're going to die.
xxx Monique
And we've got 1000 of these to play with too, which are pretty cool. Now I can just hand them out instead of searching for a bit of paper to write down my email or boat name or whatever. The cool thing is that if somebody is trying to find us at a marina or somewhere, they have the name and picture of the boat as well as our names, which makes us easier to find. Except all boat accessories are now bright orange instead of navy blue, which really stands out from a mile away and will make us very attractive to pirates because we glow. Hooray.
We had the compass calibrated the other day (when the engine killed itself), and there's no deviation which is good - that means nothing is interfering with our compass and it reads accurately. We had to take the boat out into the harbour to do it, and I managed to fall in the water when we were docking. That was special. It was really windy, which wasn't helping us dock. We have a rope set up as a spring, so when we come in I jump off, grab the spring, and hook the loop of it over the winch. Done. The boat can't go anywhere or hit anything once that is on, and we've got time to put all the other lines on slowly. I jumped off, grabbed the spring, and reached to hook it over. The boat was being blown away, quickly, and in the course of a few seconds I thought "Oh shit, where is he going," as I was reaching to hook the loop over. I must have forgotten I was standing on a dock... somehow... and instead of throwing the line to the compass guy like a normal person, I kept reaching and fell in the water. I grabbed the side of the boat, hooking my arms over the lifelines and lifting my feet onto the toerail. So I kind of hung there for a while half off the boat, wet and embarrassed, while they pulled the boat closer to the dock. And then for a while longer, while they hooked the line on. And then for a little bit more, while they got the boat close enough to the dock for me to get off. So that wasn't ideal, and I have a giant bruise on my arm - I think it's the biggest bruise I've ever managed to get. Also my sneakers are still wet, 3 days later. I suppose I was bound to fall in eventually, I just hope I manage to not do it again. It's a bit awkward when you've just spent half an hour with somebody talking about how you're going overseas on a boat, and then you're too retarded to even manage to dock the damn thing. He probably thinks we're going to die.
xxx Monique
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