Waiheke Island

We're still waiting for good weather to head back up to Whangarei.  June 1st is the start of winter here in New Zealand.  We have had the odd day of wonderful weather but then another weather system foloowed by another weather system appears and we decide to stay a little longer.

We are on a mooring in Maitiatia Bay on the west coast of Waiheke Island.  It is extremely convienient for the ferry to Auckland, the local Waiheke buses and many walking tracks.

We had come down to Waiheke to meet sailing friends we had first met in New England, Simon and Kim.  We were anchored near them near in Newport, Rhode Island and stopped by in the dinghy to marvel at their spectular transom. It was wide, easy to board and lead into an equally spectular cockpit.  We last saw them in Trinidad. 

We had planned to have lunch with them at the Mudbrick Vineyard restaurant in Waiheke.  As we were days early, we scoped out the location.  It was a 30 minute walk from Maitiatia Bay though woods, farms and vineyards.

At this time of year the sun always very low in the sky, but it still is strong enough to suck all the colour and detail out of your photos if you're not in a position to get it behind you.  I'd have to catch Tim and that seldom happens.

 

 

The views really are spectacular whether you are admiring the fields of vines and olive trees or looking at the Auckland Sky Tower in the distance.

The day felt especially fine thanks to the rainy days that had preceded it.

I was really pleased to finally see why the New Zealand Fantail is forever fluttering along with walkers.  They take advantage of us stirring up insects for them to eat.  This is the first time I was actually able to see the swarm of gnats that they were picking out of the sky one by one.

 This was not an easy video to take.  They are so fast! 

 

 

Looking into Maitiatia Bay. Larus one of furtherest boats, just to the right of centre.

 There are often notices informing us of the history of the area. 

We hope to do more walking on Waiheke before we get our weather window to head north.

We did take the opportunity to visit Auckland for the day.  It is just a 25 minute ferry ride from Maitiatia.  We went off peak for $35 return. 

We have very few reminders as we go about our day that Covid19 is such an enormous problem elsewhere in the world.  We haven't needed to use public transportation and we spend most of our time in less populated areas or at anchor.  We use the Covid Tracer App on our phones whenever we visit public places and I carry 4 masks in my backpack, but that is it.  Travelling on the ferry was the first time we had been required to use them in over a year.

We arrived in Auckland well before anything of the shops opened, thanks to our ticket restrictions, and we had plenty of time to wander around the city.  

We decided to start with a coffee and not fancying a crowded high street shop we wandered up toward the University. We found a cafe under the Ellen Melville Centre on a nice little square and went inside.  

The urn of hot water and instant coffee and tea bags on the counter were a hint. It  took a while, however, to figure out that we had wandered into a community centre.  By then it felt rude to leave haveing chatted with others helping themselves to a hot drink, so we made and drank our free coffee, rinsed our cups and put them in the dishwasher tray as per the sign, thanked the people who worked there and went on our way.

There aren't many places in Auckland, or Waiheke Island even, where you can't see the Sky Tower.  It is a great landmark for navigating the streets.

Much of the construction along the waterfront is complete but there are still packets of major building work going on.  I suspect that they are replacing an intersection on a steep hill with a tunnel and road over the top.  Auckland is a very hilly city thanks to its 53 dormant Volcanoes.

We walked up through Albert Park to the University Clock Tower and it went like this.

Up a steep path past this extemely tall tree with aerial roots. 

It might be a very tall and straight Pohutukawa, but I'm doubtful. The Pohutukawa is also known as the New Zealand Christmas Tree because it flowers red and white in the NZ summer, Christmas time.  It isn't normally that tall and usually spreads out wider from the base, but its the only one I could find with the aerial roots.

The fact that the next three trees are all Ombu trees, native to South America, seem to supports that doubt. These might not be endemic to New Zealand, but they are very impressive.

Carry on up hill ducking under the low hanging branch across the path.

 

Pause to catch your breath and marvel at the roots of this massive tree.

 

Shelter from the rain in the hollow trunk of the topmost ombu tree.

And finally, past  the floral clock across the road to ....

 

The University of Auckland's most iconic building, The Clocktower

We were pleased that the next walking we did was down hill on the whole to the Auckland Bridge.

If we didn't have flowers already onboard, it would ahve been very tempting to buy some here.

I expect I'm not the first tourist to have taken this photo.

We had a lot of low cloud, a heavy mist of rain that made everything very wet, but it made lovely reflections. We looked briefly in a shop and then turned around and headed back.

Follow that tower!

I don't even know the name of the company that thought to use this quip, but it did make me laugh.

Larus on her mooring.

  

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

 And last but by no means least...

We had a most enjoyable lunch at the Mudbrick Restaurant with Simon, Kim, Ian, Ann, me and Tim. I'm letting a picture say a thousand words.  It is the type of dining we don't do ever! : )

Yesterday, we had a lovely afternoon with an ex-work colleague of Tim and an equally memorable meal in their quite amazing mountain-side house.  We're looking foward to having them aboard Larus and have our fingers crossed for a dry warm day.

Unless it stops raining, this will be the last from Waiheke.

Olive picking in Maungakaramea

Yesterday we sailed down from Urquart's Bay to Kawau Island after a week in Marsden Cove Marina.

A number of our friends were preparing their boats to be left on the hard in the marina and we came to visit and help out.  We also had a full week of wet and windy weather.  Even some the fishing boats came into the marina.  They often anchor out in Urquart's Bay but Gale force winds and threat of up to 7 metre swell drove them in. 

Our sail down yesterday was in a gap between weather systems. We arrived in the long well protected bay of Kawau Island in plenty of time for dinner and well before today's blustery conditions. This photo is from one of the Weather forecasting apps that we use with added route information. The course I've drawn is less direct than the one Tim actually steered.

Several weeks ago now, we visited friends, Rob and Jan, who have an olive orchard to help them harvest the olives.

This photo was taken in December, which is Spring here, when Tim and I visited to look after their dog, Indy.  It's a lovely part of the country.  

Rob and Jan had laid out the nets under the trees and had started picking before we arrived.  We had taken the wrong turning off the motorway and added a very pleasant hour to our journey on some extremely hilly and winding picturesque roads.

They have two types of olive one gives a creaminess to the oil and the other gives it a peppery bite. Together they make a very tasty interesting flavour.

There are a number of ways to remove the olives from the trees. The riper the olives are the easier they come off the tree, more oil can be pressed from them, but the more likely they are to be eaten by birds.

The trees were a mixed bunch. Some had loads of olives, some not so many. Some had all green olives and some had a mix of green and the riper black ones.  When to pick is not always a straight forward decision - see When do I pick my olives for more information.

Tim picking olives and Rob using and electric rake to knock them down.  The rake vibrates fasts and shakes the olives off the branches.  This works best on ripe olives.

 

 

 

 

There is also a machine that that does it, but your olives would have to be really ripe for the machine to work well.

Most of the picking was done by hand, and Jan and Rob had a good of people to help over the 4 days of picking.

 

Having lots of people helping is good idea as, though it is very picturesque, it's also hard work. 

 

There is something about olive trees that is very special.  They are often planted in peoples gardens because they are such an attractive tree. They are even prettier with a scattering of black olives.

Tim and I first met in Greece back in '86 and next to the road between Frikes, where we lived, and the nearest village, Stavros, were fields of mature olive trees and old stone walls. This could explain why I'm so partial to them.

 

 

Once the olives have been knocked off the tree, the nets are gathered up and the olives are manoeuvred into piles.

 

 

 

Olives are remarkably heavy and smaller piles are definitely better.

 Jan gathering up the olives into the green baskets and picking out the worst of the branches.  Most of the leaves and branches are dealt by blowing them out of the olives before they pressing.

The green baskets are emptied into large orange baskets.

 

 The orange baskets are transfered into the truck that will transport them the olive press.

Once the olives are picked they need to be kept cool and dry and taken to be pressed as soon as possible.

You've probably notice a quality control issue in some of the photos.  Hand picking olives is oily work and no amount of wiping will remove it from your hands or camera lens.  My camera is water proof so no harm done but I wish I'd noticed earlier. The leggings I wore still have oily knees months later.

 

The pattern the olives formed in the nets as they weighed down the grass look just like the rippled sand you often see in shallow water at the beach.

This was a good tree, loaded with olives.  It is very satisfying to pull your hands down the branches and to hear the heavy rain patter of olives hitting the ground. Very satisfying, indeed.

 

 

This photo of the watering trough for the cows and horse makes me laugh.  

 

That it ended up looking like a psychedelic hallucination has everything to do with olive oil on the lense and nothing at all to do with the pile of field mushrooms Jan's daughter had collected and left in the shade of the trough.

From when I started this blog, we have now moved on to Waiheke Island.  We are well placed in a bay on the west coast of the island.  We have the ferry terminal to Auckland and we can catch a bus outside the terminal to tour to the island. Now we just have to wait for some more dry weather. 

More March Excitement

A few days after the Tsunami Alert I wrote about in the previous post, we had Larus hauled out in Riverside Drive Marina to refresh our Coppercoat antifouling on the hull.  

Coppercoat is billed as providing protection for up to 10 years. Around 2010 we applied Coppercoat for the first time.  It was a major job as we had all the gelcoat peeled from below the waterline as Larus had the some osmosis, which was not particularly surprising in a 30 year old GRP/fibreglass ya.  Once peeled and allowing the hull to airdry for months, we replaced the peeled gelcoat with fibreglass and epoxy and then applied the coppercoat.

At the 7 year mark we reapplied a top-up coat in Trinidad.  In light of our latest endeavour, I suspect we were rushed, missed out some steps, which gave a reasonable but much less satisfactory finish.

Most antifoul products are a paint that erodes off or poisons to keep the pests at bay. Coppercoat is a hard surface, which slows the growth of underwater plants and critters. It can and must be scrubbed occasionally to keep it in the best condition.  This isn't much of a problem in tropical water.  Every few weeks you can finish off a swim by giving the slimy buildup on the bottom a quick wipe.

In the cold water of NZ, that is far less appealing as Tim discovered during our first winter here.  The addition of a 5mm wetsuit with hood and a Deck Snorkle made cleaning the bottom more doable but never much fun in 15 C water temperatures.  We noticed as the winter went on the hull needed to be cleaned more frequently and it was decided that we had to have another go at doing it properly.

When applying Coppercoat, it's necessary to keep the hull completely dry. Any drips of water from condensation in the morning or a trickle of water from a sink will affect how well the Coppercoat cures and that will affect how effective it is.  To reduce the chance of drips from the sinks, we decided to book 2 weeks in some local and very budget accomodation.

It was a boathouse and just a few minutes walk from the Riverside Drive Marina. The row of boathouses are over 100 years old and are probably worth more than one might guess.

It was very hard to stand far enough away to take a photo that actually gave you a feel for what it was like. 

 

 

This is looking from the river end of the property, past the owner's powerboat, into the living area with sink on the right and dining room table and chairs over looked by the dolpin on the back wall. In the far distance on the right-hand side is the front door.  The toilet and shower are on the right just before the door.

 

 

From the 'dining area' looking into the bedroom/kitchen.  The bedroom/kitchen was the only place that could be locked securely. The rest of the appartment was accessible from the river.  I think that the bedroom/kitchen area was the original boathouse.

 

 

This is the only photo I have of the bedroom kitchen.  It has a little electric oven/hob combo, a microwave, a fridge, a good selection of crockery and cultery and the most appalling selection of pots and pans.  This photo was taken 1) standing on the bed and 2) to show the three skylights in the roof.  

 

I think the skylights would have been the original lighting before the buildings had electricity. There is no way to close them or turn them off so when the sun was up, we knew about it.  As well as the skylights and small bedside lamp, the only other lighting in the room was a 6 foot long bare florescent tube in the peak of the roof. We only used it when we really had to because of its harsh and truly terrible brightness.

 

In this photo the front door is behind us the river is dead ahead.  There was a sink with hot water so we tended to do all the washing out here. Any cooking the the bedroom/kitchen made it really hot so we did most of our cooking out here too.  I brought pots and pans, our induction hob, our fruit and veg baskets, oils and spices and anything else I didn't want to go 2 weeks without like muffin tins and a mixing bowl.

I don't think the photos do it justice, and there were some issues, but it had a certain charm. Eventually we found and put up the hanging chair. It was positioned at the far end of the corridor by the water's edge where Tim could sit, cold beer in hand, and watch the world float by.

This was the sort of early morning view I enjoyed.  I had startled two herons picking through the mud as the tide was out.  They squalked loud enough to startle me and flew to the top of a pile. Sadly, the photo was on my phone and the light was very low so it's not very clear but you get the idea. It was pretty special.

We started work pretty much immediately for fear of losing the good weather.

 

 

Tim sanding with a random orbital sander. It is connected to our wet/dry vaccuum and attached to the sander with a long hose.  We found it to be very heavy.  When we first applied Coppercoat in the UK we hired a big compessor and used an air sander which has much less weight in the business end.  I have no memory of the first time, but can't imagine forgetting what will hopefully be the last.

 

 

When Larus was first lifted out, from a distance she looked pretty good, the hull quite smooth.  Once you got up close however, the illusion disappeared and it was apparent that a lot of worked need to be done.  In this photo the port side has been sanded. The green colour is from the copper oxidizing from the old Coppercoat and is perfectly normal.  As one sands, a more coppery colour is exposed.

 

 

The whitish areas are where we sanded through to the fibreglass base we applied before the first coat in the UK.   As well as machine sanding, all the areas the sander that couldn't reach were sanded by hand, mostly my hand.

A quick shot of our propellor looking bronze again.  We used a hard rubber disk that fits on a drill to quickly remove every trace of white calcium coral and barnacle bases.  Normally, we do this job with a chisel and very fine wet and dry sandpaper in 10 X the time.  We learned about rubber sanding disc from the guy who applied the PropSpeed. Propspeed is new to us, it is essentially a very slippery coating that growth can't stick to. It seems to work so far, if we can get two years it will be good value, if only one year it will be pricey,'  wrote Tim.

I can't believe I don't have a photo of the strange gel like yellow coating.

This was probably at the end of the second day of sanding as we are looking pretty chipper.

Once we had sanded the whole hull, we filled all the rough patches and indentations with an epoxy filler and then sanded most of it off and leaving a much smoother surface.

Tim testing how smooth the suface is.  We could have filled and sanded again but we decided that will happen the next time we redo the Coppercoat.  We had had quite enough sanding by then and time was getting tight.

I've mentioned before, but it bears repeating, that it is so important to keep the hull completely dry once you start applying the Coppercoat.  To this end, we did a couple of things.

If you look just above the blue line, which is low tack masking tape to stop us rolling Coppercoat onto the white topsides, is a thick strip of black VERY low tack tape.  Only the top edge of the tape has been pressed to the hull.  Under the loose bottom edge we put bits of balled up masking tape.  This made a flaired mini skirt so that any drips running down the side of the hull due to condensation or water down a skin fitting would fall away from the hull.  

This worked brilliantly as people who do this sort of work on boats all time could (and did) tell us.

We'd had a really good run of fine weather for the sanding, but the forecast became worse the closer we got to 'D' Day for applying the Coppercoat.  Tim devised a brilliant solution; another cunning 'skirt' to keep rain off the hull. The tarp was in a number of sections and attached to the 'toe rail' at deck level by cable ties.

The lower edge is tied down to various lumps of wood over night or if it started to rain.

While we were working, we tied the ropes on the lower edge to points on the deck so that the skirt was lifted.  It worked so well that Tim of approached by many in the yard offering to take the tarps off our hands once we were done.

This is probably the second coat of the copper and expoxy mix because we had the presense of mind to take the odd photo. 

 

 

Coppercoat is applied using a small mohair rollers.  The first layer of epoxy we rolled on had no copper added to it.  It is a barrier coat and prepares the surface for the epoxy and copper mix.  

Applying Coppercoat is a team activity as you always want to be rolling to a wet edge.  Our friend Colin, from Burmese Breeze, came to our aid in a big way by helping us from when we started at 11 in the morning until 9 at night when we finally finished.  Sadly, the only photo I have is of Colin from behind.

Colin did the top third, Tim the middle third and I did the lower third - tallest to shortest.

It took us far longer than we had anticipated and the last application was by torch/flashlight.  We did manage to apply the recommended 5 coats of Coppercoat over the base coat.  It was a very long day and once done we all went back to the boathouse for lasagne, debrief and mutual back patting for a good days work.

The next morning, this was definitely a sight for sore eyes.  The Coppercoat looked glorious.  The next step was to lightly sand the whole hull yet again to remove the top layer of epoxy and expose the copper.  This is a new step and was not recommended when we first started using Coppercoat. It makes sense though as it's the copper that deters growth.

About a third the way through the sanding, Tim caught the palm of his hand with the edge of a rotating sanding disk. I carried on sanding while he went off to have it dealt with.  

The cut wasn't a hugely long or deep but it did need 3 stitches and the dressing changed every few days at the White Cross Medical Centre in town.  NZ has a marvellous system where anyone injured by or in an accident is treated at no charge.  

In time the sanding was finished, the topsides washed and waxed and we were ready to be launched the next day.  

We are very pleased to have this job done and even more pleased not to have to repeat it for another 10 years.

After a short break to visit the Bay of Island and spend some time at anchor, we booked into Whangarei Basin Marina for a week to replace our steering pedestal. 

When we bought Larus back in 1998 she had 20 year old Rack and Pinion Steering.  It was in a bad way and to fix it would have cost 5 times more than replacing it with hydraulic steering.  Rack and Pinion gives more feedback from the rudder, but as well as being cheaper hydraulic steering is easier to install and almost maintenance free.  We kept the compass and in time fixed an autopilot to the top of arch.  This worked extremely well for us until the the helm pump (the hyrdaulic pump located in the pedestal) started to, when working hard, dribble oil from the filling point on the top of the pump. When it began to spew rather than dribble, we decided to take action.

Tim searched everywhere but no one now makes pumps small enough to fit the old pedestal.

So we bit the bullet and ordered a new 'Jefa Steering System' (pedestal) from Denmark. 

 Throttle cables are go!

It is just as well we saved all that money years ago. The pedestal and delivery from Denmark probably cost 5 times as much as the one we replaced.

But it is beautiful!  

It is also less tall than the old one with the autopilot on the top, which means that people sitting in opposite corners of the cockpit can see each other.  Once again, it was a lot of work to install and Tim did it himself.  There were many alterations to be made - supports changed under the cockpit, new holes drilled, the teak grating altered, holes cut into the pedestal face for the autopilot, compass light (no more using a torch/flashlight at night) and for the cockpit anchor windlass control.  All of this took about a week.

There are a few loose ends to tidy up.  We are having a cover made ffor the pedestal and a separate one for the folddown teak table. There is no way to attach our teak cup holder to the pedestal so we are looking for a new solution.  We have some ideas but haven't found what we are looking for.

Right now, the 23rd of April, we are out at anchor in Urquhart's Bay.  Tim dived the bottom yesterday and found it absolutely perfect, thank goodness!

In the next blog, I'll tell you about our olive picking experience with Rob and Jan at their farm near Maungakaramea, not far from Whangarei.