Tag Archives: whangarei marine

Beastly Boat Projects: Part I

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There are so many things we do on the boat that are so very dreadful and darn right beastly!  Lucky for us, we are on the hard at Norsand and can employ their team to more effeciently conquer some of these boat projects for us.

Living on the Hard

Many cruisers rent an apartment when their boat is on the hard because frankly it is irritating to be on the hard while living onboard.  Why do you ask?  Well, first, we have no running water.  Which means no sinks, toilets, or showers.  Lucky for us we are fairly close to the bathrooms but still, in the middle of the night, I have to layer the warm clothing (as it get’s down to 11c), go outside, climb down my stairs, walk to the bathroom, and return.  Then I am wide awake for hours.  Brushing your teeth, or washing your hands, or doing the dishes take on a totally different meaning when you have to carry them downstairs, outside, and to the public sinks.

Now, let me shine some light on my craziness.  Yes, the above is true.  However, I only have to go down 5 steps where my neighbor has to go down 18 steps!  I have no right to complain.

Saildrive Maintenance and Repair

The boat projects begin.  We engaged Whangarei Marine (also known as Ray Roberts) to help us do some general maintenance on our saildrives.  I scheduled them for the day after we were hauled out but I did not expect to still be on the trailer when they arrived.  They made the best of it.  Taylor and Damon showed up and expertly removed the props, zincs, and drained the oil.

Then they had to move our engine forward in order to pull the saildrive out.  Only to have to repeat the process on the other side.

Plans Always Change…

We originally started out with replacing the bellows, clamping rings, and seal kits.  Then after we removed the saildrives we noticed our damper plates were a little worse for the wear (still functional, but new would be better).  Unfortunately, Volvo no longer sells parts for our 23 year old engines and there were no second hand damper plates.  So, we added a spacer to get more time out of the splines.  Matt thinks we added 4-5 years before we might need to think about repowering the boat (new engines and saildrives).  Gesh, this was a super expensive boat project!

Once the saildrives are installed we have to wait for the coppercoat to be applied before we install the boot that goes around the sail drive.  The rubber piece is glued with 5200 then Matt installs the fiberglass with screws.  We decided to cover these small pieces with an anti-foul wrap instead of our coppercoat.  This is a relatively new technology. It literally is a wrap that is meant to protect the bottom of your boat.

Top left shows the bare hull with the rubber boot down toward the bottom hanging losely.  The rubber boot is glued on first.  Then we glued (5200) the fiberglass boot (upper right photo) which has the new antifoul wrap on.  Once the fiberglass is set, the wrap company came back and added the plack paint around the edges and frankly made a huge mess of the entire project.  But it is on the bottom of the boat so we are letting it go.

An Experiment

Not a boat project, but a fun experiement.  In one area we have coppercoat (on the hull), prop speed (saildrives and props), Vivid barrier antifoul paint (rudder casing) and a new antifoul vinyl wrap (on the sail drive boots).  We are testing to see which of the 4 antifoul uses do better.  We both are betting on the antifoul vinyl wrap being the first to go.

Circle (upper left pic) is Vivid antifoul paint.  Lower right pic is the antifoul vinyl wrap.  Upper right shows you the coppercoat (antifoul on the hulls), vinyl wrap (black on the sail drive boot) and coppercoat on the saildrive and props.

Caulking the Deck and Beyond

There is a sealent that runs along the deck and the hull all around the entire boat.  It was looking super ratty and some areas had small leaks.  We tried to get a small area repaired in Raitea but they did not do a really great job so we decided to replace the entire thing all around the boat.  This is one of the boat projects we did not want to conquer on our own.

Josh is assigned to this lovely, dirty boat project.  First he has to carefully dig the old sealent out between the wood toe rail and the deck.  You can see it looks clumpy in some areas which is not only ugly but uneffective.  This has been a boat project we wanted to tackle for some time, but never had the time and dry weather for long enough to do it.

This is an area where he picked out the old sealent and then in the lower photo replaced it with fresh product.

Here is another area that was bad, it is the port sugar scoop by our swim ladder.

A Busy Caulker

Since we have such a talented “caulker” we asked Josh to seal several other areas:

  • Starboard large window (Int/Ext) / hatch that had a small leak
  • Starboard & Port helm seats and helm stations
  • Both davits at the boat attachment point
  • Forward and aft bimini poles (above the cockpit)
  • Inside around the new ceiling panels we installed last season in each of the 3 cabins, both heads, and salon.
  • Around the entire bimini rail, all four sides
  • Let’s just say that we “caulked” the majority of the boat inside and out

I am not sure Josh wants to do more caulking boat projects from us again, but it was great fun having him around for most of our time in Norsand!

Teak Bimini Rail

The teak bimini rail was falling off.  I am sure part of the reason it came loose was because it is old, but also because Matt steps on it when he works on the sail.  In order to properly repair it we had to completely remove it (carefully so it doesn’t break).  The rail is attached to the bimini which is made of honeycomb (strong and light).  Because the wood is old and fragile, Matt decides to take on this boat project by removing it himself.  Now the yard can fill and prepare the board to be re-installed.  Please note that our bimini rail did not look like the photos below. I failed to take a before photo of the wood so you get a middle photo of half of it torn out. 

Matt and Ben tackled the honeycomb part of this boat project.  Matt cleaned it out and prepared it for filling and then Ben filled it with sealant. We wanted to fill it to ensure the wood would hold more securly.  While the boys were working on the bimini, I worked on the wood. The end product looks amazing!

Bathroom Ceiling

This should be the last ceiling job that we do for a long time!  The master bathroom had 5 panels that were made of fiberglass and covered in paint.  The problem was the humidity over the years caused the paint to chip and it looked horrible.  The only way to properly repair the panels was to remove them, sand and repaint them.   The problem with this boat project was that they were solidly in place, glued with 5200 and tons of caulking.  It was beastly!

Of course, once you remove the panels you have to remove all of the awful glue, silicone, and residue — making this a truly beastly boat project.  We bring a day laborer, Kenan to help me for one day and I finish up on day 2.  Smooth as a baby’s butt!

Josh installed the new ceiling panels with VHB tape and then spent a few days caulking around every single panel!

Once he was done the master head looked spectacular!  I am so happy with the repaired ceiling.

Boat Projects To Be Continued…

We had so many beastly boat projects that it requires 2 blog posts!  So stay tuned for our next post as we install new heaters and a new 220v inverter/charger, we install new anchor markers and clean up our 100m of stainless steel chain, varnish tons of teak and install new mirrors.

What the cockpit looks like during project mode….ugh!

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog post occured during  7 Nov. – 22 Dec.  We repair several gel coat areas in our last blog – did you catch it?

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?