Posted by John
Forty-one degrees Fahrenheit. That’s more than cold enough to see your own breath. That’s what the outside temperature was when I got up this morning. What’s almost as bad is that the sun doesn’t come up until 7:30. It’s a lot like December at home, except that it’s June. We run the engine for a while every couple days to charge the batteries. The sun is so low in the sky we’re not getting enough solar power.
We received a text from Me Too saying they’d made it to Fiji and that it was hot there. We’re jealous, and wish we were there too. Our consolation prize is that we were invited to join the “Leftovers Yacht Club.” It’s for those, of course, who are still here.
As thrilled as we are to be able to sit on the couch and cozy up to the wood stove in the Opua Cruising Club, drink beer and share stories with the other left-behinds, we think we’re ready to sail to Fiji. At least we hope we’re ready. We’re certainly ready to get it over with and try to regain some confidence.
Rob, the rigger at Northland Spars and Rigging who we’ve been working with, is a pretty amazing guy. To go up the mast he doesn’t mess around with being winched up, or hauling himself up with a ratcheting block. He just takes off his shoes and climbs up the rigging barefoot. Sure, he’s belayed from below, but he essentially climbs and pulls his way up the shrouds, finding toe holds on whatever he can.
The new furler is a local product, designed and built in Kerikeri, which is the next biggest town down the road past Paihia, which has the closest gas station to Opua. Being so close, it should be easy to get spare parts in the future… Oh, wait. I guess we don’t actually live here. Anyway, the furler looks pretty good to us right now. It has a ratchet to hold the load, which should make reefing during strong wind easier. It appears to be a more modern improvement over what we had.
Roger, from the North Sails loft down at the other end of the marina, made us a new custom jib from scratch. Since we didn’t have the old sail anymore, and never had gotten a good photo of it, it was a little hard to describe what we were looking for. We didn’t know any of the dimensions. The new sail design was sketched out on a pad of paper right on the dock next to the boat. Final measurements were taken after the furler was in place. Roger showed up with the sail the next day after the furler received its final tweak and said, “I got it to you when I said I would, right?” That he did.
The missing steering parts were the first to arrive, shipped from California and arranged by Kevin, the local rep for the Saye’s Rig self-steering system. If it was just the $600 bronze casting that had fallen off, we’d be all set with the new one. But because the “tiller arm” broke off, and the replacement has to be custom fitted, welded and bolted to the rudder, and the rudder is underwater, we plan to work on that in Fiji. We might just get the critical measurements and then take the parts home to the stainless guy we’ve worked with before in Port Townsend. It won’t be fun to hand steer all the way to Fiji, but we’ve done worse.
We’re still discovering things we no longer have because they were apparently washed overboard. We also noticed last week that several of the screws holding the wind generator to the mast were either missing or very loose. I had checked them the day before we left, for the first time since we installed it last year, and they were still completely tight. The fact that they had become so loose, and started falling out, is kind of disturbing.
When putting on the new jib we discovered that we have no sheets (the controlling ropes) for it, remembering that they had been still attached to the old one. Then we discovered that the block that guides the jib sheet into the winch had shattered and been destroyed. Besides the AIS antenna on top of the mizzen mast being bent at an awkward angle, the emergency strobe that was up there appears to be just a stub of its former self. What might yet be left to discover is a little unsettling.
The result of this experience is that we’ve learned a lot, including what weather that we probably should avoid looks like. We’ve been forced to change our plans. Our simple two-year tour, already delayed by a year before it even started, is now stretched out for at least another year before we can finally sail the boat back into the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
We are going home at the end of July. We already have the plane tickets. For two of us they are round-trip. Robyn will be having new adventures at school. She can’t wait to get there, and the rest of us can’t wait to get back into our house, and all the comfort and security that comes with that.
We’re taking the forestay fitting from the top of the mast, with the broken strands of steel cable still in it, home with us. Brion Toss, the rigger in Port Townsend who worked on our boat in 2015 before we left, wants to see it. We leave for Fiji as soon as the approaching weather front clears out. That looks like it should be before June 8th.
Maybe we’re a little nervous, but we also can’t wait.
