02/17/2010, Portobello, near Dunedin, New Zealand
While Follow You is slowly making its way across the Pacific, Rina and I are starting a 14 day road trip of the South Island of New Zealand. After a short flight from Auckland to Christchurch, Rina and I rented a 4wd Subaru and headed south, stopping our first night in Timaru, enjoying the view of the ocean from our room at the funky Sea Breeze hotel and enjoying a nice dinner. The next day we headed to Omaru, home of the endangered blue penguins. We got a back stage pass to view 150 mating penguin pairs, who unfortunately for us, are nocturnal. The conservation society here has set up marine-world style bleachers for 300 to view the nightly pilgrimage of penguins that waddle up the beach back into their little huts to feed their young. Fortunately, there were viewing boxes with infrared light that allowed us to see great examples of young chicks molting before they make their first foray to the sea.
In the afternoon we travelled the last 120 km to Dunedin where we will spend several days before heading west to the highland lakes and glaciers. We entered Dunedin to the sight of many "no vacancy" signs on the many motorlodges lining hiway 1. We started our search, and after 90 minutes had found exactly one B&B with only one night available. Apparently we arrived 2 days before college classes start, so families are descending on the town to deposit their young at school. Having done this drill with both Megan and Alyssa, we know how overwhelmed the local infrastructure can become. We changed strategies and headed out the long Otago peninsula, with many historic sights, summer cottages and tiny towns tucked into the many protected bays. We travelled 16 km along a twisty shoreline road, watching 25 knot winds churn up the whitecaps on the bay, until we came to the first cottages and B&B's. After several strike-outs we pulled into the Portobello Hotel and Pub, whose young proprietor Tiny gave us the bad news... fortunately he knew a couple of places that might have rooms, so after making 5 calls, located a one room B&B just up the hill, with a view of the town of Portobello and the bay beyond. We relaxed in our studio apartment with a glass of wine, then walked back down the hill to Portobello's for a bowl of nibbles, before turning in for the night.
Today it's off to Museums and other inside activities as rain drenches the coast until the late afternoon. Then it's off to the settlers museum on the Otago peninsula and the historic Fort Taiaroa, home of the only working Armstrong disappearing gun.... Ooooooooohhh! Oh yea, Rina says it is also home of the royal albatross.... Isn't that a cousin of a certain rat with wings? Yawn! These kiwis certainly work the tourism thing hard, don't they.
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We are now getting mentally prepared for our 23 day crossing...nervous!
02/14/2010, Port of Auckland
Check out this sequence that Rina took of Slojo heading into Super Servant 3 in the picture gallery on your right....
Another folder holds a bunch of pictures of our Dockwise loading experience. It's pretty illustrative of what to expect loading and securing your boat.
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02/14/2010, Port of Auckland
You can barely see us, but that's Follow You's mast and hull right behind the Dockwise bulkhead of "Super Servant 3". It has been quite the experience doing this whole boat transport thing. From struggling last August with the options on how and when to get us and the boat home, to preparing the boat for transport, to finally loading her on the freighter; finally getting her secured on deck has been exhausting. The pictures in the gallery say it all.
Over the past week Rina and I have been battening down things down below, purging fridges and water tanks, polishing hull and stainless in the vain hope that she'll still look decent upon arrival, and adapting our shadetree covers to cover the decks on the 5000 mile journey from Auckland to Ensenada Mexico. Doing research and hyping with many cruisers who have used Dockwise in the past uncovered that the boats can show up at their destination with a lot of cosmetic damage if not prepared well. Many boats shrinkwrap their entire topsides, at the cost of several thousands of dollars, hermetically sealing the boat and virtually guaranteeing no damage from salt water, metal shavings from all the welding taking place on the deck, exhaust soot, and the ravages of many sea miles in conditions that the boats would not normally find themselves in otherwise. Some have reported that when Dockwise shoots fresh water on the decks of boats to knock the exhaust soot off that residue from rusty tanks has pockmarked the decks, requiring a tedious cleaning session to get it off, if it comes off at all. We opted to save the bucks and adapt our Shadetree canvas covers for covering the deck, using shrinkwrap non-residue-leaving tape to secure the perimeter. As a safeguard against strong winds, Rina added large grommets to the perimeter of the covers and we strung 3/8's inch line between the cover and the lifelines. We had planned to put our plastic panels around the entire cockpit perimeter but straps required to lash us to the starboard bulkhead of SS3 prevented us from putting the rear panels on.
We woke early Sunday morning to host Richard and Suzanne from Kaumoana for tea and coffee before cutting our Auckland dock lines for good and heading to the SS3 to standby for loading at 7am. 3 hours later, Follow You was the next to last boat of 9 boats loaded on, slowly motoring into the center of the sunken freighter, then letting the 15 knot wind from the port beam drift us over to the starboard builkhead where the waiting Russian crewmen grabbed our docklines just as a downpour drenched us for about 30 minutes. 8 fenders and 4 huge straps held us in place as divers set temporary jackstands under the boat. We shut down all systems, covered the remaining parts of the boat and departed as the ballast water began pumping out of the freighter and she slowly lifted, allowing the divers to methodically set the stands on each of the new boats. It was actually quite tricky, as there was everything from "Limits", a racer with a 4 meter keel to Zen, a catamaran with less than a 4 foot draft. Boats all ended up at different levels, depending on their keel heights. The water level on deck of the SS3 was adjusted as they settled each boat on to their cradle and jack stands.
The last boat in was Slojo, a 156 foot motoryacht that we met in Tahiti. Rina took a great sequence of pictures that I'll post next. Their huge friggen bow thruster would blast us against the bulkhead now and then to counter the port winds, as the SS3 boat handlers confidently held us in place. The helpful idiot crewman on the boat ahead of us urgently warned us to not try to fend off the huge motoryacht if she came to close to us. Duh.
Monday morning we came back to inspect the more permanent cradles, welded in place by the friendly (but gawking) Russian welders. We met with Patrick, the loading master, explaining that I was kind of uncomfortable with the placement of the cradle. He said no problem and had the crew weld in two additional cradle arms that did a better job of holding up Follow You's bloated butt. (We had her weighed in Opua and she is just short of 30,000 pounds)
We're pretty comfortable that she'll come through the journey ok, and we have the crew of Slojo looking out for her, giving us a report every couple of days. Rina and I are now off to the South Island of New Zealand where we are renting a car and touring for the two weeks that Follow You is in transit. We'll fly to LAX in early March, visiting former crew Stephanie and John in Newport Beach and Megan in San Diego before heading to Ensenada to meet the boat. Off to the airport!
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02/14/2010, One Tree Hill, New Zealand
Having cruiser girlfriends has been one of the best parts of visiting so many countries of the world. Here in Auckland we decided to go to a really nice lunch called High Tea on One Tree Hill. Check out the gallery to see some great views from one tree hill and also my friends and the great food. The above picture is Suzanne on S/V Carinthia...its funny, her pink tea leaves, when steeped, matched her pink shirt. Lovely food, tea, great company, and the weather was fantastic all day. I'm going to miss these new friends and hope to meet up with them in the future, either in the states, or out where their boats may be on their continuing adventures around the world. I've had such great times over the last 18 months with all of them... too many to name here, but you know who you are!
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02/14/2010, Auckland, New Zealand
New pics are on the way!
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02/13/2010, Auckland, New Zealand
Rina and I have just wrapped up 2 weeks at Viaduct Marina in Auckland, enjoying the many restaurants and activities nearby. We arrived to the thumping of music from a seafood festival, with over 100 booths serving all kinds of food from many local eateries and the huge fish market complex. In classic kiwi form, it was raining and blowing 20 knots and nobody cared at all! If kiwis acted like Californians and went indoors whenever it rained, they would never go out, as weather systems regularly come through and dump a little rain most days. Over the next two weeks we enjoyed downtown activities, movies and the nearby island of Waihiki, with great wineries, beaches and nature preserves. The gallery has great shots of the local area, which was refurbished last for the 2000 America's Cup races. Two of Team New Zealands training mules are even used to ferry tourists out for quasi-match races each day.
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02/04/2010, Auckland, New Zealand
Back in the big city of Auckland! Boy, the hustle & bustle after being out on the boat again is quite the jump back into reality. People everywhere, walking to work, cabbies racing around, joggers on the waterfront, and mothers walking their babies in strollers. I think the hardest to get over is the "suits" that partake in happy hour for most of the middle of the week. The thought of going back to work when we return is one of hesitation, the looming reality of the trip being over and getting back to our land lives. Going home for the holidays was a whirlwind of visits and putting many miles on Allan's car driving all over Northern California. It was a great time, but trying to get your boat fixed via long distance was a challenge. All is well except for the watermaker...which the guy is coming today to check it when it's all hooked up again. We'll keep you all posted. Ok, back to boat work to finish up before this baby leaves for Mexico. Can't wait to do another spring season down there before we work our way back home during the summer.
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02/04/2010, Auckland, New Zealand
The chaos continued on our way out of the Bay of Islands this week, as the expected 20 knots of wind on the nose never developed, and instead we had 15 knots of following breeze. Sometimes that can be a bad sign, as the wind gets sucked towards a deepening low and more extreme winds to come. Fortunately that did not happen, and we enjoyed about 12 hours of sunny skies before clouds, wind and rain returned just outside of Auckland. We enjoyed the company of a few other sailboats and a large pod of dolphins who danced under our bow for about 30 minutes. As the sun went down around 830pm (ain't summer grand!) we could see a front approaching from the east, and overnight winds built to 25 knots with gusts to 30. We changed our course earlier to keep us well offshore to the east so we could ride the front into Auckland rather than paralleling the shore in shallower water and taking the brunt of the wind and rain on the beam. Turned out to be a good decision as we had a relatively calm ride into Auckland overnight. Our only drama was dodging fishing boats coming out of Auckland harbor and a freighter or two coming in.
We arrived in Auckland at dawn, creeping slowly into the channel as small fishing boats sped past us on their way out to the Hauriki Gulf. We coasted up the waterfront on the flood tide, entered Viaduct Marina, located right at the foot of the downtown tourist and shopping district. We tied up right next to our good friends Dietmar and Suzanne on Carinthia.
We've spent the last several days hanging out with Wayward Wind and Carinthia, as well as meeting new friends on Lightfoot and some locals, doing typical cruiser sunset parties and dinners. Our days have been filled preparing the boat for it's voyage on Dockwise, which will take the boat to Ensenada, now scheduled for February 14th, as well as more mundane maintenance stuff.
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01/29/2010, Russel
Those words, spoken by local weather guru Bob McDavitt, were never more true than today. Rina and I have been watching buoyweather and gribs from the local metvuw weather service and that big red blob was heading north, right before it decided to turn west enough to put 35-35 knots right on our nose as we planned to head towards Auckland this morning. So we find ourselves waiting for the blob to pass before heading to Auckland on Sunday morning. Of course, that could change tomorrow morning too... the upside? I get to play another gig with Roger and Bobbie Joe at a small festival in Russel this afternoon.
We took advantage of the brisk 15-25 knot winds today to give the new rudder a good thrashing and she worked great, highlighting only our rusty gybing skills. 3 hours got us all the way out to the mouth of the bay, where we experienced 2 meter short period swells, putting anything loose down below straight onto the cabin sole. The proverbial "shake down" cruise...
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01/28/2010, Russel, New Zealand
It was quite an experience getting back out on the water, with just a little trepidation after almost 3 months tied to a dock or on the hard. Those hard-won cruising skills came back quickly though, and we are once again bouncing around the boat, gaining stronger sea-legs by the day. Talk about feeling like noobies!
We have been sorting out the boat, which was in quite a chaotic state after all the work that was done, and we are close to having her back in order. We also discovered that our genset and solar charging system were not working, reducing our electrical system to a single alternator for charging the 675 amphours of capacity. We therefore got just a little cranky when we had to return to the dock to research what was going on. 2 days later, both problems were traced to workmanship... The genset fuel pickup was not tightened after a tank cleaning back in November, allowing air to enter the fuel line, resulting in variable genset RPM before it shut down. A half a turn on the fuel fitting fixed that. The solar panels was more interesting, with visions of a controller that had lost its mind and no longer sent current to the batteries. If there is one skill that I have not gotten comfortable with, it's electrical systems. I can do the basics, but after watching Carl the electrician come in and diagnose the problem in 5 minutes, it confirms it have a long way to go. Turns out that when the batteries were pulled out and reinstalled to torque the keel bolts, one of the hot leads was not connected, allowing the voltage on the charge input battery to rise, which told the controller to stop sending a charge to the batteries. The electrician diagnosed this by identifying a voltage drop between the batteries, then tracing the cables, finding one that had hidden itself in one of the chases. Hooked her back up and everything's working fine... back to 3 charging systems!
The new rudder works great, with virtually no change in behavior from the old while sailing and motoring around the Bay of Islands. We will get a better feel as we head to Auckland on Saturday, where we will Rendezvous with Carinthia and Wayward Wind at the Viaduct Marina. We will then load Follow You onto a Dockwise freighter for a trip to Ensenada Mexico, where Rina and I will resume cruising for 6 more months. While Follow You is in transit, we will tour the South Island of New Zealand, "Lord of the Rings Country" as Dietmar on Carinthia likes to say.
Meanwhile we have reconnected with our cruising musician buddies Roger and Bobbie Joe from Hipnautical, playing at the Opua Cruising Club for a large audience last night. Tonight is our final gig with Trippy at the Opua Café. I'll really miss playing with everyone here, especially Roger and Bobbie Joe, having played gigs with them in Mexico, French Polynesia, Tonga and now New Zealand. It highlights a cruising truism, meeting great people, building great friendships, but then having to ultimately say goodbye as our cruising plans diverge over time. Bittersweet indeed...even if balanced by our excitement of heading back to Mexico where we will meet new friends and reconnect with old ones.
The picture above is Follow You Follow Me, dead center, in the Bay in front of historic Russel, the first capital of New Zealand.
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