As winter bites us hard (this is the first cold season we've had in four years, and John's not happy), we are setting about a few major boat jobs that we have been saving both time and dollars for. We were very pleased at our post-cruise haulout to find the hull and underwater gear all in perfect shape - the Hydralign prop is still nice and tight and there was far less growth than expected (we had done a really thorough job of sanding, smoothing and priming the previous time).
A few brief afternoon sails and a lovely weekend with son Matt and Jane up in Bantry Bay, then on with the jobs....
We have always navigated on a laptop in the nav station, with input from our Leica Navigator GPS and a Comar AIS (the Comar is a great unit!). This works well, but John has always felt the need for a nav display in the cockpit at the steering station. So we looked at various options - settling on the Raymarine C120W Widescreen - good sized display and capable of dual display (radar/chartplotter, chartplotter/highway display etc) and also able to input and display video, AIS, MOB alarms etc. We like to support local dealers and, if possible, manufacturers. But......
The lowest price we could get in Sydney for the unit, without charts, was $5,000 AUD. We finally bought one, complete with charts, on-line from Defender.com (an on-line chandler in Connecticut that we have used before) for the USD equivalent of $2,500 AUD! It arrived by tracked FedEx courier within 5 days and even after GST was paid we were thousands ahead. It's sad that we were really forced offshore, but those are our hard-earned after-tax dollars. Same story for the NavPod housing - $500 here plus $150 to cut for the C120W, online $375 pre-cut and ready to install (getting the steering pedestal grabrail altered to suit the installation was nearly double that cost: $720 for a bit of welding and polishing). Aussie tradesmen are very good but they really do themselves a disservice sometimes.
So now one of the big jobs - the cockpit hardtop! For a couple of years we have felt that since we only ever take the covers and clears off to clean or repair them (and they often do need a bit of work) we might as well have a full hard cockpit cover. This will be permanent rain and sun protection, whilst allowing John to scoot across its top to tend the main and lazy-jacks. So we enlisted Kevin Hudson to help us do the job. Designing the thing proved more difficult than we had expected - lots of factors to consider such as aesthetics (pretty important - you see a lot of nice cruising yachts ruined by a boxy, ugly hardtop), function, not hitting heads on the way in and out, attachments for side clears, internal light fitting points, headroom.....
We are making the top and supports with 25mm Divinycell foam cored GRP. Should be strong enough to park the helicopter on! We are at the stage of having a blank cut for the top and some tentative moldings for the front and sides - it will all be coming together over the next week.
Next job will be a higher-capacity watermaker, and we will then be installing the Hydrovane self-steering (because we have hydraulic steering both the Aries and the Monitor are not suitable).
Meanwhile, we spent some time with our dear friends Mike and Lynn from "Wombat of Sydney", who have now left and are on an express run to South Carolina, where Lynn's dad is starting to cause some health concerns. Amongst all this we have visited our older son Tom and his girl Amanda in chilly Canberra.
Another very good friend, Joe Walsh the yacht rigger, has had a tough time recently. Joe is 60 years old but still a very competitive road racing cyclist. He has had two accidents this year. The second was a severe one, resulting in fractured C1 and C2, and requiring a 6 hour neurosurgical operation. Amazingly Joe has suffered only the mildest of deficits - a bit of weakness and loss of fine movement in his left hand. He was immobilised at the scene by a doctor and paramedic who were also in the race he was competing in. Considering the commonest result of those fractures is instant death and the next commonest is quadraplegia, Joe is a hell of a lucky man. Whilst he is a long way off climbing masts again, he is at least back at the yard supervising his boys.
We have put up a few pics of progress on our jobs -
click here to have a look.
Cheers from us in chilly Sydney!