Saturday, March 26, 2022

Haul Out: 2022

[Kyle]Seven short months after our big haulout at The Boat Works, we were back again for another. We didn’t really need one, but the lockdowns are ending and the world is slowly reopening for travel. We suspect it won’t be long before the Australian Border Force clears its backlog and starts issuing visas with end dates in the near future. We also had a few tweaks needed to some of the repairs done last year at the same place so it made sense to haul out here again.

Last year’s bottom paint was still looking as unblemished as ever, but it would not likely make it another year and a half until we have time to redo it again, so we decided to top up with a few coats now to tide us over until then.

There were a few things that needed to be addressed since our last stem-to-stern refit last year. Since The Boat Works is probably the southern hemisphere’s best boatyard, dealing with all of the trades-folk could be done quickly and on-site while we waited for the paint to dry between coats. We could also use the yard’s courtesy cars for a big provision and drive the load right up to the boat, which is even easier than being in a marina and way easier than anchoring out.

Like these things always go, as soon as we started dismantling things, we found even more that we originally decided to deal with. The worst of these, time-wise, was a disintegrating shim on one of our props. It’s a fairly minor part, but it has to be ordered from Germany and installed by a qualified technician who, of course, had a backlog, but was nice enough to squeeze us in once the part arrived.

That pretty much dictated our timetable, since it delayed our splash date by another week. We had to do stuff every day, but not all day. We only used every photon of sunlight a day offered one time. The rest of the work, we were able to do on an eight to four or five o’clock schedule.



Hard at work for a few weeks in the yard again

Just as we were winding down and looking forward to three easy half-days before going in the water, I went up the mast to have a good close look at the rigging to see how it had fared during that horrible sail up the coast from the Southport entrance. There, I found two broken strands on our starboard shroud, just outside the terminal swage. Damn! This is bad. I could make up a replacement with our spare, but then we would have no spare. {All our rigging was new in Dec 2021, professionally inspected in July 2022, and regularly checked over by Kyle, so this was quite a surprise – and exactly why we regularly inspect it ourselves.}.

On the off chance that they weren’t totally backlogged, I went to the rigger at Everything Marine and asked if there was any chance they could help. The guy said he was busy until the end of next month, but if I could take the shroud off and bring it in, he would try to make a replacement in between other jobs. Great! And, I guess my other jobs for the day will have to wait.

When I got the old shroud off and took it in, we were keen to get an understanding of why the fault had occurred on such new rigging (that had been professionally inspected after our Tweed Heads incident). It was all double-checked and measured and determined that the wire had been over-swaged. For those that aren’t really into rigging, a swage is basically a tube of stainless steel into which the wire is inserted. That tube is then squished down onto the wire until it is held with considerable pressure, creating friction with the wire. If the swage is not squeezed hard enough, the wire can slip out. If it is squeezed too tight, the wire strands can be fractured, weakening them. The manufacturer of the swaging machine that does this squishing publishes a table of acceptable post-squish dimensions. Ours was below the lower limit, thus over-swaged.

Well, it was good to know the wire, which was installed new fifteen months earlier in Exmouth, was not faulty. The bad thing, of course was that all of the other wires were installed at the same time using the same swaging machine. Back up the mast I went (which is now held up by only two wires and a couple of rope halyards). With calipers in hand, I carefully measured all of the remaining swages and radioed the numbers down to Maryanne. She diligently recorded them and compared them with the relevant tables. After triple and quadruple-checking everything, we determined that all of the other wires on the mast, including the three that don’t hold it up, but keep it in column, plus the martingale on the forward beam, were within tolerance. Only the starboard shroud was a problem.

This was good news because there were a few tense hours there where we thought we may have to replace all of the standing rigging again, which really would delay us for months (let alone another huge unexpected expense). We emailed our last rigger in Perth. We got the expected responses: We don’t know how to properly use calipers. Our calipers are cheap crap. The rigger at Everything Marine is probably using worn-out calipers that are also cheap and that he also doesn’t know how to use. Only his calipers are the gold standard of all calipers. We can’t possibly know what we’re doing. Okay, but three different sets of calipers used by four different people came up with the same result, and two strands in that swage lasted only 7% of their normal service life. Well, at least we now know one new thing to check the next time, which will hopefully be the next decade.

Well, a huge thanks to Everything Marine. The rigger didn’t have a blank swage with our pin size, so he picked one up on his way home from work. He had the completed shroud ready to be picked up seventeen hours after I first darkened his door with a problem, which is only about an hour longer than the shop was closed for the night. We were impressed and grateful.

Since we were generally only slightly completely exhausted at the end of each day of boat jobs, Maryanne made a point of reserving the courtesy car quite frequently (especially over night), with the aim of making sure we were well and truly struggling to keep our eyes open by the time we crawled into our berth.


Unexpected treats: a gift basket from Kate, and sunset in the yard.

Mostly, we snuck off for a bit of fun. Matthew, a young American man, visiting/working on a Backpacker visa, befriended us after happening upon Begonia while she was moored at Constitution Dock in Hobart in February 2020. When we arrived in Queensland this year, he sent us a message saying that he was now living on the Gold Coast. Could we meet up? Well, certainly! We invited him to the Wednesday Trivia Night at The Boat House pub and he responded by inviting us to Trivia Night at the RSL in Surfer’s Paradise.

Matt is a good guy to have on your team. He’s intelligent and well educated, and as such has a brain full of all sorts of obscure information (and especially good with movie and pop-music dates). Along with Dick from Maia, who was also at The Boat Works, we won First Prize the first week. Usually that honor goes to big teams with many brains, but we managed to beat out both of the perennial teams who are always swapping first and second. We managed to do it one more time and usually did well enough for the prizes to at least partly cover our costs for the evening.

Matthew even swung by the boat one day, asking to be put to work. We tried not to abuse him too much, but his extra pair of hands was most useful when it came time to dismantle our wind turbine. The yaw bearing had seized during the deluge we encountered while sailing up the outside of Moreton Island. Thus, it no longer pointed into the wind and it had to be taken apart so the bearing could be replaced.

Our wedding anniversary also occurred during the haulout (Anniversary #19!), so we took a weekend away to rent a house on a hill with a view, which we used as a base for many rejuvenating walks in the woods. Additionally we FINALLY got some quality time with Jan and Richard of Morpheus of London, some dining at Hope Island Marina and even a trip to a return to the Mt Nathan winery.



A weekend away to Lamington National Park (and surrounds) was a perfect escape
With lots of tea shops and scenic walks (and the Mt Nathan winery for a generous tasting).


Wine tasting with Morpheus, and visiting Surfers' Paradise to meet with Matt (and friends) for a weekly "Trivia night" all helped sweeten our time in the yard

Once the new shroud was installed, I was finally able to turn my attention to replacing our trampoline. After 6½ years and 52,000 miles, it had finally come time to replace it. Lashing the new one on is not particularly difficult, but it is time consuming. I managed to get it finished right at dusk on the last night before we went back in the water. Then I had one last go over the freshly tidied interior with our shop-vac and we were finally ready to be set free.

We then had an afternoon at a dock, which we used to fill our water tanks, do one last load of laundry and pressure wash the decks clean of the ubiquitous black boatyard dust. We got one last takeout pizza from the excellent place opposite The Boat House pub and we were finally ready to resume cruising.

Sunday, March 06, 2022

Coomera River

[Kyle]We didn’t quite get as much time at slipping Sands as my back needed, but we had a day of tailwinds coming up, so we decided to take advantage of it to get us to Coomera (where we'd be hauling out the following week)..

The first part went great. We joined the ebb and with one engine and a bit of sail in the light winds, we shot away from the anchorage at seven knots. That lasted until we turned the corner just inside the Jumpinpin Bar. Since we were now going away from the bar, we were now fighting the ebb. Our speed dropped to almost nothing. Since the ebb would be decreasing soon and since there was no point burning fuel to stay in one place, I shut down the engine. The wind was now pushing us at four knots against a 3.6 knot current, leaving us with a speed over the bottom of about a boat length per minute.

Anchored off of the port side of the channel was a monohull. We snuck up on them silently. They were in a narrow section of water, so the closer we got to them, the faster the current ran. We were now going backward in lulls and forward in puffs. As we approached, I was about to go on deck and introduce myself, followed by a longish conversation as we sailed in formation with them.

Just then, my brother called (from the USA). He is still dealing with Mom’s estate, so I devoted my attention to him. That made me the weird guy sitting at the helm and talking on the phone while being too close for the other boat’s privacy. I turned five degrees right, which gradually eased us sideways toward the navigation buoy on the starboard side of the channel. The current was stronger there, but there was also a little more wind, so we were still going nowhere.

Half an hour later, after enjoying a particularly nice spell of wind, we had finally crept abeam the other boat. It seemed to be occupied by a couple, like we were. Both of them had occasionally come on deck to check on laundry drying on their lifelines and to offer a wave. This time, the guy went forward and hoisted a spinnaker sock. Oh, no!

We were still technically behind them when they pulled up their anchor, eased forward 3/8ths of a mile and dropped it again. The current started to drop and we crept forward. There, we entered the wind shadow of a stand of trees, which slowed us down and we backed into our original spot. Well, I’m pretty sure this is the first time we have ever lost a race to an anchored boat.

The ebb decreased a bit, which finally let us crawl to a wider, slower part of the current. Half an hour later, we were finally abeam the other boat and moving smartly at half a knot. Then the guy came on deck. I thought they were going to get underway again, but then he dropped the spinnaker sock.

Oh, this guy is crafty! 80% of anchored boat racing strategy is knowing how to play the psychological game. As we rounded the next corner, I was half expecting them to lift their anchor again, unfurl their spinnaker and go rocketing past us, but they never did. We might have actually won that one.

The rest of our trip was uneventful. Not just uneventful, but TOO uneventful. Because of the floods and all of the floating debris, and probably also because of the occasional rain, everybody was staying put. This area is usually lousy with jet skis, speed boats and all of the traffic going to and from Australia’s three biggest boatyards. For the whole afternoon after the race, we saw only two tinnies, each with a diehard fisho at the bow. The quiet was a little eerie for such a normally busy area.

We finally anchored in a wide spot in the river right opposite The Boat Works. We got some debris there, but it was all moving by slowly enough to bump its way by without hurting anything. We have some prep to do for our haulout, but the idea is to spend most of the time resting so that my back will be ready for the yard once we lift out.


We were safely anchored well in time for the days of rain and lightning storms
The picture of Begonia with a rainbow was kindly taken by Eva Oldfield

Wednesday, March 02, 2022

Sand Hills to Slipping Sands

[Kyle]We really were hoping for a rest and recovery day or two after the awful (with one good day!) passage from Tasmania. In the darkness before dawn, we were awakened by a change in Begonia’s motion. The wind was blowing us toward shore and the waves were getting bigger. We needed to rub the sleep out of our eyes and get moving.


We got a bit of rest at Sand Hills before having to change anchorages

Again, our timing was wrong, the ebb was about to start, but the last half of the flood would be in darkness, so we would just have to put up with it. The strongest winds wouldn’t be until tomorrow. For now, we had a little bit of a lull, so we decided to just motor for ten hours and see how far we get.


With the recent storms and rains, there were a few unexpected items where they shouldn't be)


Otherwise, it was a nice passage

With the help of a little jib every now and then when the angle was right, we made it all of the way to Slipping Sands before it was time to throw in the towel. Slipping Sands has no real fetch from any direction, so even in big winds, we would be secure for a couple of days. My back was really killing me, so I was looking forward to a couple of extra hours in bed each morning.


We caught up with some rest at Slipping Sands, waiting for the winds to pass