Splashed into Autumn

Finally. We finally splashed. It was a glorious relief, though of course there was one last ride on the emotional rollercoaster. We rescheduled for what felt like the 100th time for a Tuesday afternoon at high tide. And that didn’t happen. The material for our third and final bearing arrived to the machinist a day late, probably due to the cyclone, and there was not enough wiggle room in the schedule to allow for late delivery, then machining, then testing the fit. But, we were quickly rescheduled for the following morning. They got us up in the slings at the end of the day Tuesday with a plan to splash us first thing Wednesday. We FINALLY got the rudder back in late Tuesday afternoon, and it turned as it should! But of course, a new challenge showed its face. The ring that sits atop the thrust bearing and carries the whole weight of the rudder would not sit level. So we took the rudder up and down multiple times Wednesday morning instead of splashing. At least we did not have to drop it completely and we were able to slide it down and back up with a come-along and our group of 3 instead of requiring the lift and forklift. The guy we hired to work through this never-ending project with us took the ring back to his shop multiple times that day to shave off a little metal and eventually he got it close enough! It was tricky since it needed a tilt machined into it as well, partially because of the rudder stock corrected-tilt, but mostly because it wasn’t sitting square to the rudder when bolted in. Fully reassembled, we waited for our scheduled time as one of the last boats of the day on Wednesday afternoon. Midway through the afternoon, the yard manager walked up to Kris and said he was not having a good day in the yard as many things were going wrong with the scheduled boats and lift movements. He asked if we would like a free night in the yard. Kris said “No. We absolutely do not want a free night in the yard” with a soft smile on her face while holding back tears. They both reluctantly laughed. She took a deep breath and said, “Thank you for the update, and keep us posted.” Good news comes to those who wait. The yard really came through for us, stayed after hours, and delivered us into the water late that afternoon. It was incredible. Friends came down to the dock to shake hands and hug, as did the yard staff. 87 days after our arrival, we finally said goodbye to the yard as we motored 1.5 nautical miles upriver, under the bridge, and back to Town Basin Marina! To top it off, the steering felt great!

Meanwhile, the seasons have been moving along at their steady pace. It is absolutely autumn, the season of kumaras, feijoas, persimmons, and changing leaves. On sunny days the air is crisp and we have only about 10.5 hours of daylight. The clocks here fall back this time of year and we’re still trying to get used to how dark it is by 6pm every evening. We have pulled out our small electric heater and the big cozy down duvet. It’s time to get out of here! Some of our cruising friends have recently departed, setting sail in the first weather window up north to the tropics.

We’re looking forward, perhaps in the next weather window, for our departure. Before we go though we naturally still have a few projects. In recent days we finally received our new genoa after it sat in customs purgatory for about 3 weeks. We raised and furled it and look forward to sailing with it. It is a lighter material than our old genoa and is a 145% instead of a 120% size. This should be a good upgrade for us and we hope the larger lighter sail will perform nicely in the lighter winds that we anticipate encountering this year in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. This is also the only sail we did not upgrade before departing Seattle. The old genoa had some life in it back in 2024 and we squeezed what we could out of it crossing the Pacific and island hopping. Prior to raising the genoa halyard we also added chafe guard to protect the halyard from known rub areas inside the mast. We did the same with the jib halyard as well. We took delivery of the stainless steel pieces for our dinghy davit, but we’re still waiting on a few modifications and the actual install. Our new stack pack is mostly installed, and we’re just waiting on the finishing touches from the marine upholstery company. A stack pack is designed to stay in place while sailing with an opening on the top to allow the sail to be raised and lowered. Our old cover required fully removing and stowing away while sailing (as if we have tons of extra storage space for a large sail cover). We needed a new cover anyway and decided to splurge on this more convenient style. We upgraded our grill set up with a new stainless steel arm allowing us to move the grill to a convenient spot on the stern for use and we swapped out old parts for new. We added a folding pad-eye to the forward deck as an additional tie-down spot or for a future baby stay if ever required in an emergency (i.e., forward stays break; need to add more support to the mast; need to deploy a storm jib on its own stay without dropping other sails). We cleaned all the electrical connections on the windlass motor and the motor itself. We also completed some standard diesel engine maintenance. First we hired a diesel mechanic to conduct clearance of the valve tappets. Then we ran Barnacle Buster through the raw/salt water side of the diesel engine to clean out salt and bio-scale buildup, and replaced the impeller that had several cracked vanes. We have a few more engine maintenance projects to go but nothing major. We replaced the anchor locker drain valve (to the bilge) due to corrosion on the original. This valve when open normally allows drainage from the watertight anchor locker to the bilge, but in an emergency if the anchor locker were to fill with seawater due to a crash we could close it off. We updated some of our worn out bedding and took all the carpets to a laundromat for a good heavy duty wash. We’ve been provisioning more, and dumped & refilled our emergency water supply. As good as Seattle water is, we decided it was well past time to refresh. We’re also thinking of future projects and trying to buy supplies and spares here as we expect it could be quite challenging to get things elsewhere such as a new spare windlass motor, high quality through hull fittings, interior LED lights, and odd/unique battery sizes. The past few weeks have been busy for us, though we are definitely running out of steam for new projects. We are slowly shifting towards departure preparation instead.

Next Stops: Wrapping up in Whangarei and heading to our NZ departure point!