With Debbie flying back to Sydney for a reunion with Japanese friends and Jade's first birthday, it was time to get stuck into some maintenance work on Volar�.

She was hauled out at Ashby's Boatyard Yard, Opua on November 19th for antifouling and other work. I painted her bottom with International Ultra, a hard antifouling, hopefully with similar properties to the product we used in Mexico nearly eighteen months ago. I decided to drop the rudder and give it a close inspection. There are tremendous forces operating on a spade rudder that is not supported by a bottom pintle and you need to be careful there is no sign of corrosion where the stainless shaft goes into the actual rudder. The rudder was perfect, however there were other signs of wear after 8,000 miles of sailing.

When I was removing the steering quadrant in order to drop the rudder I found one of the steering cables hanging on by a few threads of wire - it would have snapped in the not too distant future. I had a new cable made up and was ready to put the rudder back in after replacing the packing around the gland.

I had the hull acid washed to remove any of the left over Pacific Ocean and then the hull was polished.

We have been annoyed a few times with water coming down the mast when it rains heavily because it drops straight onto Debbie's head and pillow. I think I may have fixed this problem with a product called Spar Tite - a two pot mix that you pour into the mast partners that replaces the rubber wedges needed on a keel stepped mast and (hopefully) provides a permanent water tight seal.

While out of the water, I took the opportunity of replacing all the toilet plumbing in both heads (the pipes had a cholesterol problem with severe calcium build-up).

I had an articulated bow roller made up by a local engineering shop that will make it easier to launch and retrieve our Delta anchor. It's now self launching once the brake is released.

The mainsail went off to the local sailmaker for an overhaul - primarily repairing chafe, replacing a broken leech line and importantly putting in a third set of reef points. I also had them do a little nip and tuck to take out a wee bit of stretch on the leech that had come about because we have sailed so far with two reefs in the main.

Finally, we had been getting a few bubbles in the gelcoat on the cockpit seats because we have had cockpit cushions down for the entire time we have lived aboard. This causes the seats to sweat and water finds its way under the gelcoat causing an air bubble. It was an easy matter to grind these out with my new Dremmel tool but it meant repainting the cockpit seats after the bubbles were filled. I decided that I would put non-skip paint down on the seats and the cockpit coaming as well as the cockpit floor. Even though there is a deck pattern moulded in these areas it can get a little slippery from time to time, so now we'll stick to them like glue.

Today I have been doing some varnishing around the companionway that gets a lot of sun. I'm just about done now in time for Debbie's return on Thursday and a departure, hopefully, over the weekend.

Oh, just remembered - about halfway through the work schedule after the boat was back in the water I went out in company with Magnum, firstly to Russel where we tried out the new Thai restaurant then to a little bay on Urapukapuka Island (try saying that after a few rum punches). At low tide we took the dinghy across to a little reef that had dried out and found the mother lode of blue lip mussels. We filled a 5-gallon bucket, stopped off at Magnum to get a few beers, then went ashore to clean them.

As the sun set slowly in the west Uva and I sat on a rock telling stories, cleaning mussles, drinking a beer each and shucking and swallowing oysters to accompany the beer.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.