Queens birthday weekend

We took advantage of the long weekend and headed north up to Pittwater. 

Leaving Saturday morning there was a reasonable SE swell left over from the stormy week past. As a precaution Liz and the kids took their sea sickness tablets and the results were great with no one suffering. One side effect is that they get very drowsy and within 30 minutes I was the only person onboard awake. First the kids jumped on their beanbags in the cockpit and fell asleep. This was shortly followed by Liz dozing off as well. Leaving me to look after the boat.  We've found the beanbags to be perfect for the kids to find a comfortable spot in all conditions. Below is a photo I snuck while everyone one was asleep. Olivia in the foreground and William firmly packed in between the cockpit table and seat. 

All this sleep happening while the boat was motor sailing along at 8.3 knots. Very relaxing. 

 We spend Saturday night at the Basin and then Sunday night around at refuge bay. Two of the highlights were

1. Teaching Olivia and William to make mud castles as a change from the regular sand castles. here Olivia is shoing off her tower made from sand / water droplets.

2. Teaching the kids how to catch nippers (yabbies) with the nipper pump. William was a natural at holding the sieve and Olivia was a great spotter. No one but me was game to pick them up for the transfer into the bucket.

The sunset on Sunday night was fantastic and I have to share it.

We all had a great time.

Now for some technical information

The solar panels are working great but with the overcast weather only provided 30 amps per day. We were using 60 to 100 amps per day. The alternator was playing up again and we couldn't charge the house batteries. The regulator is the cause this time. We came home with the batteries at 40% having used about 260 amps for the weekend. So sorting out the alternator regulator and adding the extra 400watts of solar angels should be able to cover our power needs.

A Bimini and Dodger are a must after sitting out in the rain on our return trip to Sydney harbour. It wasn't fun standing out there watching Liz and the kids being so warm inside. Having shelter from the rain would have made it a little more bearable. I must be getting soft!

Water consumption is a problem for our family. We are averaging 90 litres per day so with our 660 litres we will be filling up every 7 or so days. Not so good if you want to visit remote locations in the South Pacific. We need to work on reducing this or I need to get a water maker.

A little break to Thailand

Liz and I managed to get away to Thailand in Feb. It was originally going to be tacked on to a work conference I was attending. Spending cuts cancelled the conference but we decided it would be a good break and chance to see one of our potential cruising grounds.

We spent a week exploring Phuket Island and had a great time enjoying the people, sites and especially the food.

Here are some of our fav photos from the trip

This place looked very touristy but wasn't like the main beaches. It was a small lagoon leading into the bay

An Update on the project list

We are getting a bit slack on posting updates but here is a new one.

Well i can now say that we have achieved a number of the listed tasks since the original post in November last year. Some were straight forward and others a learning experience.

Here is the original list that we came up with. I've added in the current comments in italics with images when I remembered to take the photos.

1. Replace the hatch just in front of the mast as the Perspex is broken along the support hinge. Unfortunately this was not picked up in the survey as it had been covered by grip tape. It was a rude surprise to find the bedding soaked the first time we left the boat without the bow cover on. 

This task was achieved relatively easily once i was able to source a replacement hatch at a reasonable price. Locally the hatches retail for $700+, with a little searching on the Internet I was able to sort a replacement for $420 plus shipping. I combined the shipping with a list of optimist dinghy parts we required and ended up paying significantly less than the local source. The actual replacement was a fairly straight  forward job of about 3 hours all up.

2. Re-bed the stanchions. There are signs of leaks from these and we have confirmed at least one to be dripping when it rains. 

We turned this job into an all weekend exercise by combining it with a recaulk of the teak deck. Wehad managed to get a weekend without the kids. The stanchion rebedding went very well with the help of Liz and the caulking not so well as we made a few beginner errors. We've now learnt the importance of removing all of the previous calk as the old and new do not stick to each other. Luckily we had only done about 20% of the job before realising this. The good news is it allowed us to determine the right process to follow.. Ie. fill the void with a bead that is about 2 to 3 mm above the groove. This then shrinks during curing. Use a sharp chisel blade to shave off the excess calk and then sand down to the correct height. It is very important to use low shrinkage caulking. The image below shows a section where we had flattened down the caulk prior to curing. This is not the best way to do this and requires a lot of sanding.

Needless to say the recalking is still a work in progress.

3. Convert our walker bay dinghy to be a sailing dinghy. There is a sailing kit available for about $1000 but I have decided to rig it with optimist gear so that the kids are familiar with the optimist rig, when and if they choose to race. It will also stow more neatly. 

Job completed

4. Purchase and install a solar system. I'm thinking 800 to 1000 watts should be enough. This should equate to about 180 amps per day based on 40% production for 4 hrs and then 80% for the remaining 4 hrs per day. Using a worse case scenario of 8 hr long days.

We were able to complete this job in February with the help of a gift from my grandmother Betty. It was the perfect contribution to the boat. We purchased a 60 Amp MPPT charger and two 200w solar panels. In reality with this configuration we are able to get 110 Amps on a good day. This easily keeps up with our needs at anchor and we only run the engine for hot water or on a cloudy day. If we were to go to 800w we would have no need to run the engine.

5. Repair or replace the hatch for the sail locker in the bow. It is leaking in the rain so I can only imagine how bad it would be in the ocean with waves crashing over it. The frame seems to be bowed so the seal is poor. Maybe I can use the parts from item 1 to repair the bow locker hatch. Mmmmm?

This was a very easy repair and involved shaping the hatch back to a flat profile from the current bow that was the result of the hatch being pushed back over the inner forstay mount.

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