Back on the hard

Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Sun 15 Mar 2009 01:07
Hi Folks,
 
Well Thursday was the nail bighter as we went to dock down in Opua up the Kawakawa river, the travel lift was on the limit of our weight, which we estimated at 28 tonne light ship, we pumped out all our water, the fuel we had used up on the way down here and only had 450 litre in the day tank, all the cruising gear had been removed, this amounted to 4 cubic metre of store space, I measured the dock width, we slipped in with 4 " / 100mm to spare each side,when they took the load we were pleasantly surprised to find that we weighed in at 23.6 tonne . . .  out we came like a cork from a bottle onto the hard stand, they were very organized and we were jetted off, what a carpet of growth had accumulated in the past three months , oysters, muscles and weed, the copper bott has ceased to work, so this time we will use an anti fouling system International Micron, over the copper bott, the weed and oysters had loosely attached themselves and came off easily, but we have had this problem since Martinique and the frequency of diving to clean the hull is fine in warm tropical waters but a tad more effort if there's only one, and the waters cold ! so we are resigned to going back to anti foul .
Once we were moved to our resting place we were popped into a steel cradle and then we looked over the undersides, they haven't surfaced for 21 months, we were quite impressed with the adhesion of the copper bott though, after at least twelve bum cleans it still looks good under the Velcro blanket .
Anodes were 3/4 depleted and the prop one 1/3 which isn't bad for the last three months in a marina .
So as I tap out the blogg I look down the Kawa kawa river , still a great view but lots of rubbing and scraping to be done before we are back afloat, a new echo sounder to also be fitted, so it will be off with the old one and make a new hole in the hull for the new one.
 
No internet here so I will have to drive to the nearest hot spot or use the sat phone to transmit to you all .
Hope you are all riding the recession well, were are so remote up here it seems as if we are on a different planet  ..
 
The Opua Noah's