Back from Oz

Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sun 6 May 2018 07:35
I told someone recently that we had now been to Australia and they laughed that I should think a week in Sydney would reflect such a vast continent. It doesn’t of course but on a day rail excursion to the Blue Mountains, as we joined the Chinese selfie queues to look at the Three Sisters rocks at Katoomba, we gazed out over the Bush from our cliff top vantage point and had an inkling of just how vast Australia is. There was uninhabited Bush as far as the eye could see and we knew that it stretched for hundreds of miles over the horizon. We were even brave enough to tackle a Bush walk and survived a very enjoyable afternoon without backup anti-venom or serum in case we encountered a brown or tiger snake or death adder as included on the “what to look for” sign.

One could (and many do of course) live very comfortably in Sydney. Our hosts Jenny and John live in Mosman, a leafy waterside suburb 20 minutes from the centre by ferry. Fruit bats roost there at night and eat the bananas in the front garden. Brightly coloured Macaws, parrokeets and magpies provide a raucous dawn chorus. Your boat could be moored in one of the local bays and provided you don’t fall in the harbour or dig up a funnelweb spider in the garden life could be extremely good. However, you would need a highly paid job in the modern city (commercial and business centre) to afford the Londonesque house prices.

Back on board we have been passage planning and come to the conclusion that we will miss too much by trying to get up to Malaysia or Thailand by the end of October. We have therefore decided to concentrate upon Fiji, Vanuatu, Soloman Islands and Papua New Guinea this year before heading across to Australia for the cyclone season. It would be lovely to visit the Gilbert Islands of “Pattern of Islands” but that is probably too big a detour to the north east. Mackay or possibly Brisbane are far enough south to placate our insurers while we visit the UK again.

Boat preparations continue apace (a slow pace that is). The forestay has been taken off for the joints in the genoa foil to be re-glued - in fact just glued as this wasn’t done when installed. As with everything you ask someone to look at on a boat, the last person to install or work on it “didn’t do a proper job”. In this case it was Malo the builder which actually might be true as we have found a few instances of uncharacteristically shoddy workmanship. Had we picked them up during the build it would have been another indication that all was not well with the company. After several years of reduced activity Malo has now become part of the new Sweden Yachts Group and building is underway again. For all its little misdemeanours we love our Malo and are really pleased to see that more are on the way.

The marine engineers had planned to send their apprentice down to investigate our misaligned rope cutter but it seems New Zealand health and safety regulations have intervened. We are due to be lifted out of the water for an hour on Tuesday. Our ever busy rigger needs to get the forestay reinstalled beforehand and no doubt we will go down to the wire on this (I must try journalism next time around).

Whilst in the Canary Islands we had an additional 30m of anchor chain attached to the original 50m. All has been fine and the chain looks still to be in reasonable condition. However, the ‘weak link’ that joins the two lengths is looking very rusty and is probably stainless steel, the chain being galvanised steel. Stainless will rust when in contact with galvanised. I have tracked down a galvanised link that is ‘rated’ for strength and of good quality. Chain links come in two halves that clip together and the fear is that the link will come apart. Received wisdom is that a spot or two of weld is required to prevent this but welding destroys the galvanising. On balance we have opted for some small spots of weld and a painting of cold galvanising. We will also reverse the chain so that the original 50m is attached to the anchor and the link will therefore be submerged less often. We have coloured plastic inserts to put into the links at measured intervals so we will know how much chain has been let out and, piece de la resistance, intercom headsets that will do away with our limited range of hand signals. No more cockpit to bow bad tempered exchanges when the hand signals are not up to the nuances of what is required for anchoring.............

When removing the anchor chain from its locker I was horrified to discover cracks in the floor of the locker. Thinking this might be compromising the structural integrity of the boat and/or be allowing water to penetrate the hull I investigated further. Fortunately it looks like the bottom of the locker has been infilled after the hull was moulded so I have ground the cracks wider and infilled with epoxy and hope that all will be well(!).


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