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13/08/2019 Airlie Beach
Today was "fix the anchor winch day". I got up early and had a coffee and then proceeded to take the old anchor winch apart. I did this so that I could take it to be inspected by the anchor winch people in Airlie Beach. It took me all day. Find the right spanner, then the right allen key, then contort my body and use muscles that haven't been used before… and voila, anchor winch uninstalled. I borrowed my Dad's car to take the winch to the mechanics and they told me what I already know, that I have to give my right arm to have this all working again. So, in the spirit of travel and adventure I removed my right arm and walked away with a brand new anchor winch, and for only a few fingers more I got the more powerful one, more suited to our boat and anchoring needs.
When we got back to the boat with my new found bounty I laid it out in the cockpit floor hoping it would slip straight into the old slot. It looked so beautiful and shiny. I wonder how long that will last? We then went back ashore to visit Mum and Dad who are staying in a really nice caravan park in Jubilee. They cooked us dinner and we had a long hot shower and washed off the week long stink we developed out in the islands. Oh yeah.
14/08/2019 Airlie Beach
"Anchor winch installation day" is today. Yes, well I was hoping for a nice easy installation. Yesterday I took the old winch to compare the footprint of the old vs new and was pleasantly surprised that it will all slot straight in. Well, having brought the thing home and done a test fit it is clear that something has changed. Yes, the footprint of the winch is the same, but Muir has gone and made their connection of the shaft to the gearbox more "efficient" with their new "quick connect" system. All well and good except the old system required 10mm less diameter for the shaft. That means I need to expand the 60mm diameter shaft hole by another 10mm. Not an easy feat even for a seasoned carpenter, of which I am quite the opposite. I went to a home hardware store in search of a tool to help with the job and all I came back with was a small chisel. This did the job surprisingly well, after using the jigsaw to notch out the space. After a bit of sanding and epoxy I had the required diameter. A couple of hours later the new winch slotted in with a bit of sealant and there you have it, another job completed by someone who doesn't really know what the hell they're doing. Nice.
Now all we need is the new anchor chain. We have about 40-50m of 10mm chain which is good, but I reckon we can do better. There is space for 100m if we want, so I think that is what we are going to do. Everyone I have spoken to about this suggests getting new chain with the new anchor winch because the old chain can damage the gypsy (the physical part which grabs the chain) which can cost a third of the price of the new winch if you bugger it. So anyway, that is a job for tomorrow.
Mum and Dad's caravan park puts on a spit roast on Wednesday nights with a bit of live acoustic music, so we booked a spot and made our way over there in the afternoon for a beer and some good food and company. It wasn't meant to be all you can eat, but the majority of the clientele were grey nomads and they don't seem to eat very much. So the good people putting on the spit roast made the call for seconds. Yes please! 2 plates later I was satisfied. It was a great night.
15/08/2019 Airlie Beach, Qld, Australia
Today I ticked off number 643 of my TODO list for improving the boat, 100m of new anchor chain. Well, actually I ticked off 642, 641 and actually 644, 632 and 633 over the last month come to think of it. They all related to modifying and updating the anchoring system. But todays job meant I could rest easy from now on when carrying out anything to do with the anchor. I ordered it yesterday over the phone as they need a little time to prepare it. 100m of chain is bloody heavy and cumbersome. I think it weighs about 200KG and probably takes up about 0.75m2 of space when clumped together.
The plan originally was to take the boat over to the marina where the chandlery is to just wheel the chain over and suck it up using the new anchor winch, but the weather was looking terrible for the next few days. Strong wind + docking = no fun. So after a bit of staring at the wall trying to figure things out I decided that it wouldn't be a problem to use the dinghy to get the chain to the boat. Sounds crazy right? Well it was so crazy it just about worked. I asked Dad to give me a hand so he picked me up in the morning with the car and we went to get the chain. The nice people at the chandlery already had it laid out in a trolley for me, so after giving them the shirt off my back as payment I wheeled it over to where the car was parked, loaded it in and off we went. Timing was everything. We were aiming to get back to the dinghy just before low tide so that we could have the dinghy right up to the back of the car and if weight became an issue then we could just sit and wait for the tide. But on the other hand we didn't want to wait too long as happens every day it seems, the wind picks up sometime mid morning, and a strong wind which was forecasted would not help out on the water. Well it turned out that the weight in the dinghy was not an issue at all. Our 3.1m Highfield RIB has a so called weight limit of 550KG, so an extra 200KG didn't really make much of a difference, so that was one crisis averted. The other was the wind. I got back to the boat with the chain all ready to go and wouldn't you know it, the wind pipes up. Again though, it didn't really cause too much of an issue. Vanja dinghied the chain around to the front where I tied her off to a cleat. She passed up the first link and I passed it through the new windlass gypsy, pushed my foot down on the switch and a few minutes later 100m of new anchor chain was safely in the chain locker ready to pounce when we need it. I just have to remember to attach the anchor first.
The rest of the day was not as exciting as getting my new anchor chain aboard, well for me anyway. We hit the town and did a shop, played at the playground, did some skateboarding and had a nice dinner at home. A great day really.
16/08/2019 Airlie Beach, Qld, Australia
Another task that has been picking at my brain in the wee hours of the morning for the last few weeks was our dinghy engine. The first service of the dinghy engine to be exact. We bought it brand new back in June and the manual states that it should have it's first service at the 20Hrs or 1 month time period. Well it certainly hasn't done 20Hr, but it's definitely been more than a month. Maybe 2, but who's counting? Anyway I've been wanting to do it since Great Kepple Island but I thought I didn't have the gear oil required to do the gearbox. After going into town yesterday to buy the oil I needed I went home and just so happened to find that we had 3 litres of the same stuff in our front locker. Honestly, this boat is like some sort of palace with hidden compartments all over the place, without the living space.
After overcoming that mild annoyance I decided today was as good a day as any to do the engine. There are 2 parts to servicing the engine; the first being the engine oil, this one is reasonably simple. Unscrew the bolt halfway down the engine, let the old oil drain out into a container, then screw it back up and pour the new oil in through the cap in the top. The second part, the gearbox oil, is a little more cumbersome. The manual shows a picture of the engine needing to be upright to change it. That's not easy to start with. Then you have to pump the new gearbox oil from the bottom hole which is millimetres from the bottom of the engine. What the hell?!
Don't ask me what I was thinking, but I decided to do this service from the back of the boat while the dinghy was hoisted up on the davits. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I could use the SUP (stand up paddle board) to sit on underneath the engine to do the work. No worries. Well, it was all going very well until… it wasn't. I adjusted the dinghy lifting ropes to give me more room at the back and tied the SUP to the 2 hulls of the boat to give it some stability. The wind, and therefore waves, were pretty calm when I started. I got the engine oil done in a matter of minutes, barely spilling a drop. The gearbox oil change didn't go as well unfortunately. I spent a bit of time adjusting the dinghy so I could get to the engine a little better. Well, in that time the wind must have increased as when I got back on the SUP and undid the top screw to the gearbox the waves were sort of splashing up onto me on the board. It was at this point I should have postponed the job. I didn't. I undid the bottom screw of the gearbox of which oil started pouring out into the bucket I prepared. It was at this moment there was a loud snap and I found myself falling into the water. I grabbed around for whatever I could find, not wanting to spill the oil into the ocean. My hand found a rope to grab, but unfortunately it was the rope which undoes the dinghy. In my panic I realised it was this rope and not wanting to drop the dinghy into the water I let it go, but not before it was unlocked from the cleat. The dinghy crashed down into the water centimetres from my head. I should probably be thankful it didn't knock me out and send me to the ocean floor, but instead I was furious knowing that now the gearbox was full of salt water. What an idiot! Though I am happy to say that the bucket of old oil I was holding was saved and did not go on to pollute the ocean. Yay for the environment!
So after that debacle and the embarrassment of telling Vanja and the kids what just happened I got on with it and called the professionals. Not one mechanic in Airlie Beach was available to come help me. Though two of them said that all they would do was flush the gearbox out with oil and do it again. One of them even said that this happens all the time because the seals around the screws fall apart, apparently quite often. Well that made me feel better. After consulting with one of the mechanics a few times I decided to row the boat into shore and do the flushing myself, with the help of Dad (thanks again Dad!). We manoeuvred the boat around the bay at the sailing club to find a nice set of rocks where we could lift it to get the engine as vertical as possible. We then went through the painstaking process of syringing the oil from the bottle into the bottom screw hole until oil came out the top. This whole process took about 30 minutes of annoying uncomfortable repetitive work in the oyster infested mud shores of the sailing club. We did this twice, once to flush, and after 20 minutes of running the engine, a second time to do the actual oil change. What a day. So what was meant to take 30 minutes took me all day. I'm sore, I have a huge cut on my toe from a damn oyster and I probably spent $100 extra on parts and oil. I should've just taken it to a mechanic. There, I said it.
17/08/2019 Airlie Beach, Qld, Australia
What a fantastic day we had today, especially after my botched misadventure yesterday. Mum and Dad came for a day sail with us to Hook Island, specifically Nara Inlet at Hook Island and we got back to Airlie Beach around 7pm. It has been an absolutely perfect day.
I picked them up at about 8:30am from the sailing club in the dinghy. We went back to the boat and got ready to weigh anchor. I still had the old anchor chain out so this meant I was pulling it in manually one more time, for fun. I didn't mind too much as I knew this would be the last time for a while (hopefully). Once that was done we pointed the boat East and set sail with a perfect 10-12kt beam reach all the way there. Using my usual average speed of 4.5kts we were predicted to get there in 2.5Hrs, but due to the very nice conditions we got there an hour early. Oh it's so nice when that happens.
The Inlet was absolutely magnificent with beautiful turquoise water at the base of prehistoric rainforest covered mountains jutting straight out of the water. The water was like glass, just inviting us in. We were worried it was going to be too busy given it was a Saturday, but it wasn't at all. We picked a spot near the end of the inlet close to a walk that was written about in the cruising guide.
As soon as we dropped the anchor I dove in for a swim with the kids following close behind. The water was beautiful and clear and almost warmish. Mum even came in for a swim and that is saying something. She normally reserves her swimming for +40�C days. We then had a really nice spread for lunch with a beer to wash it all down.
Once our food coma wore off a little we decided to head to shore to check out the walk up to the caves where some several thousand year old aboriginal cave paintings have been preserved. The walk itself was short, but steep up the carved rock stairs. Along the way we could see fossilised leaves in the rocks, which was a nice surprise. The view of course was amazing looking back down the inlet with our boat lying at the bottom framed by gum trees among others. At the top there was a bunch of informative posters about the Ngara people who used to inhabit the island. Both we and the kids were fascinated and totally engrossed in their history. "They lived here 9000 years ago, and this island used to be connected to the mainland?!" Jake asked in disbelief. The cave paintings were really cool too which can be seen well from the viewing platform. All in all a great little walk for some history and spectacle.
When we got back to the boat it was time to pack up for the trip home. The wind was not as convenient on our way back being 7-10kts from directly behind us, so we only managed our usual 4-5kts of speed. This meant we got back to Airlie Beach just after sunset making it a little tricky to pick our way through the boats at the beach. We found our same spot though and dropped the anchor ending a very nice day trip. I dropped M&D back at the sailing club, went and grabbed a few things from the shops and went home to bed for an early night where I lay here typing this.
18/08/2019 Airlie Beach, Qld, Australia
Another boat project day today. The water tanks have caused us so much grief on this trip so far it was time to put that little baby to bed. The problem with the tanks is that they sometimes overflow. This isn't really the problem though. The problem is that the compartment they are in has a hole in the bottom which runs directly into our main cabin areas and down into the shelving below our beds and ultimately into the bilge in the bottom of the hull. Whenever the overflow occurs everything on the shelves is ruined, then I have to spend 30 mins drying and emptying the bilge. It's just not fun. Anyway the solution I have come up with is to block one of the holes up (there is one on each side) and add a drain hose to the other one and feed it to the shower sump where it will be pumped out of the boat like we were having a shower. I could've blocked both holes then drilled through the bridgedeck for the drain but I don't like drilling into the boat if I don't have to, plus I would have to somehow get under there to add some protection from waves, etc. etc. Long story short, more work.
Anyway there were a few other things that needed some epoxy like the mouldy locker lid in my room, the frame around one of the seats in the cockpit and the water tank valve door. So I did it all at once. It took all morning, but everything went well and I even managed to keep Charlie from walking in the epoxy and spreading it throughout the boat.
After lunch we headed into M&D's for the afternoon and some dinner. Not the most exciting day, but productive nonetheless.
19/08/2019 Airlie Beach, Qld, Australia
Not too much to write about today. I finished off a couple of boat projects I've had on the go for a while. The water tank fix is now done. I just had to attach a hose from the newly installed drain to the shower sump. A couple more holes and a bit of epoxy later and voila. Now I just need to flood it to test it. I wonder if Vanja will let me. I also finished installing the new fuel tanks today. This particular project has been ongoing for at least 6 months. It was basically classified as "non essential", so it only got worked on when there was nothing more pressing to attend to. These new fuel tanks triple the amount of fuel we can carry. Prior to this we carried 120 litres of plumbed in fuel plus another 80 litres in jerry cans. These new tanks each hold 220 litres, which takes our grand total to 640 litres. That works out to be about 10 days of motoring, or about 1200 nautical miles or 2200 kilometres for the land lubbers. This means that if we really wanted to, we could motor the whole way to PNG from Cairns, then back again without lifting a sail. How good is that?!
The last job I finished up today was to install inverters on each of the engine batteries. This is because we currently have no way to charge our house batteries when we run our engines. Our house batteries are 24 volts, a decision I made before knowing anything. The engine system runs on 12v like every other engine in the world. Therefore the 2 systems do not play well together. I could install a 24v alternator on the engine and run some heavy duty cables to the batteries, but that would add a hell of lot of weight, complexity and cost. Those alternators are not cheap! Then one sleepless night I had a brain wave that I could just use a cheap inverter to convert the 12v to 240v which I could then feed into the shore power plug. Genius, simple, and cheap.
Vanja was hanging out at the lagoon with the kids while all this was going on. Darren from Irie suggested we go in for a beer in the evening, which sounded good to us. It was a great night which ended with us ordering pizza to take away back to the boat. Good times.
21/08/2019 Airlie Beach, Qld, Australia
We are getting ready to get out of here tomorrow, so we have been busy with the preparations the last couple of days. Our current plan is to get to Darwin by the end of September. This is because we want to get to Indonesia before the cyclone season which officially starts in November. We are running pretty late in the season so we need to keep moving. We are giving ourselves about a week in the Whitsundays before pushing onto to Cairns, then Lizard Island. As long as we don't have any serious weather or boat issues I don't see why we shouldn't be able to make it in time.
We said a very sad goodbye to my parents last night as they are heading back to normal life. I'm pretty sure we would not have made it this far without them, so a very big thank you from all of us! We love you. And drive safe! Of course we couldn't let them get away without borrowing their car for a few more days to complete our provisioning.
Vanja also managed to tick off a few "admin" duties such as getting doctors scripts for various medicines as well as submitting her and Lara's passport renewals. We really should've done that before we left, but we didn't. Apart from that we haven't done much except go to the lagoon for a swim and hang out at the boat.