Back on the hard
Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Sun 15 Mar 2009 01:07
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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
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