TaDA!!!!! Tackless II has left the marina!

It was a beautiful day as we backed out of the slip and puttered over to the fuel dock where we took on an ungodly (and oddly round-numbered) amount of fuel: $1000F diesel and $100F gasoline. The only mishap was that our dinghy had got untied, and so came free behind us as we made the turn, but this provided immense amusement for our friends who all took the opportunity to come ask us if we were planning on taking it with us.

Our last week in the marina went by quickly as we finished off the major remaining items. The lid for the deck box didn't actually return until the day before departure and the joiner and Don only got it reattached hours before we started the engine. Willie did do a beautiful job with the paint and non-skid, a huge improvement over the rough fiberglass we had before. Meanwhile Don and I got the enclosure attachments remounted and the plastic isinglass windows polished. All the gear stashed in the trailer gradually made the transit aboard, and there were a couple of more trips up the mast to replace lightbulbs. Don also had to cope with an eleventh-hour issue with a transmission leak from the shifter seal. It was one of those deals where you have to take a whole element apart just to get to replace an o-ring. But as has oft proven the case during this project, the things that seem like the biggest deal, end up being the most straightforward. It's really the easy stuff that most often blossoms into frustration.

On Saturday, Don and I actually went into town together, something we had not done since last year. My main objective was veggies from the big market and Don's was back-up alternator belts. But we had a nice breakfast together at the Chili Tree Café and ended up staying long enough for lunch at Chili Bites, and Indian restaurant at the other end of town. Unfortunately, I had to go back to town on Monday to return all the belts Don had bought, as well as (since our bank was not open Saturday) close out the "external" checking account we had opened (which, by the way, definitely made it easier to wire in the US funds we needed to pay off all the work.)

We had a positively lovely trip out to Musket yesterday. Mother Nature couldn't have been much kinder, with bright sun and a cool breeze and naught but little tiny wavelets. With the breeze a bare 25 degrees off the bow, we hoisted the main and motorsailed, taking the chance to check the engine, the alternator belt, the transmission and to flush and run the watermaker. Then, when the breeze filled and veered enough to properly sail, we set the genoa and shut everything down. How incredibly grand is that! A nice lunch and a gentle sail. I could go around the world like this! The only hitch we encountered was a locked up genny winch. ….add servicing the winches to the list!

As we threaded our way into the reef strewn entrance of Malolo Lai Lai (the island where Musket Cove is), the wind backed again and freshened off our port side. On the sand spit where we snorkel our friends Tricky and Jane and their guest Dirty Curry (aka Darren) were out kite surfing, obviously throwing over plans to have us to cocktails at four in favor of the wind! No worries for us. We were happy to take the remaining hours of the afternoon to launch the dinghy, test the outboard, and celebrate being back "at large." There is nothing finer than sitting on a floating boat swinging freely into the wind!

At the moment, our plan is to linger here the next ten days, mixing in a little R&R while we check off the next twenty-four items on the MUST DO list. On the 28th or so begins the revelry associated with the Island Cruising Association's rally to Vanuatu, scheduled to depart Fiji August 2nd. We are currently thinking to join the rally. We have never done a rally. The chief attraction is the facilitated checkout here, forestalling a return to Lautoka, and likewise facilitated check-in at Tanna, Vanuatu. It also wouldn't hurt to be traveling with other boats, seeing as T2 hasn't had much of a shakedown.

That's assuming we are ready to go. There is still the MUST DO list, and a few little suspenseful issues that have cropped up with the alternator and the outboard. Although our official time in Fiji expires on August 5, a customs officer from Lautoka arrived at Vuda just as we pulled up to the fuel dock to "inspect Tackless II regarding the work we had remaining to do." Milika, the manager of Vuda Marina had filed an application for an extension on our behalf several weeks ago when Don was at his most despairing. So, here I am, just having changed from Fiji attire (long shorts) to sailing attire (short shorts and bare feet!) and off we go for a meeting where he examines our invoices. He was suitably impressed with the sums, but wanted to know how much MORE we would be spending. I had to be honest and say we HOPED we wouldn't be spending ANY more, but that we had only just finished the spending and now had to get it all finished and checked out. If I made a good case, he will probably give us a two month extension. If we get the extension, we might just take it, or some of it, and shake the boat out with a little look-see at the Yasawas which we have so far missed, assuming, of course, we get the twenty-four items checked off. But the problem is that if we linger here much longer, we will cut into what time we have in Vanuatu and New Caledonia before ending in Australia.

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Musket Cove, Vuda Point Marina

14 July 2008 – She floats!

The day after the picnic, the weather took a decided turn. Good timing for the party, not so great for us. By the time Quantum Leap reached Vuda (a 2-hour trip for them), the cloudy skies had darkened and a few spits had begun. Up on the hard, Tackless II was looking very handsome with the first two of three coats of bottom paint freshly applied. By afternoon, the rain was coming down hard and the wind had wound up to a healthy blow.

The good news is none of our old leaks produced a drop. The bad news was we had a gusher right over the salon table through a screw hole under the main companionway cap that hadn't gotten filled properly! Fortunately, it is something we can identify AND reach!

Sunday was unexpectedly sunny, so even as the front driven wind continued, causing the boat to rattle and shiver in her stands, Don and I managed to finish off most of the remaining outside projects, including remounting and rewiring the refinished windlass. Monday, however, dawned with a return of the rain threat, and between that and the forecast of unusually strong winds all week, we debated the last coat of bottom paint and our Tuesday launch reservation. Just what we wanted to do! Launch our freshly painted boat into a packed marina in 25+ knots of wind!

But had we delayed, we'd have missed our chance to launch for a week or maybe two as the yard was taken over by the boats of the ARC and Bluewater round-the-world sailing rallies, coincidentally here about the same time and all wanting bottom paint before arriving in Australia (Australia requires arriving boats to have anti-fouling less than a year old.)

So it was, after a restless and windy night, that Tackless II finally got her hull wet. Although he presented his usual together persona, inside Don was a bundle of nerves. All launchings are stressful, but this one had six new thru-hulls to worry about leaking, not to mention the big winds. To add insult to injury, when the hoist was on its way, we couldn't locate the camera for the picture that Don had long been planning in his mind – a reprise of the shot I took of him in 1996 when Tackless II was last painted after Hurricane Marilyn. We'd even found the same shirt. A friend rustled up his digital camera, but by then stuff was happening too fast to stage a matching shot, and the sun was in the wrong place anyway!

The launch went well, however, and with five or six friends on board we managed – despite the wind and despite the fact that the marina was so full there was hardly an inch to spare – to get into our assigned slip without injury.

Talk about a huge sigh of relief! Snug between our neighbors, the whistling wind seemed to blow right over the top of us, and, after a celebratory dinner and a bottle of red wine, we slept that night, lulled by the lapping of gentle wavelets, like we haven't in months!

Since the launch last Tuesday, July 6th, it's been a busy time getting the halyards run, the sails mounted, and all our loose paraphernalia out of storage and back onto the boat. In the water, our own washing machine works, so I've finally caught up on the five loads of musty clothes and linens I'd stashed in the storage trailer, now all sweetly sun-dried on the foredeck. (Sure beats the $5 per token for the questionable marina machines!) Don's got the engine and generator running, the replacement Link controller installed, the solar panels hooked up, and the watermaker flushed.

We are coming down to the last things on the list: the rebuilt deck box lid, which Baobab has had since the start of the project, which we've only now discovered doesn't quite fit; redrilling and replacing all the enclosure hardware around the cockpit; getting back the dinghy, which they haven't delivered yet; the in-water part of our insurance survey (the out-of-water part completed on that blustery Monday before launch), and a rigging check. It is looking like we have a real shot of making our required departure date of August 5th.

So, there you have it! Up to date on the saga of Tackless II in the yard. Whew. Maybe we'll be able to relax in Vanuatu!

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Vuda Point Marina

We had long hoped to be out at Musket Cove in time for the Fourth of July party our friend Robin of Endangered Species was planning. All of our American friends from last year planned to be there, and never in our wildest imaginings did we think would wouldn't be ready to go on Tackless II.

But we weren't. Instead, we got a ride out aboard Serafin, a Liberty 458 skippered by Linda and Dee, whom we first met in 2002 at Punta de Mita in Mexico. After a big refit in Florida after an onboard electrical fire, Dee had had enough, but Linda still had the urge to cruise. So, taking on as crew old cruising friends for a sequence of legs, she has brought Serafin through the Canal and across the Pacific in two years, arriving with Dewey and Nan (formerly of The Great Escape also from our Mexican era) as crew. A few days before the big party, Dewey and Nan flew out while Dee flew in by 747 for some vacation time in Fiji. Even though bottom paint was due to start on Tackless II, Don was persuaded to go.

Once out in Musket, we stayed aboard the beautiful St. Francis 51' catamaran Quantum Leap. Tom and Bette Lee, from Mobile, AL, are retired from the medical field, and Tom particularly takes a keen interest in the health concerns of fellow cruisers. It was Tom who coached Sheri of Procyon by SSB radio how to care for Randy when he was so sick on their crossing (see www.thetwocaptains.com/admiralsangle > "The Need to Know"). It was also Quantum Leap, of course, that had the watermaker problem that came right at Don's point of overload the week before. One of the best bits of medical practitioner-ing he's ever done was taking us our for a top-notch Indian meal at the elegant Saffron restaurant in Nadi the evening that Don solved their watermaker problem. That, of course, was the same evening we discovered the painters doing the non-skid in the wrong color!

In Musket Cove, I'm quite sure Don would have been happy to veg out with a book, but our friends did not agree. No sooner than we arrived than we were hustled out for a snorkel, followed by grilled steaks as the Musket Island Bar. The next morning it was up for a fast hour and a half walk over the ridge with a gang of about nine friends, followed by an hour of yoga for the ladies and a trip to the bakery by the guys. After consuming the spoils of the boys 'labors.', we returned to the boat to change, and then spent a nice couple of hours visiting with Tricky and Jane aboard Lionheart. Visiting with Tricky and Jane invariably leads to a few adult beverages from their onboard brewery, so we were almost late to get changed for the afternoon picnic which began at 3pm.

Dressed suitably in red, white and blue, we assembled ashore for beach games – from bocce ball, to coconut toss, to broad jump, to tug of war (Randy rashly called for USA against all comers, so we were eventually overpowered when the Kiwi racers kept added bodies (and no women) to the end of the rope!) After that it was more beer and lots of potluck dishes to go with hot dogs on the bar-b, all to the music of great American rock 'n roll assembled on CD by Robin. We even had "fireworks"! Come nightfall Randy, a retired coast Guard Captain, oversaw the firing of expired flares, teaching many people how to shoot them off properly for the first time! And someone donated a little mini, all-in-one fire-work box, that when ignited set of a sweet little low-altitude series of swizzlers. All in all a fine, fine evening!

Early the next morning, Quantum Leap weighed anchor to drop us off back at the salt mines…er, at Vuda!

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Musket Cove, Vuda Point Marina

I've had my hand slapped for falling down on the regular postings! Good! At least someone is reading them! My hands have been pretty darn busy elsewhere this past month. Not a lot of computer time. I'm not only behind on the Blog, but coming up on a deadline for the column.

It's been….a difficult time. The adrenalin rush of seeing the boat get painted in three hours was followed by several weeks of frustrating problems. The non-skid areas-- where the paint is rolled on, the grains sprinkled on in a smooth layer and then rolled with paint again -- should have been so easy. They day they finally got to it, Don was called off to help with a big water maker problem on the catamaran Quantum Leap. It really was the last thing Don needed on his plate right then: watermaker work on someone else's boat. At least they came here to vuda, because it ended up taking two days of his time and a way too much of his overtaxed attention.

Here in Fiji (and most tropical places) boat painting takes place in the late afternoon so that any moisture from overnight dew is well dried and so that the painters themselves don't expire in the heat! I climbed the ladder to see how they were progressing, only to find that although they were halfway down the side of the boat, they were painting the non-skid white white, not oyster white like the boat! I could hardly bear to alert Don. Not only was the day lost, but the whole can of expensive two-part paint.

Our next paint issue was the re-spray of the hardtop. This was on Willie, as he had accidentally missed a spot with the final coat on the first go round. Since he was having to re-spray, we took the opportunity to correct two things: the color, which had come out darker than we wanted (the color of a nice creamy latte to match all our canvas!) and the texture which was supposed to have had a matte, orange-peel texture to look like canvas rather than gloss. When the paint was delivered we did a test, and the color was still too dark. Willie got the paint company reps out to see the boat, to see what we wanted both color and texture-wise. We got the remixed paint several days later, and this time Willie got a good shot done with just the right texture. Unfortunately, the color was still darker than we'd have liked, but we figured…"Hey, them's the breaks!"

In the middle of the night I woke up and said to Don, "You know, I bet he mixed all the latte paint to have the matte texture like the hardtop. We don't want THAT on the wood trim!" Well, …sh-t.

The saga of our wood trim could be a parable for the importance of communication and forethought. I have always joked that what we needed to do was just dip the whole boat in paint, so we proposed to Willie early on, that since our caprails were painted, perhaps it would just be easier to shoot them with two-part paint. This would save them having to tape out the wood trim when spraying. Made sense to Willie at the time, but one afternoon early on Don came up to find the guys stripping the old paint and undercoat of varnish off the wood! Yikes. That wasn't the idea. Seems Willie had got to considering that we had painted the wood trim with one-part paint in Mexico, and that two-part doesn't go over one-part. Well, fine, but talk to us first! We would have just gone back to the original plan to tape out the wood (or timber as they call it here) and do it by hand afterward with one part paint.

But now we were committed, and Willie's guys stripped the timber (caprails, trim and handrails), sealed them with a two-part wood sealer, filled and faired them as if they were fiberglass (!?!?!?), and then Willie primed and painted them with the topsides and deck.

Now, mind you, the result was gorgeous! Smooth, sealed and very fair. And if we'd had any sense, we'd have stopped there and left them white (oyster white, remember) like the rest of the boat. But no, everyone insisted we needed some sort of definition. So now the guys sanded the timber and started trying to paint the color. We went through two remixes AFTER the realization that the hardtop matte wasn't right for the timber. The paint company kept sending us darker and darker paint when we wanted lighter and lighter. Even Willie was disgusted. We had an eight-foot deck board we use for securing fuel jugs in the original (desired) color on which we tested each paint as if came. It lay there halfway coated in a sequence of bands as mute testimony to our frustrations and delays.

Once we settled (compromised?) on a paint color, our troubles were not over. The paint did not brush on well. Willie's team is used to spraying topcoat and rolling bottom paint, so all comes to a stop and in comes Baobab's "varnish specialist." Willie's team is all Fijian, whereas most of his partner Brian's guys are Indian. Sylvin (sp?) was a dark, slim, handsome young man, who painted at a snail's pace. It about drove Don crazy, who was itching to knock him out of the way and do it himself. In the end, Sylvin came through by changing out to a tiny roller, and the final finish looks as good as…well…how it looked white before we started messing with the damn color!

Meanwhile, Willie's guys were back working on the bottom. Can you imagine a more tedious job? Sanding, fairing, sanding, fairing, sanding fairing. I find it tedious to write about, so I will just say that the project of drying out the boat was quite successful, the bottom is probably smoother than it was when the boat was new, and with three coats of epoxy, four of barrier coat and three of the green Altec bottom paint we had shipped in from New Zealand (after all this work we wanted the bottom back GREEN!), it looks superb.

This all took several weeks and it was not the happiest of times. Don as project manager had a tremendous lot on his plate, because while all this was going on outside, he had dozens of projects inside. Over the course of our time here we have removed and replaced most of the deck hardware, redrilled and repositioned all the hatch hinges and springs, cleaned or replaced most of the stainless fittings, re-fiberglassed inside tabs, painted the aft bulkhead and all the lockers, varnished the aft cabin, the galley, and half the main salon. Don has replaced the ancient bronze thru-hulls and seacocks with new Marlon ones (always scary working with new and different materials) along with several of their backing plates, all of which unfortunately necessitated some dismantling, re-plumbing and refitting since they were not the same size and shape as the originals. We've cleaned every nook and cranny of the boat (and everything stowed in those nooks and crannies multiple times throughout the multiple stages of sanding fiberglass and paint. And, we've had the life raft serviced, the fire extinguishers serviced, the dive gear serviced, canvas restitched, a sail remodeled (reef points added to the staysail), and new cockpit instruments hooked up. And as the day for launching drew near, there was the engine to get going and piles of stuff to put away since the salon table and nav station were buried in baggies and containers of nuts, bolts and parts.

We moved back aboard during the week before the Fourth of July. We had been eating on board for a couple of weeks, but all the drawn-out painting on deck kept postponing our final checkout from the hotel. At last we said farewell to air-conditioning, flush toilets, hot showers and hot cooked breakfasts and moved on board with night buckets, mozzie (mosquito) screens, and the clatter of black plastic in the wind.

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Vuda Point Marina

The last time we checked in we were playing hookey from the boat yard with such success that you might well wonder from the intervening silence if we either were still out at Musket Cove or if, in the end, we did take off as crew with Jim of FLIGHT. Well, tempting as either might have been, neither is the case.

We came back to Vuda Tuesday morning on FLIGHT with four of our friends hitching a ride to the "mainland," which gave Jim more than enough hands to set the main, genny and mizzen of the beamy 49' ketch making for a very nice motorsail in the light breeze. It was a perfect cap to our getaway weekend, reminding us of how grand it could be to be moving under sail and reassuring Jim and Bob that all FLIGHT's sails were in working condition.

As we pulled into the marina, we got our first glimpse of Tackless II with her coat of primer. On her stands on the hard at the head of the marina, she looked blindingly white and huge in the midday sun! Everyone congratulated us on how well things were moving along and then dispersed to their own errands.

Has it really been almost three weeks since then? Until yesterday, very little changed about how Tackless looked to the passerby since that day. This is not to say that there hasn't been plenty of work done – endless sanding and patching and re-sanding done by Willie's guys, several more coats of primer, even some bottom work – but none of it the kind of work that jumps out and says, we're making progress here! It is hard to point proudly at a boat flecked with green speckles (of fairing compound) and say proudly, "That's ours!"

Don has spearheaded a huge amount of work inside the boat, including new varnish for the aft cabin, aft head, galley, and starboard side of the salon (so far). Even that has had its frustrations as it seems we ordered in the last can of gloss varnish in all of Fiji and had to wait for more to come from NZ! We have polished hinges, marked chain, had canvas and dive gear repaired, run weekly loads of laundry and swept up countless dustpans of fiberglass dust. If you have any doubts, this is NOT the fun part of cruising.

It doesn't help that many or our friends have come and gone. Our friend Marjetka of Little Mermaid pulled in and made a fast exit to Tonga by airplane to restart her Fiji visa, leaving us in charge for a week of the wonderful Cheri, a Caribbean canine of ancestry suggestive of a wolfhound. Although she slept on her own boat, Cheri's joy at seeing us twice a day or more, definitely lifted our souls, and by the end she was pretty much spending the whole day with us. "Mama" Marjetka is back now, but Cheri, full of wriggles and joie de vivre, still comes to find us, and we still take her for the odd walk.

Another highlight was the return from New Zealand of our young buddies Tricky and Jane of Lionheart. But after orchestrating a few repairs from their boisterous trip up, fixing us a fine dinner of sausages smoked in their new aft deck smoker, and leading Don down the path of way too many beers, they took off in pursuit of kite-surfing venues, their newest hobby. Ah, youth…

Also back are Steve and Rachel of Apogee, which brings us to a look at the latest political move affecting cruisers. Last November, the government issued a surprise ruling that cruising yachts would only be permitted to stay in the country six months. This produced quite the hubbub among the stored boats until we were assured that we were all grandfathered in. However, now that our year is running out, the government has come up with a new rule: boats can come in for three months, extendable to nine, BUT they then must stay away nine months before they return or else be liable for duty and the ruling is retroactive to March 08!

Now, in places like Mexico, we paid for a temporary import permit (good for 10 years!!!) for a reasonable fee (something like $150 US, if I remember correctly). Fiji, however, wants duty of 27% of the boat's value with VAT tax of 12.5% of the valuation PLUS the duty on top!!! Yikes! They will give you five years to pay it in installments, and you can pay for a year and then leave, but still....

Apogee was on the same junket to Futuna that Tackless made last year, so Steve and Rachel are pretty much on the same countdown to August that we are. However, Apogee is sitting in her cyclone pit without an engine. The engine is here, but not yet installed, and, to complicate things, Steve is enmeshed in a project for his company that will tie him up for another year. His and Rachel's hope was they would be able to arrange an extension in order to keep Apogee in this safe boatyard, have the engine and other work completed, and then be able to cruise this part of the world when the project finally ends…all worth a great deal of money to the local economy. The new ruling makes that a very expensive proposition.

Fortunately, this is not an issue we have to cope with (although we could easily have spent more time cruising Fiji). The issue we have to cope with is getting Tackless II back in the water. So, here's this week's exciting developments:

THE BOAT IS PAINTED!

And it happened pretty fast, too. At 3:15 pm yesterday, Willie started spraying oyster white topcoat. We thought, as we assembled chairs and cameras (and beer) to watch him, that he was just going to spray the deck. This turned out to be Willie pulling Don's leg. Willie (thank goodness) seems to really enjoy Don's sense of humor, and dishes it right back, such as telling Don, just before the painting was to begin that he needed him to go up the mast…and stay there…to act as a scarecrow to keep the birds off! So, after that chuckle, we settled in to watch as Willie proceeded to put on three coats of paint, wet-on-wet on the deck and then, without stopping, the topsides, all in just about three hours. It was quite a show. The sun was setting as he finished and his eye lashes (the man shoots without goggles!) were fringed white!

And the boat looks gorgeous! Imagine a three hour shoot with virtually no drips!

His motivation for this superhuman effort was, unfortunately, a lousy weather report. A tropical depression is heading our way from the equator with lots of rain and wind forecast for Thursday night through Saturday (work-days, of course). Today's plan to get the non-skid areas done fell apart because the winds would have blown the non-skid granules away. And there is still the hardtop to re-shoot in the color I like to refer to as Latte (Willie missed a patch on his first effort) as well as color on the "timber" (the local word for wood, in this case referring to the caprails,)

So we are still a ways from being done, and wouldn't you know there's another holiday Monday! Fiji is really something for having good weather on weekends and holidays. But Don and I will have plenty to do getting the boat ready for us to move back aboard.

Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Vuda Point Marina

We are playing hookey! Our Vuda friend Jim on the Hallberg Rassey 49' FLIGHT invited us kind of at the last minute on Saturday to hop aboard for a weekend out at Musket Cove. Jim has been trying to get out of Vuda Marina for weeks! Always something kept him yet another day, the last of which was the 'desertion" of one of his volunteer crew, the attractive young Ruth, who flew back to New Zealand upon the death of her uncle. Both Ruth and Bob arrived in Fiji (about the same time we did) expecting to hop aboard and take off. The inevitable boatyard delays have been very frustrating for all of them. So, having the two captains along to help troubleshoot some lingering system issues (not to mention do the cooking!) has been a nice thing for them. I am fairly sure they would be thrilled to have us come along for the trip to Vanuatu,( since they are down to the two of them), on which they need to soon leave, but I think we will restrain ourselves.

Both of us, however, really needed the break. We've been at this yard work effort for a month now! Believe it or not Willie, the painter, was aiming to shoot the first coat of primer Saturday afternoon. I think perhaps Willie PAID Jim to seduce us away. Almost surprisingly, Don came!

It was a beautiful trip over to Musket (although the wind was on the nose, of course), and we had a nice reunion with several friends here, a reprise of our morning walk around the island this morning, and we will be on hand for the first Sunday night barbecue at Musket's Ratu Nemani Island tonight! Last night in FLIGHT's unfamiliar galley I cooked up a nice dnner that seemed to please the guys (I was thrilled with a head of romaine that I turned into a right passable Caesar salad) and we had croissants from the Musket bakery for breakfast! Our palates and bellies are happy, plus Don had the best night's sleep he's had since we've been back to Fiji, even if it was in separate bunks in the V-berth. There's nothing like a rocking boat and a fresh sea breeze!

FLIGHT will head back to Vuda Tuesday morning and we will be back at work soon enough. When we get there Willie will be at work on the hard top and sanding and fairing the first rounde of primer, and with luck we will see the rest of the primer and maybe even final paint the next week, weather permitting.

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Musket Cove, Vuda Point Marina

An attribute crucial to sane cruising is the ability to remain relaxed and flexible in the face of on-marching time, circumstances and weather, which leads directly to the cruiser's golden rule: "Never have a schedule". Don and I are usually pretty laid back about such things…why we have taken nine years to do what some manage in two! And life here at Vuda wouldn't be too bad – what with the nice room, movies three nights a week, live jazz on Sundays at the Yacht Club, internet via the broadband card, someone else cooking meals, and plenty of interesting conversation…..if it just weren't for two constraints: every day costs $$$, and every day ticks off against our time limit in the country.

When Monday rolled around last week and we woke to a resumption of rain, it looked like we were going to have a rerun of the previous week. I mean, how much sanding can one cockpit take!?! In reality, the rain must have been lighter, because by the time we reached the boat four guys in blue dust suits with masks and sanders were working away on Tackless II's hull! It was as though we had climbed up to a new plateau of commitment, and every day such great strides were made in grinding, filling and sanding that we actually believed it when Willie said Friday that he thought his team would be taping and spraying primer by the following Tuesday (today).

No such luck! After another beautiful weekend during which Don and I worked hard on the deck digging out old caulking and cleaning, replacing and re-bedding rusty bolts and screws to be ready for the paint, damned if the rain clouds haven't rolled in again on Monday. This time it's heavy enough that there's little point in the guys even coming to work. We went in light rain early this morning to the café to Skype Tiffany on her birthday but were driven to shut down and pack up when a cloudburst rolled through with big winds driving the wet into the café's seating area.

Some highlights of the week for those who care: Don got the windlass off the deck after he discovered the keyway in its drive shaft was contorted. Brian of Baobab took it up to their shop, and when Don went to check on it this morning, Brian already had it taken apart into dozens of pieces. The boys had already sanded the metal part down for repainting, so, when Brian is done with it, it should be like new.

Then there was the day Don poked his head out from below to find the guys stripping the paint off the teak caprails. This is the colored epoxy we put on in Mexico over three layers varnish to seal the wood.. We thought the plan – conceived to make things really simple for painting – was to just spray over the old paint. But Willie grew concerned that putting two-part paint over our old one-part paint might not hold, so now they are stripping it, resealing it (with a better product) and THEN will come the paint. The good news is that the layers of varnish laid on five yeas ago have in fact protected the teak! We could varnish her right up...but we won't! The paint has been so much easier to care for!

A highlight that was a bit of a lowlight was the discovery Saturday morning of some voids in the original lay-up, undetected until now, that once discovered have to be fixed. Old Tacky II is gonna be better than new when she comes out of here…of course, that's if we ever get out of here! The enthusiastic optimism of last Friday is somewhat dampened, and it doesn't help that all around us boats are launching and leaving, while three of our cohorts from last season have already arrived back to Musket Cove from New Zealand. The season is getting underway without us! Waaaannnh!

It has not been all work and no play. We have had several home-cooked meals on friends' floating boats. Peter of Otama Song made us a big dinner of spaghetti, while Ruth made her debut in Flight's galley with a sumptuous dinner of chicken and mashed potatoes topped with salad and finished off with homemade lemon-papaya sorbet! Sunday the lowering clouds held off long enough that we had time to get cleaned up and enjoy a couple of hours of Fiji Fusion, a really fine live band that plays alternate Sunday afternoons at the Yacht Club. Despite being stiff and sore from the day's work, we recovered enough energy to dance along with Rod and Shirley of Sundowner while most of the locals looked on!

The forecast calls for today's heavy rain to taper off tomorrow, and then, by golly, for a longish stretch of dry weather. Please, let's hope so. Our Ark is not ready to float!

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Vuda Point Marina

You may recall my mentioning that the weather our first week in Fiji was consistently hot and sunny? And I predicted more of same? Well, you can delete that. No sooner than the work on Tackless II was due to start last week than the rains began. Monday morning during breakfast the pessimistic captain predicted no one would show up to work. The optimistic captain...was...well.... more hopeful. Imagine the pessimistic captain's surprise when we cleared the gate and there were three workers hard at work sanding.....all three in the covered cockpit!

Tackless II is a big boat to sand when you can't use your electric sanders and you are working instead with small squares of sandpaper. Don says the guys reminded him of the animated "scrubbing bubbles" of TV ad fame, kind of following one behind the other over much the same territory. However, the rain did ease off a couple of times long enough to let the guys emerge from the cockpit to work on the foredeck and cabintop some, and by the end of the week they had pretty much covered the whole boat. It was a traumatic moment when the artwork on the bows and stern disappeared (documented by photograph for the artists to replace...we hope). There is still lots to do -- specifically all the hatches, hatch coamings and compartment lids, as well as lots of stress cracks to grind out and fill. But there has definitely been progress. Don has a running banter going with Willie, who is in charge of both the bottom and the paint jobs, ticking down the days of Willie's promised month for both. Willie just smiles....

The steady rain did bring one bonus. Richard, the oft-in-demand fiberglass specialist, was not able to work outside, so he was free to tackle a major inside project for Don, including glassing in the new backing plates for the thru-hulls.

In between excavating all the nooks and crannies for Richard to fiberglass, Captain Destructo himself has been hard at work ripping out the plywood liner backing our bed on the inside of the transom. Years of mysterious leaks had pretty well rotted this wood away, and the liner Don had covered it up with ten years ago was stained with rust streaks. The leading plan now is to fill and fair the back wall and paint it white. We are especially optimistic about this since Richard added a layer of glass to the wet locker above, which we THINK has put an end to those mysterious leaks (seeing as we've been able to test it with all the rain!) Don has also been busy in the aft head removing the toilet plumbing for its biennial beating to remove the calciferous build-up therein. He also took the chance to move the toilet an inch inboard so its lid will stay up better.

What has the Yard Princess been doing during this time? Well between the rain, the fiberglass dust, and the Fijian workers there really was no place for me on board. So, in between running loads of work clothes through the washer and drier, I spent most of the week perched on our hotel room bed laboring away furiously on the computer. I have produced three pieces for my Admiral's Angle column, thereby buying me some breathing room on my deadlines and begun some interviews and note-taking for a couple of other article ideas. Quite truthfully, I think both captains are pleased with this arrangement!

Wednesday did give us a day's respite from rain, so I made a trip into town to deposit more US $ into our local account. These dollars were the 20s Don so painstakingly collected from daily visits to the ATM in the States. It added up to quite the stack, which would have been embarrassing enough had they stayed neatly together, but when they erupted from my hands in a cascade at the international teller window, it made me feel like a drug dealer or counterfeiter! The best part about the trip to town was getting our Vodafone broadband card reactivated so that we have Internet right in the room. Sadly, the card does not permit voice Skype like the WiFi connection up at the cafe. We've had a lot of fun Skyping people from the cafe while we eat lunch or sip decaf cappucinos. The connections have been like we're next door! ( I even indulged in a long chat with Captain Rob and Barbara in Saba on Mother's Day!)

mv Doulos

While on that trip to town, Jim of Flight, with whom I was sharing the taxi, wanted to make a stop at the mv Doulos, "the world's largest floating bookstore,"(http://www.mvdoulos.org) which was tied up to Lautoka's main wharf. We had been hearing quite a bit about her on the radio. A venerable old vessel built just a few years after the Titanic in 1914 in Newport News, Rhode Island, the Doulos is "the world's oldest active ocean-going passenger vessel". At 130 meters in lengthwith a beam of only 16.6 meters, she is a long and narrow 6818 gross tons! She started life as a freight steamship, but was converted to a passenger ship in 1948. In 1952, she was acquired by the Costa cruise line and her steam engine replaced with a huge 18 cylinder double-acting deisel engine. In this guise she cruised between Itlay and Argentina and later the Mediterranean. She became the Doulos in 1977/78.

Although I didn't know for sure before visiting the ship, I had rightly guessed she was a Christian charitable endeavor. Except for a large section of children's books and a diverse cooking section, the majority of the books for sale had a Christian motif. The ship's mission, as stated on the website, is to "visit port cities throughout the world, supplying vital literature resources, encouraging inter-cultural understanding, training young people for more effective life and service, promoting greater global awareness, providing practical aid and sharing a message of hope in God wherever there is opportunity."

The crew (including the captain) are all volunteers coming from 156 countries, who sign on for a two year stint, paying about $6000/year for their room and board. It is not luxurious living, and they all work hard on onboard jobs. Our tour of the vessel was led by a relatively new young Dutch crewmember. He was hard put to answer out nautical questions (like what kind of engine she now had...a question we were able to answer for ourselves in the engine room), but he was eager to show us all the pictures of their good deed doing.

The Weekend

Come Saturday, of course, the rain stopped. For some reason, nary a worker showed up for the Saturday half-day. When the "skilled" workers are absent, suddenly the old Admiral is in demand again. I got a lot of brownie points by solving in five minutes a plumbing problem that had kept Don up fretting half the night. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes is more important than skill! Don and I then spent the rest of the weekend cleaning up and removing all the remaining hardware and equipment from the deck and hatches in anticipation of a big push this week.

However, guess what? It's Monday and its raining again, and the forecast is for more all week!

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Vuda Point Marina

How fast a week has gone by! We have fallen into quite a routine, staying awake a little later each night and rising a bit later each morning. We try to fit a short walk in each morning before our complimentary breakfast at the resort, at which we tend to eat way more than we should because it is free. Lunch is invariably at the Marina Cafe because it is cheap and tasty AND they have free WiFi as well as washing machines around the corner. Sadly, dinner is an unreliable meal. Our only choices are either the resort -- which has a two-for-one pizza night on Mondays and Fridays (popular with the boaties) and a reasonably affordable bar menu other nights -- or the Vuda Yacht Club which definitely has the atmosphere, but rather disappointing cuisine. The options are already seeming old. I am not cooking on board because we decided to go ahead with the paint job for Tackless II, so it makes no sense to clean everything up and stock the fridge and shelves only to have to shut down as they sand the fiberglass etc.

Don has spearheaded great progress on the boat. The day after the last update, he and David managed to get all the through-hulls out, a project that had had Don stressing for weeks. As often is the case, what he stresses over most goes unexpectedly smoothly. It was still a lot of work, and Don was hugely grateful for David's help.

Unfortunately, David is back at work on Jim's boat Flight for the next week or so, so Don has had to make do with me. Together we have gotten the boat emptied out into a trailer our contractor Baobab Marine has lent us, plus we have stripped a lot of hardware off the deck, including the main and staysail boom,the compressor and deck storage box (which has never been off before) and the dinghy. The deck was a mess with the debris of six months of leaves and a blue tarp that had distintegrated into blue threads. Cleaned up she actually looked pretty good; maybe we don't need to paint, said Don! Not quite. Besides the sanders are already hard at work.

We've managed several improvements in the working conditions. We got our big awning from Trinidad out and hoisted over the foredeck as well as the one we had built in Mexico to hang over the aft deck. Also, we did a deal with a departing cruiser for their air conditioner, of which we finally took possession yesterday. After working hard for 24 hours it has cooled the boat down at least fifteen degrees and sucked out a ton of humidity which drains away through a hose shoved down the scupper at a rate approaching a small faucet. With luck T2's doors will close again someday!

Socially, it's also been a lively time. Jim of Flight has had two crew fly in and occupy the last two discounted rooms at the resort. Ruth is an attractive and interesting young woman who grew up in England but who has been living in New Zealand the past four years. She is taking this adventure, her first open water sailing experience, as a break from her career as a geneticist! Bob is a retired fellow from Rochester, NY, who instead of buying his own cruising boat has made a hobby of crewing on other people's boats. This will be his fourth crew passage...the last one being a trip from the Horn to Buenos Aires! The five of us generally dine together and then divide up for the day, although Ruth and I have made several trips to town together.

The biggest distraction of the week began when Don looked up from lunch one day and noticed Joe and Julie (of Palmlea Farm in Vanua Levu where we spent so much time last season) standing at the fuel dock gazing across the basin of the marina. They were, they said, wondering if we might be here. Since Tackless II is poised broadside at the opposite rim (sitting on jackstands, she towers over the other yachts moored or still in pits),, it's hard to imagine how there could be any doubt. Joe and Julie and their farm manager Ravine were in town to meet an Air New Zealand flight coming in from Australia the next evening bringing them 60+ Boer Goats, their latest enterprise for Palmlea. (http://www.fijidailypost.com/news.php?section=2&fijidailynews=15706 as well as other links found under Palmlea Farms!)
Boer goats are larger and meatier than their run-of-the-mill cousins, and this project is a big deal, not just for Joe and Julie (who, in their seventies, might supposed to be retiring!!!), but for Fiji agriculture in general. Joe had a big press kit prepared and the relevant ministers of the Fiji government were all over it. Unfortunately, it was impractical for us all to troop down to the airport to see the goats' actual arrival, but we did all cab to the Lautoka Wharf Thursday to see them transhipped by truck to the Westerland ferry for an overnight ride to Savusavu and thence over the mountains to their new home at Palmlea. They looked hot, tired, uncertain and...well...like goats. Joe and Julie and the Fijian government have an ambitious breeding plan planned. Ravine is proud as punch.

Also in the small world department, our friend Peter of Otama Song sailed in from Tonga for some yard work before sailing home to Australia. In the process of hailing him, I borrowed a radio from a boat in the marina, and then got talking to the owner, who had worked in the liveaboard dive business for a number of years as I did. In his case, he had worked for the Aggressor dive fleet. As we worked through the roster of people we knew in common (most of them former Tropic Bird crew) it turned out that he'd been crew on Lammer Law at the same time as I was on the Aquanaut ships, at which point we realized we'd met! Interestingly, he was closing his sailboat up to return to work as a cruise ship captain with Royal Caribbean! That's the biggest jump I have ever heard of for former dive yachties!

And so it goes here in Paradise. The weather has been consistently hot and sunny, except for a bit off rain and wind night before last which brought us a bit cooler weather this weekend. thenext few weeks will probably be more of same...but never fear! I will keep you updated!

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Palmlea Farms, Vuda Point Marina

Considering we have barely been back 24 hours, a lot has been happening. We hardly had our suitcases aboard when the Travelift came and hoisted us out of the pit (and more importantly out from under the tree we didn't want to under in the first place!) to jackstands in the main part of the yard. This morning the guys are already at work on the bottom, which is looking pretty dry!

On the ground we met another cruiser with his boat on the hard who had worked a MOST ATTRACTIVE DEAL at the resort next door. In a small building that used to be the dive shop (from our first visit here three years ago!),First Landing Resort has created four small rooms with bath, fridge, coffeepot and AIRCONDITIONING that they are renting to people in the yard for very cheap weekly rate. It even comes with breakfast! It is less than 100 feet from the boat! Such a deal. So we moved our clothes right back off again. Man did we get a good night sleep last night.

At 5 am when we were up considering the world this morning, we discussed whether our decision not to paint Tackless, made in the gloom of US market worries might have been a bad call. The Fiji dollar has only gained 3 cents on its old exchange rate against the US dollar, and things will never be cheaper anywhere down the road. Business is slow in the yard and willie says he can paint the whole boat in three weeks! Even using the "boatyard factor" and doubing that time, makes very feasible. and our old girl sure needs it!

Then Jim, the guy who hooked us up with the room deal also has a day worker David he uses outside Willie's guys for other jobs. David makes $8F an hour. That's about $5.50! Jim will be leaving in ten days, so we can inherit David after that. Since the painters are working on Jim's boat today, we have David today starting on cleaning Don's tools which have molded and rusted. My job will be to get the galley back in working order so we can eat at least some meals aboard, and then start from the aft cabin and work forward cleaning. Oh joy. But I have an airconditioned room to retreat to in the heat of the afternoon to catch up on my column, a deadline for which is coming up fast. Gotta get ahead, and this will be a good time to do it.

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Vuda Point Marina

To all who care, the two captains are safely back to Vuda Point Marina, Fiji. Thanks to our extra night (thank you, Ray) in Oakland and a relatively empty plane across the Pacific, we have arrived much fresher than we usually feel. The weather this morning is lovely, pleasantly cool as the sun rose over the mountains...but it is warming up now. We need to excavate some shorts. All our bags made it, with the only shadow on the whole trip being that they got us for some duty. first time ever...but inevitable, and Don and the customs officer danced nicely together and got it down to a less painless amount! Tackless is opened up and we are waiting for the cafe to open for some morning coffee. I'm sure there will be more to tell soon!

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Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Fiji 2008, Vuda Point Marina

I am hoping Don will write his own account of his last week in Fiji. Until he does, suffice it to say that Tackless II was hauled successfully and Don departed on schedule.

For the next six months or so, the Two Captains will be back in the USA living aboard our RV based in Crystal River, FL. The emphasis of our doings shifts from nautical stuff to land cruising (by RV or Harley) and the delights of family. We do work a number of boats shows, so we do not abandon our nautical identities entirely. Any family, friends, or two-captain die-hard readers who wish to follow our land adventures, should add this link to our USA Blog -- http://www.thetwocaptains.com/blogs/usa2007/ -- to your Favorites List, and visit us there until April 2008.

Vinaka vaka levu! Moce.

Gwen & Don

Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Vuda Point Marina

After a few days' R&R after the regatta, Don and I dropped the mooring at Musket Cove and pointed Tackless back towards Vuda Point Marina. When we arrived at Musket a month ago, we'd never imagined staying in one place so long. We'd thought we'd stay a week or so and then wander northwestwards and check out the Yasawa Islands in the time remaining to us before the end of our personal cruising "season." That plan got squeezed out by the delights of Musket Cove on the one hand and by anxieties about the realities of boatyard schedules on the other. Fo,r although we had quotes on prices and time needed on planned boat work for Tackless at Vuda Point Marina, it occurred to us that relying on Baobab Marine's pledge of five days to do the window replacement project -- a job we wanted done before we put the boat into storage for six months -- in the week prior to our flying out was not realistic. It seemed to make more sense to go back to Vuda and get the job done before any more play. However, once we started thinking that way, we realized that mentally the season was already over for us, and rather than while away time indefinitely in the boat yard, a better use of my time would be to fly back early and work the Annapolis Boat Show.

The window project in question, by the way, is the complete replacement of Tackless II's large salon windows. The original windows, each a slanted parallelogram about 17" x 41", were tempered glass in aluminum frames. Over the years the frames have deteriorated from electrolysis from their own fasteners and begun to leak…the worst leak being right over the nav station where our nav computer used to sit! Don has had two of the four windows out several times in an effort to reseal them, but in truth, every time the frames came out, things just got worse. Some of our sister-ships (see www.soggypaws.com) have dealt with the problem by removing the old windows and frames and replacing them with Lexan. The problem with Lexan is that any kind of fastener mounted through the Lexan has the potential to crack it in response to flex. Most modern production boats, however, use the Lexan without fasteners thanks to new space-age sealants. Brian of Baobab Marine persuaded us that he could retrofit Tackless with this kind of installation, mating together ½" ledges routed out of both the Lexan and the cabin top.

We pulled back in to Vuda on Sunday afternoon…a hot sultry Sunday afternoon. Since it is inappropriate in Fiji to do visible work on Sundays, we spent that first afternoon with friends listening to "jazz" over chilly beers at the Vuda Yacht Club. We regretted that decision Monday when we woke to rain. Rain was not something we had factored into the equation. Not only could Baobab not get started on the windows, but we couldn't get started on getting the sails down and the boat packed away. The forecast, once we finally checked it, looked bad for the whole week!

Mother Nature took pity on us and, ignoring the forecasts, sent us a pocket of blue sky and hot sunshine on Tuesday. Don and I were up early, hoisting all the sails and draping wet canvas all around the boat to dry in the ever-so-slight breeze. Miraculously (and with a little help from our friend Tricky), we managed to get everything dry enough to drop, fold, and pack up! In the afternoon they moved us to another "slip" where it would be easier for the Baobab Marine guys to work on the windows, but nothing got started and by 10pm it was raining again! We were beginning to feel discouraged.

It wasn't until Wednesday afternoon that work finally got started. Don and I had gotten two windows out first thing that morning, but the Baobab guy with the router didn't show show up until after lunch. Unfortunately, once he did get to work, despite his careful prep, with fiberglass dust flying the boat became an unpleasant place to be. Fortunately, I had used the wait time well to clean out and pack up the cupboards, the fridge, the salon and our clothes lockers, to cover the bookshelves in plastic and bag up the TV, printer and stereo, and to seal off the forward and aft cabins. The good news is that Baobab Marine has storage and they did take away our sails, our life-raft, the two kayaks and the fuel jugs before the rain! With these bulky items out of the way the boat will be far easier to clean up afterthe fiberglass work not to mention far less congested while stored

Don and I spent much of my last two days in Fiji hiding out from the noise and the dust. Progress seemed very slow, and by the time I was ready to take the taxi to the airport Friday evening, only one side of the cabin top was ready for Lexan. It was disappointing to leave without seeing the finished results. Don was booked to fly back the following Friday. With the weekend upon us and the haul scheduled for Tuesday, things were not looking good for him keeping to the plan. Not only had we wanted the window project done before we left, but we'd wanted to see the boat hauled and get the results back on a planned moisture test on the hull. In fact we intended to be on hand to see Tackless placed into her pit (next to a half dozen good friends) for cyclone season storage. However, the moisture test (and our strong suspicion that we had a serious osmosis issue) complicated things. The moisture test required the boat to sit out and air dry for at least a week, and if the test results came back as we feared, then the bottom's barrier coat and gelcoat would have to peeled off, any blisters opened up to dry, and the hull washed with fresh water daily for several weeks to draw out the moisture that has accumulated in the resins before she could be moved into her pit. Even as I was taking my leave, Don was realizing that, despite his inclinations, he was probably going to have to leave at least some of this to Baobab to do.

Lest anyone think too unkindly about my leaving poor Don on his own in the yard, let me point out he was last seen squiring two women off to the weekly half-price pizza night. Marinas and boatyards are rarely lonely places for sociable cruisers!

Labels: 2008 Boatyard Work, Vuda Point Marina