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[ Up ] [ Whangarei New Zealand ] [ Cleaning the Boat ] [ Sailing Adventure Begins ] [ Passage to Rarotonga ] [ Rarotonga ] [ Passage & Visit to Aitutaki ] [ Passage to Suvarov ] [ Suvarov Visit ] [ Suvarov to Hawaii ] [ Hawaii ]
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Getting the Captain's boat ready to sail back home to Canada was no easy task. The sail boat had been left unattended for about eighteen months in the
Whangarei Town Basin.
A port hole had been left open allowing in water, which consequentially resulted in mold, mildew & dirt to accumulate on every surface inside the boat. The outside of the boat was also black with dirt & mold.
The inside of the boat was in a complete & utter chaos with "stuff" piled on every available spot. There were no cleaning products or brushes with which to clean the boat properly. There was no hot water. The stove had to
be taken completely out & required two large cans of oven cleaner along with a lot of elbow grease to clean.
It was apparent that it had not been properly cleaned for a very long time. Everything was so filthy that we went through a lot of bleach & cleaning solutions!
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Chaos & mess in cabin & V berth
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Chaos & mess in galley
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Mark starts to clean off bottom
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Will is cleaning/repairing stove. It was taken out to clean properly
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Before the bottom work
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Mark is preparing bottom for repainting
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Day after arriving Will is tired but jumping (lifting) into inspecting top of
mast
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Marilyn helps to scrub the hull
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During our time spent with the Captain we learned why the boat was in such disrepair. For the entire passage from Mexico to New Zealand there was no regular repairs or maintenance done on the boat due to a number of reasons.
One reason was the lack of knowledge of previous crew & other people involved in this boat. The everyday things that needed to be tended to on a boat were not done during the entire passage from Mexico to
New Zealand.
Another reason, upon the Captains' own
admission, was that she did not know a lot about the electrical or mechanical systems on the boat.
She told us that she only had one other crew in her repertoire of 13 crewmembers who knew anything more than she did about boats & sailing. This lack of knowledge resulted in a lot of systems breaking down or not working properly.
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The Captain did not log repair or maintenance items during her passages. Apparently the oil was changed fairly regularly but that was the only thing that we could ascertain had been done.
Although the Captain had a log book on board, it was not a priority to record any repair or maintenance items that were done or needed to be done. Therefore there was no way of telling when any of the systems had last been maintained or repaired.
We kept our own journal of anything that we did on the boat for the entire journey.
Some of the things that were in need of repair would only be discovered once out to sea. And there were many, many things that went wrong on the boat. In fact, almost every system that could go wrong in some way, did!
It is a good thing that Will is capable of repairing & troubleshooting almost everything. He saved the day on more than one occasion.
Will has a motto: "we
make it work" & he really does. If something is
repairable, he will repair it. He proved this time & again with all the things that broke down on this boat. In many cases there were no spare parts & when there were spare parts they were corroded or old parts that should have been thrown out but were stowed away instead.
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Since we keep a very clean & organized boat ourselves I was appalled at the condition of the boat when I saw her. I knew that Will would be of the same opinion: this boat was sadly neglected for a long time. When we told the Captain that we would gladly help get the boat ready for the next leg of her South Pacific Sailing Adventure, we never envisioned the boat to be in such a mess.
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The Captain picked me up at the Whangarei Airport & took me directly to the boat. My heart sank at what I saw! I learned that the boat had only been taken out of the water a couple of hours before my arrival.
Originally we were told the boat would be out of the water about the beginning of February when cleanup & repairs would be started. We were told the reason the boat was left in the water
so long was because it was cheaper to have the boat in the water than on the dry dock at the boat yard. Cleaning the boat while in the water tied to pilings was almost impossible because of having to use the dinghy to get back & forth to shore, never mind the fact that there was no water on board with which to clean anything.
When I saw how dirty the boat was & the complete chaos
& filth inside I knew that our work was definitely cut out for us. Will agreed when he saw the boat, & that was after I had already worked on it for a week.
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The boat was in the boat yard for another week after Will arrived. He started from the bow & worked his way to the stern inspecting, repairing & replacing items as he came upon them. He also did a lot of sorting & organizing of tools, spare parts, etc. as well as cleaning.
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While Will was working around the boat he observed the interaction of the Captain with the worker hired to paint the bottom & polish the hull. It seems that she thought she knew better than him how to do the job so kept interfering in what he was doing. She felt the workers were not going as fast as they could to get the work done & was quite upset if she saw them talking, to me, in particular. At one point she told me to stop talking to the man
& "gossiping about her", because I was slowing down his work &
she was paying him, after all!
The first man ended up leaving & the second one was very glad when he put the last drop of paint on the hull & got his pay &
left. Will tried to assure her that the person she had hired was a skilled Boatwright & trained crafts person & knew what he was doing. He would tell her to "let the man do his job" & attempt to steer her in another direction.
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If we had paid closer attention to her interaction with other people involved in getting her boat ready to sail again we would have clued in to what was to come for us. We were soon to discover that the Captain would question almost everything that either of us did on the boat while cleaning or repairing.
Frustration does not even come close to describing what it was like being around this woman & trying to convince her that we knew what we were doing.
As an example, the boat was in complete & utter
chaos. Spare parts for all the systems on the boat were stored all over the boat. When Will or I needed something & asked her where it might be, she either did not know or would go to several places to find all the pieces that might be necessary to repair the toilet (head) or wind vane, etc.
To find a manual for a particular piece of electronics involved a complete search of the boat to find
it. We did not see this system working very well. After my suggestion that she let me organize, & after her admittance that she did not know how to organize, I went ahead & did major sorting & stowed away spare parts, tools, books, etc. where they would be readily accessible should we need them.
The Captain & I chuckled a bit at her lack of organizational skills when she saw how organized her boat could be after I got finished with it. She told me that she did not know how to organize things & that when she
was small her nanny had tried on more than one occasion to teach her, but, to no avail.
And it proved time & again to be very important to know where things were stored for quick retrieval. There was so much extra space available at the end of the organization that the Captain couldn't believe it. She was even more amazed at the space still left over after storing all the provisions. If she needed something she could find it easily. She commented what a good job we had done. 
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The work that needed to be done on the boat was ongoing. Out of approximately 82 days on board the boat, about 62 of those days Will spent doing repairs. Maintenance was not necessary because the systems broke down before Will could even do any maintenance on them!
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The Captain was quite anxious to get the boat ready & out to sea as soon as possible. You see, she was financially motivated to leave New Zealand waters because her extension to stay in the country was to expire about the end of the May. If she was still in the country she would have to pay thousands of dollars to the New Zealand Government for GST charges. So, the push was on to get things done very
quickly, whether it was done right or not. We felt the pressure of her wanting to leave sooner rather than later. Had she had the boat lifted weeks earlier, like she told us was the plan, the pressure to hurry up & get the job done would not have been as great.
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Monis starting to paint bottom green |
Monis painting |
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From
green bottom paint to.... |
blue paint (couldn't find matching green in N.Z.) |
