Category Archives: Repairs

Bare Bones: A Dirty Job

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Time to get the boat ready for many projects which means taking her back to the bare bones which is a very dirty job.

Preparing Our Bottom

The first thing we did was pressure wash or waterblast the bottom of the boat.  This knocks off the first layer of muck that might have accumulated since our last cleaning.  Then the sanding begins and this is a dirty job!

Norsand Boatyard assigned Jamie, a 19 year old laborer to the task.  He worked very hard removing our bottom paint over 4.5 days. Lucky for him we only had 2 layers of bottom paint and then the primer to remove.  Had we done this 3 years ago he would have had to get through 20 years of bottom paint, layered over and over itself.  It takes Jamie about one full day to do half of the hull.

Jamie sands the top layer of black, then blue, then the army green barrier coat to get to the white/grey shown below.

Not a Good Sign

Two years ago we sanded down the bottom to the original barrier coat.  However, this time we sanded down further.  We have never sanded down this far and several things shocked and dismayed us!  

The first thing we discovered was that we have a few small areas on each bow with osmosis!  Basically water engress which is never a good thing.  We will certainly have to address this and repair it before we apply the new primer for the coppercoat.

Repairs to the Bones

In order to properly fix the osmosis areas Ben comes in to grind the fiberglass back to a healthy state.  I absolutely hated to see him grind out the fiberglass, but it is what you have to do. 

Ben grinds out every spot, hairline crack, and problem area.  Then meticulously fills them, sands them, and fills and sands them again.  Because our boat was made with vinyl luster that is what he used to fill all the areas in (as opposed to epoxy).

Filler is added to all of the areas and then sanded down.  In some instances he had to go back multiple times to add more filler in order to get the proper results.

Losing Our Minds

For the past 13 years Matt and I have been baffled by the starboard waterline.  For some reason, the waterline on the inside of the starboard hull was always lower which would indicate there is too much weight on that side of the boat.  So, we were constantly moving things to the center of the boat or to the port side to raise the water line.  

Little did we know that the boat was not unevenly weighted down.  The waterline was way off!  In fact it was 3-4″ shorter than its sister side!  What the heck?  So we borrow a digital laser level from the yard.  Matt sets it up where the front of the bow and that back of the boat are even and then draws a line between the two.

It is rather remarkable how uneven both sides are.  We think the original owner used a string and when pulled tight dips in the center.  This would explain how the bow and the stern were even but the center dips into a low “U.”  The bottom two photos show you the exact same spot on port and starboard — see the difference?

The good news is it can easily be fixed.  We will mark the new waterline and sand the gelcoat to match the bottom.

Removing the Daggerboards

In the 13 years that we have owned Sugar Shack we have never removed our dagger boards.  We love to use them, but why remove them?  Well for one thing they are stupid expensive, like $8000 euro each!  But we needed to sand off the bottom paint and apply our coppercoat – so out they came.

We used the spin halyard to hoist them and with Matt on the ground and me on the wench we slowly got each board to the ground.  These suckers are HEAVY and huge!  They measured 15′ tall.

If you dig deep enough you will find more problems.  We found a few issues with the dagger board casings.  We stuck our faces below the hole and looked up and to our surprise we found osmosis inside.  Unfortunately there is not much we can do as it is a very tiny and narrow space prohibiting tools from getting up in there.  We do make small repairs at the opening (right photo) as far up as we can go.

On the port rudder shaft there are two small repairs that we have to make. One is a crack at the opening of the casing (top photo) and the other is a bubble that sticks out enough to mark the shaft.

In upcoming blog posts we strip all of the graphics (stripes, logos, designs) off the boat.  The cover photo is when Sugar Shack is truly bare bones.

Frankly, I am surprised at all that we found once we took our boat down to the bare bones.  It was a truly dirty job in my ways than one, but certainly worth it to get her back to tip top shape.  Now we are ready to being the coppercoat process.

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  The events in this blog post occured in early November.  In our last blog we share what Life is Like on the Hard.

Life on the Hard: Boatyard Projects

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We haul out Sugar Shack at Norsand Boatyard to complete lots and lots of boat projects.  The plan was to be “on the hard” for 5-6 weeks but a lot of projects have to be done in sequential order and cannot be done simultaneously.  We started booking contractors and work back in May to ensure that we could get all of the work done and be back in the water before Christmas.  Several blog posts will come out about this journey.

Last season in New Zealand we were able to complete a lot of upgrades, maintenance jobs, repairs, and a few miscellaneous projects.  We were tied to the dock at Town Basin Marina for almost 8 months where we upgraded to lithium batteries, repaired our salon window seals, replaced our main sail and genoa, replaced our dinghy and dinghy chaps, had a new cockpit enclosure made, new interior and exterior fabric for our cushions, new ceiling panels, new LED light fixtures, and new stainless counter tops and sink.  It was a lot!  (to read more about these upgrades, search our website for the specific blog post or click on the above links.

Hauling out

Hauling out and splashing always makes my heart race.  So many things can go wrong and yet we’ve been blessed with excellent workers at each yard.  We had a late haul out because we had to wait for high tide which was 4:00pm on our scheduled date.  We arrived and found the dock empty (which evidently was not normal).  The slipway manager was busy swapping trailers and we came in a smidge early so lucky for us another cruiser met us at the jetty to grab our lines. (top photo).  I was afraid I’d have to prove my non-existent Texas skills by lassoing the pilon.

Norsand Jetty

Norsand Jetty

Kevin, the slipway manager and Shane arrive and slowly walk Sugar Shack down the slip toward the ramp.  Another two workers showed up to toss us lines for the starboard side.  Once secured, Kevin rows a dinghy out to measure the exact placement of the trailer.

They use a large tractor to push the trailer into the water.  It has to be lined up right down the center of the boat.

They expertly manuever the trailer under our boat, without incident.  Once the trailer is in place, Kevin rows his boat out again to use the trailer’s controllers to set the supports on our bulk heads (the strongest part of the boat).  It is a slow, tediuous process, but we don’t rush them.   Slow is pro!

Coming Out of the Water

Once the boat is secured onto the trailer she is slowly pulled out of the water.  

Kevin and Shane blocked us on the trailer for the night right at the top of the slipway and smack dab in the middle of the yard.  Hello Norsand, Sugar Shack has arrived!

The Projects Begin Before We Are Even Blocked

The following projects are started early the next morning, before we are moved to our parking spot.

  • Removed both rudders (the original starboard rudder and the temproary rudder)
  • Removed both props
  • Removed both saildrives (this is done by Whangarei Marine as they will service them)
  • Evaluated our vinyl/stickers with Vital Signs and he shows us how to remove them

We are moved and blocked later that afternoon.  Not sure how he is able to squeeze us in between these other two boats, but he does with no problems.

Thank Goodness We Are Not This Wide

There was a trimaran that had been in the yard for 25 months!  She had a lot of work done and was finally going back in the water.  The problem was she is too wide to go down the slipway so they have to brining  a 90-ton crane to lift her up and over into the water.  

It was remarkably fast and effecient.  The yard did a tremendous job and truly was due to the expertise of the slipway team with Kevin at the lead.  The crane arrived around 8:30am and was done by 11:30am!

Boat Yard Projects:

We have scheduled a lot of boat projects with the yard, including:

  1. Haul out / Splash
  2. Waterblast
  3. Copper coat bottom (sanding down bottom paint, applying primer & copper coat)
  4. Re-Seal the deck and hull joint around the entire boat
    • In the end, we also resealed the starboard large hatch, both helm seats & stations, both davits, the bimini.
    • We also resealed / caulked the new ceiling panels in all 3 cabins, master bath. Caulked the salon around the new counter tops & around the nav station.
  5. Gelcoat repairs
    • Below the waterline: repaired small osmosis areas, small cracks, dagger boards, and sail drive casings
    • Above the waterline: both hulls had previous repairs that no longer matched the surrounding gelcoat so we blended them better; 2 small areas at starboard bow
    • Sugar scoops: both sugar scoops around cleats, steps, and by waterline
    • Deck: Port bow filled holes from old cleat, cockpit, filled crack on hatch, both entries at sugar scoop filled holes from old barrier (water stop barriers)
    • Inside: a few of our bulk heads had small hairline cracks that we reinforced and re-glassed
  6. Wash, wax, polish
  7. Prop-speed on the props

Outside Contractor Projects: Outside of the boatyard staff:

  1. Canvas: Kim is coming back to give us phifertex side panels for the cockpit enclosure and new phifertex and sauleda window covers for the salon.
  2. Whangarei Marine removed our props and saildrives.  We are replacing the bellows, clamp rings, o-rings, and seals on both saildrives.  Huge . They also sleeved, turned, polished the wear marks on the saildrive shafts and lapped the starboard cone.  An big and expensive job.
  3. Vital Signs is replacing all of our vinyl graphics, stickers, logos on the boat.  
  4. Aakron Express is repairing our EVA/non-skid which came up on the interior floor of our dinghy
  5. RH PRecision is making our new rudder shafts, then we will take them to Alert Anodising to anodise them.
  6. New custom fit rudders are being built.
  7. Denray Marine will service our liferaft and 4 of our PFDs
  8. Nautilus Braids will provide us with new main sheets, spin halyard, reefing line, Oh $hit line (hand hold off bimini), and a roll of dynema
  9. Cleigh Ltd, Matthew Duckett will install a new 220v inverter/charger.

Matt and Christine’s Projects

  1. Remove all vinyl stickers, logos and adhesive (5+ days)
  2. Replace anchor chain markers indicating length (every 10m) and clean 100m of stainless chain (3-5 days_
  3. Install heater port heater
  4. Install 12v Inverter/charger, Matt assisted with wires, breaker, installation
  5. Varnish hand rails along cabin top, flag pole, hand holds in cockpit, helm seats, princess seats, flag pole, bimini rails (all 4 sides), princess seats, and wench handle holder
  6. Clean and polish all interior wood
  7. Polish all stainless
  8. Replace window screens
  9. Repair utensil drawer 
  10. Repair wood along aft bimini (wood glue)
  11. Repair, paint, seal starboard head ceiling (5 panels have chipped paint on fiberglass)
  12. Repair 3 steps on both both sugar scoops (teak work)
  13. Sewing projects (probably won’t get to): new fender covers, new cockpit table cover, new cockpit pockets, new recycle bags, new man over board cover, new outboard cover

As you can see we are doing a LOT of work.  And it is putting my project management skills to the test!  We are hoping to get all of this done within 5 weeks!

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts on building new rudders, coppercoat (bottom job), vinyl stickers, gel coat repairs, and canvas work.

The cover photo is Sugar Shack after removing her stickers and her bottom paint.  That is our NZ car that we bought last season and are tooling around this season (BMW 330i with 20k miles that we bought for $3850!)  What a deal!  We will sold it for the same price after we splashed back into the water.

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog happened the 2nd week of November 2023.  Did you catch our Christmas in Whangarei blog where I bake over 800 cookies and ring the bell until it upset the Mayor?

Damaged Rudder Shaft with broken tines

An Utter Rudder Disaster

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We thoroughly enjoed our solitude at Minerva Reef but it was time to make a move for Tonga.  Our weather forecaster told us that a rather large weather system was coming and that we should leave for a more sheltered anchorage.  Why do you ask?  Well we were currently anchored at Minerva Reef which is not sheltered at all, there is no protection from the receeding reef that disappears twice a day at high tide.  We had a somewhat “decent” weather window to make the 2-2.5 day passage.  It is during this passage that we had an utter rudder disaster.

Weather Window

When we look at weather to make a passage we take into account several factors using 4 different weather models and a professional weather router.  We look at wind speed, wind direction, cape, rain, swell size, and swell direction.

During this particular weather window we had good winds, no cape, and no rain.  However, we did have big 3m seas coming from the rear quarter panel.  This sucks as seas can make your trip very uncomfortable.  But, we needed to leave for a protected anchorage so we took this window.

I should note here that the passage from New Zealand to Minerva had pretty rough seas as well.  During that 6 day passage we had 2.5-3.5m seas the entire time.  That is a lot of bashing on the boat for a long period.  But we made it to Minerva and all was ‘”fine.”

Passage: Minerva to Tonga

You probably read about this passage while we were actually underway as Matt was writing “live blogs.”  But to summarize, we had decent weather for the first 1.5 days.  The seas were big, 3m, but they came in long increments and were not too choppy.

However, after that we encountered messy, choppy seas that made it feel like we were inside a washer machine.  The boat was banging all over the place and it was very uncomfortable.

Auto is Failing

Around 9:30pm, Matt woke me to help him steer the boat.  What?  We have auto for that.  Auto Pilot is our automatic steering system which we rely on a lot during passages.  Consider it like “cruise control” in your car.

In big seas auto has a hard time steering the boat because the boat comes out of the water. With the big seas and strong winds the boat was wanting to head into the wind so Auto was having to constantly overcorrect by turning to port.  But at this time, Auto was going every which was and not holding course at all.  In fact, at one point, we were going backwards. This is when I took over hand steering as Matt adjusted the sails.

Matt and I worked on sail congifuration for 1.5 hours trying to figure out what was wrong with Auto.  We finally settled on no main, a small double reefed jib and the engine.  This was the only way to control steering and we still had 88nm (12hrs) to get to the channel in Tonga.

Keep in mind that it was pitch black outside, no moon, big seas, and the boat is moving  6-7kts.  Matt checked the engine rooms to see if everything was ok with the rudders, but you can only see the top portion, and that looked good.  You can’t see under the boat in these conditions.

We are missing what?

At dawn, we approached the Tonga channel.  The winds had calmed down to a respectable 17-18kts and the seas were down to 1.5m.  Matt went to the starboard sugar scoop and looked across to the port side and realized we were missing a rudder!  Are you freakin kidding me?

Nothing we can do until we drop the hook so we continued on to the anchorage where we needed to clear into the country.  Lucky for us, the officials allowed us to anchor outside the basin because we could not manuever around the small basin with only one rudder and limited steerage.  We picked the officials up in our dinghy, did the paperwork on the boat, and then returned them to shore.

While in Raitea, French Polynesia we removed both rudders.  This is what the rudder should look like:

Assessing the Damage

Once we cleared into the country we were allowed to jump in the water to evaluate the damage.  There are multiple parts to a rudder….

  • The shaft is about 6′ in length and goes up into the engine compartment and down below the boat.
  • Tines or Fingers:  There are 3 tines or fingers on the shaft below the boat.  They are supposed to be long where they are perpindicular to the shaft jetting out in front and behind the shaft.  They help support and enforce the blade.
  • Rudder blade made of fiberglass

This is what was left of our rudder:

As you can see from the above photo, we are missing the rudder blade completely and each of the 3 tines are damaged.  But the good news is that shaft is intact!

Humanity Restored

As we are motoring into the anchorage I am emailing people for help.  We met the owner of the one and only yard in Tonga (Vava’u The Boatyard) and we met the yard manager for Vuda Marina in Fiji during a conference in Auckland.  It pays to network.

We also posted our problem on our blog and the emails, texts, and calls came flooding in.  I cannot tell you how much love we felt during this difficult time.  We had cruisers from NZ, Fiji, Tonga, French Polynesia, and Cook Islands, asking us how they can help.  It was inspiring and amazing – thank you everyone.

Repair Options

We have a few options…

  1. Tonga: Vava’u The Boatyard is a 1-2 day sail from our current location.  We met the owner/manager at the conference and he has been of great assistance.  They can rebuild our rudder using our good working rudder as a mold.  The problem is that the yard is stretched thin and could not start work for 3 weeks and the entire project could take 6-8 weeks for a total of up to 11 weeks on the hard.  We only have a 4 week tourist visa.
  2. Fiji: Vuda Marina and South Pacific Fiberglass.  We met the manager of Vuda Marina at the same conference and he had some great advice.  He recommended two contractors to rebuild the rudder: South Pacific Fiberglass and Prasaads Marine.  Both companies provided feedback, but South Pacific Fiberglass was more specific about cost and turn around.  They can build the rudder in 10-14 days.  But they are in Fiji and we are a 4-5 day sail from there. (1-2 days to North Tonga, then 2-3 days from N. Tonga to Fiji).

6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon

3. New Zealand:  Try to follow along with this networking connection.  A fellow cruiser, Jef in NZ heard about our rudder loss and reached out to us.  Jef informed us that he replaced both of his rudders using Peter Palmer at Norsand and RH Precision in Whangarei.  

We met Peter, who is another cruiser, last season in Fiji.  Peter works part-time at Norsand in NZ which is the yard that will be hauling us out in Nov.2023.  He used to manage the yard before he decided he wanted to cruise with his family 6-months of the year.  We reached out to Peter and he said that there might be a spare rudder from Sel Citron, a Catana 52 in the yard.  So, Peter told us to contat Norsand and ask them to track down this rudder.

We met Sel Citron last season in Whangarei.  We reached out to him to ask about this rudder as well.  The rudder was replaced on Sel Citron before the new owner, Dan took over Sel Citron, but he gave us permission to take and use the old rudder.

And to our great joy, the yard found it.  Unfortunately it is not in great condition, but it is better than what we have which is nothing.  They sent the measurements of the shaft, tines, and rudder and we compared it to our rudder.

Unfortunately it is not an exact match and it is a different shape but it is completely workable.

The Plan

We measured our one good rudder and compared it to the measurements of Sel Citron’s rudder and it can work.  We asked Norsand Yard in NZ to look into shipping costs to get the rudder from NZ to Fiji.  Shipping items to Tonga is rumored to be extremely difficult, expensive, and time consuming.  We decided to have it shipped to Fiji where the resources are more plentiful.

We will use Sel Citron’s rudder to get us back to NZ and then we will either have two new rudders made in NZ or we will ship in two new rudders from Europe.

The yard miraculously found a cruiser (Andreas on Seven Seas) who was leaving Norsand bound for Fiji within a few days.  They loaded up our temporary rudder and delivered it to Fiji for us.  Andreas was headed to Musket Cove (and we were still in Vanua Balavu).  So we asked Andreas to give the rudder to our friend Chris on Sea Glub.

This is a huge favor, but know that curisers do this all the time for other cruisers.  In fact we are caring a generator, outboard, and spare parts for 4 other boats right now. So, it’s nice to know that we all pay it foward.

The Spare Rudder

We arrive to Musket Cove and pick up our “spare rudder” from our friend Chris.  As luck would have it, Peter (from Norsand) is here on his boat Camara.  Peter is a master fiberglass professional.  He came over and both he and Matt determined the shaft on the rudder is not long enough.  What we had hoped would be a plug and play situation now became surgery.

The top shaft (big aluminium post) is our current rudder shaft and it is about 4″ longer than the spare rudder post (making it so the holes don’t align).

We have to put the spare rudder in place to determine how much of the blade has to be removed in order to get the shaft in place.  Peter jumps in the water while Matt goes in the engine room.  Once the rudder is in place, Peter scores the blade to mark where he has to cut.  This will help in two ways. One it will allow us to push the shaft higher into the engine room (allowing us to use 3 of the 4 holes) and we can cut the top of the shaft to fit the curve of our boat.

Another blessing is that the rudder blade is shorter than our current blade, but it is wider.  So even when we cut the blade (making it smaller) it will still have the same surface space as our existing rudder.

Fun Fact:

Our rudder floats.  In order for us to get the rudder into place we have to put 40lbs wieghts onto it to sink it.

Altering The Spare to Fit

Another blessing: we are at Musket Cove where Peter knows the owner (we know Will, the owner, too, but not nearly as well as Peter does).  We are able to utilize his workshop to alter our spare rudder.

Peter marks the rudder indicating where he is going to cut the blade.  The top part of the blade (near the shaft) was nearly touching the bottom of our hull (which is not good).  So, he is cutting more off that end than the back end.

After the blade is cut he has to sand down the fiberglass on the sides so he can apply new fiberglass across the cut top.

The next day, the fiberglass has dried and he applies a fairing and barrier coat.  Then we have to hunt for anitfoul paint to seal it all up.  The cruising community is so generous to us as we are able to find it for free.  It doesn’t match anything but it works.  The right photo shows the newly completed and fitted rudder.

Peter brings the rudder back to Sugar Shack.  Matt adds the weights to sink it, added shims/spacers, and easily installed the rudder in less than 30 minutes.

We are officially a two rudder boat again.

How Does Sugar Shack Sail with one Rudder?

Because we are a catamaran, we have almost two of everything.  On the one hand it is good as it acts as a spare, but on the other hand it is bad as we have to buy and maintain two of everything.

But in the case of our missing rudder, the one working rudder got a true work out.  We sailed over 1,000nm on one rudder – how did we do it?  We had to learn.  A catamaran has to be evenly balanced and having one rudder caused the boat to constantly head up wind. 

Our auto pilot had to work very hard to keep the boat heading in the right direction.  We had to constantly depower the sails and deploy the dagger boards to help the boat hold a course.  And even then there was a 20-40 degree margin.  If our course was 220, we could head anywhere from 180-260 depending on the seas and the wind.  So, it took us awhile to figure out how to sail with one rudder and we hope we never have to use this newly learned skill again.

What’s Our Plan?

Thanks to Peter’s help we will be able to safely navigate from Fiji back to New Zealand.  This is already a challenging passage and one we did not want to make with one rudder.  So, now we can head back to NZ with confidence.

Once we are there, we had already planned to haul out at Norsand (where Peter works).  We have engaged RH Precision to remake our shafts and Peter will build us new blades.  We will replace both rudders.

It is sad that it takes a disaster to remind you just how amazing humans can be.  We are truly blessed and grateful for all of the help in the cruising community.  Especially Peter!

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog post occured mid-July on the passage from Minerva to Tonga.  Did you read about our adventures in Minerva Reef – click here.