GOODBYE FOR NOW GIRLS.

17th May: After almost two months of living and working on the family farm, we've now moved into my parents place in Leyburn. Dad had to go into hospital for a week and even when discharged was clearly weak, unstable and disorientated, so the general opinion was that Les and I could perhaps be of more use in lending a hand to Ma & Pa rather than milking cows; at least neither of them kicks me or craps on my head.
As anticipated, having got the Corona Virus contained, indeed virtually eradicated the New Zealanders are not compromising that by letting us or or anyone else fly in anytime soon; disappointing, but we can't fault them for making what to us seems a very smart decision. Reading between the lines of their news reports, our best guess was further confirmed during a conversation with their Customs & Excise Department: It's going to be at least a year, probably more and possibly much more before they'll let us come back to Moon Rebel in Whangarei.
Not good news, but these things are all relative and hearing from friends who're 'locked-down' on their boats in various anchorages around the world, makes us count our blessings; several are in the Hurricane/Cyclone/Typhoon zones yet unable to move anywhere else. The Maldives and more northern islands of the Caribbean chain strike us as being particularly scary locations to be; we and Moon Rebel might be 12,000 miles apart, but both we and she are at least 'safe' by 2020 standards.
So where does that leave us? Well, the yard-bills are likely to reach £4-5000 before we ever get back, we knew of £2000 more that we needed to spend before relaunching anyway (excluding the gearbox, of which more later) and I suspect that a further year ashore will add at least another £3-4000 to those bills, with the life-raft, epirb and standing rigging all reaching/passing their expiry dates, an already tired mainsail sitting on the boom and the batteries & electronics no doubt slowly fading into oblivion even as I'm typing this.
We did finally extract a response from Seapower regarding our gearbox: All the bearings were trashed, it was no longer their fault - “just one of those things” - and you'll have to pay us £1100 to get it rebuilt. My reply was: Just send it back then; yes I realise it'll have to be fixed and that we'll have to pay someone to do that, but I'm damned if it'll be you that I pay, to fix something that I will always believe got broken by your mistake in the first place.
Having spoken to a Yanmar Engineer in Whangarei and been advised that not only could they fix it, they could also probably discern what'd caused the damage and should they agree with my opinion, would back us up in making a civil claim to recover the repair costs from Seapower. This would apparently be very easy, cheap and most importantly quick via NZ's Small Claims Tribunal system, albeit that I'd need to get back there to do so. Sadly I then fucked-Up, by letting Sea power discover that this was our intention and I've been unsuccessfully chasing the return of our gearbox ever since; not easy for someone to check the damage and reasons for it if they can't get a look at the gearbox. I'm sure that 'a' broken gearbox will eventually arrive at the boatyard, but given time (of which Seapower now have plenty) I suspect that that it won't necessarily be 'our' gearbox that appears, but how do you prove that a year or more later? So there'll be those repairs to add to the total too.
So with £12,000 or more to spend before we can relaunch and half of that to be paid before we even see Moon Rebel again, what will she actually be worth when we've done? Well in New Zealand or Australia, perhaps £14-15,000, though to sell her in either, we'd lose around 20-25% of that to their import duties and that valuation is based on Pre Covid-19 values too, we both suspect that the current 'Buyers Market' for boats is likely to get a whole lot worse for vendors by the time this virus is finally under control and the world's oceans are re-opened.
So, with the assistance of the boatyard and NZ Customs (thanks guys!) we're hoping to progress and conclude the sale of Moon Rebel, before the yard's storage bills have time to escalate; we don't anticipate seeing much if anything ever reaching our own bank account, but at least we'll avoid accruing a heap of unpaid yard bills whilst the boat slowly rots away. We've seen more than enough 'Junker-boats' cluttering up the world's boatyards and anchorages, we really don't want Moon Rebel adding to that blight. Besides, having only paid £26k to buy her in the first place and enjoyed (well, for the most part!) nine years of cruising between Greece and New Zealand, we don't reckon she owes us anything anyway. Should we want to return to the Cruising life in a year or two's time, I suspect that the money we're not spending on Moon Rebel now will go a long way towards buying us a more than equivalent replacement and we'll get to choose where we start from – going from a couple of years ashore straight into a ten day passage back up to the Pacific Islands might prove a bit much?
So immediate plans: We'll be with Mum & Dad for a few more weeks, whereafter we'll find a house to rent (we've got really good tenants in our own house, so we don't want to disturb them) and whilst I won't be going back to the farm at milking time, I can continue to stave off boredom with the programme of nettle and thistle spraying that I'm midway through, whilst still social-distancing. I intend digging out the motorbike next week too (it's getting a bit warmer) and see how much time and effort that'll take to get back on the road, assuming of course that it's actually still there, I've not even looked into the garage in more than four years! It was in perfect running order when I parked it in there, but as that was October 2010, I'm not optimistic of it starting with the first press of the button; a new battery's already on order.
Stay safe everyone and hopefully I'll have a photo of a shiny and roadworthy BMW headlining the next Blog.