Captain’s Log: Auckland to Marsden Cove

April 29

Hi All,

Did you hear our joyful shout as we left the dock??? Oh how it feels so good to be on our way to Marsden Cove!!!! What we thought was going to be a couple of weeks in Auckland turned out to be 4 1/2 weeks of pretty nonstop boat projects.

There are a few truisms in cruising that are universal no matter what country you are in: 1) No work really gets done unless you are present. We gave a few technicians 60 days while we were on our road trip to get a list of items done and about 50% got done while we were gone. 2) Double or triple the time you think will take to do a project!!! That’s why our 2 weeks turned into 4.5 weeks….ugh, ugh, ugh!!!!

We thought we were so organized this time. We used Kiwi Shipping to transport our 18 boxes from the USA to Auckland. How long does it take we asked…oh, about 4-5 weeks. Great, we gave the go ahead to ship mid January thinking we would get our goods late February while we were on our road trip. We would either have them store the goods until we got back or have Steve, the mechanic working on Mystic, take delivery. Well…..a combination of factors came together and it took over 3 months for our cargo to arrive. How can that be…..labor issues in Long Beach, extra 6 weeks, just as we were loading in early March on a ship, US Customs pulls our container for a random inspection, add 3 weeks, (btw, Customs did inspect 3 boxes and charged us $150, they looked at the HP printer, the Pegasus light fixtures, and the Maxwell chain gypsy, all shipped straight from the supplier) and finally New Zealand Customs is having a bad year or is having a hissy fit with the Kiwi Shipping Agent, add another 2 weeks…..and voila we got our goods on 4/22, just a week ago.

We have worked nonstop this past week, 10-12 hour days…..oweeeee, bodies are sore and advil no longer helps…..but tequila and wine still do:))))) So what did we do you ask:

1. Replaced 400′ of 3/8″ HT anchor chain…..the old one lasted 10+ years….no idea how many times we deployed it but it was pretty rusty. Sounds easy to change…right….wrong…the chain weighs about 1.5 lb/ft and we had to manually drag the chain over a railing and then down to our dock, get the old chain into our dinghy to haul away, clean out a very dirty chain locker, mark the new chain, install a new correct sized gypsy wheel (the old one which worked for 10 years was undersized, and then maneuver the new chain in a good position for the windlass to haul the chain into the chain locker!!!
2. Replaced the watermaker membranes: the old ones lasted 6.5 years and 2785 hours…..really not too bad!! But, not as simple as plug and play….there was not enough room to take the back membrane out so had to take the membrane bracket off…ok, no big deal, except two screws were frozen and very hard to get to….took every TOOL I own and a hodgepodge of connections but finally heard the snap of the screw releasing…..pure joy…..doing the happy dance…..then took 1 hour to put all the tools away….arghhhhhh!!!
3. Replace the engine room fluorescent lights
4. Replace the GEN sound panel insulation (foam). The old foam was very oily and flaking and made a terrible mess. I had to use a very strong solvent to get the old foam adhesive off….had a headache for days:((((
5. Replaced our printer…..sounds easy right, but the new ones are automatically setup for wireless mode….we use a USB cable….so after 2 hours of reading the limited manual I see an asterisk that says go to a certain function to turn on the USB function….WTH!!!!!
6. Replaced dinghy anchor setup…..lost the old one…don’t ask how….very embarrasing:(((((
7. Installed new 110 volt freezer on Flybidge. The one we bought in Fiji was 230 volt 50 hertz so we brought a 110 volt GE unit in from the USA….it has a few dings from shipping and the back plate was not included….WTH…but the electrician made up a nice plastic back plate so all is good….AND, the best of all, Blair the guy waxing Mystic said there was a 110 v outlet under the cabinet forward of the BBQ…really, I looked and it was there and live….on the ice making circuit….in 11 years we never knew it was there….made it so much easier to wire up….sweet as!!!

Ok, that was my list, Kathy, besides handing me every tool I own per project and helping with extra hands, had to store a gazillion spare parts and work through our corrupted spare part database…..not sure how that happened but when I lost my laptop the old file was corrupted…ugh…..so every spares locker had to be rechecked and parts confirmed for the new database. Fortunately, we found all of our mission

critical spares and corrected locations as needed. She also updated the provisions database, as it too was lost in the computer failures of last year…aarrggg!

We also loaded the 54 bags of food, clothes and other assorted items from Butterfly Trust for Vanuatu. It filled up the forward head and most of the forward stateroom….whoa!!!

So…..that was our week…how was yours????

Today: Well, while not the best of weather…15-20G25kts on the port beam, the winds are offshore so the fetch/waves are 1-2′ short period wind chop….giving the stabilizers a good work out which is what we wanted…..so, not too bad of a ride!!!! This is a 70 nm run so about 9 hours!!

Hmmmm…wrote too soon….the last 30nm or 4 hours was 25-30G35 kts with 3-4′ short period wind chop waves slightly forward of the beam….took splashing water all over Mystic…..arghhhhhh!!! So took me an hour to hose off the boat and then 30 min to rewire our converter plug for power and by 6:15ish we are popping that passage beer!!!

We hope to be in the Whangarei area for about a week…..we need some bimini canvas work and major provisioning. We will look for that perfect trawler like weather window starting hopefully the middle of next week!!!

Hope all is well!!!

John
Mystic Moon
Marsden Cove New Zealand

Ken and Cathy from Butterfly Trust loading the bags for Vanuatu on Mystic Moon. Total of 54 bags weighing from 10-25 lbs

John moving the bags down below where Kathy is stowing

The forward shower completely full

The head completely full

Forward stateroom about 2/3’s full!!

Good by Auckland…..it was a happy/sad…happy to be on our way and sad as we really like Auckland and the people!!