On the Hard….Work, Work, and More Work

Hi All,

It has been 3 weeks since we made it back to Empire Marina in Bobbin Head outside of Sydney and it has…..well, been a lot of WORK…yep, the ugly four letter word…..but a little fun mixed in!!!! So, for the fun part first:

After the first week on the hard we had a date w/e in Sydney…..we were a bit tired from 5 days of projects, all done pretty much in 85-100 deg F heat with humidity thrown in for a kicker. The highlight of the w/e was going to a Led Zeppelin concert at the Sydney Opera House. OMG….this was just about the best concert we have ever heard. I forget the name of the band but they have been playing Led Zeppelin music for over 30 years and are pretty close to the real thing. But, what made this special was they combined with a full orchestra. This combination along with the precise acoustics of the Opera House concert hall was outstanding!!!! Plus, the 2700+ in attendance were all about our age so it just didn’t matter that we all danced like geriatrics:)))) I’ve posted some video and pics on the website.

We also made it to the Maritime museum and saw a submarine and a replica of the HMS Endeavor, the one Captain Cook sailed on his first trip to the South Seas. In April 1770, Endeavour became the first ship to reach the east coast of Australia, when Cook went ashore at Botany Bay. In all the lands he discovered, he completely missed Sydney Harbor!!

We also made it to the Fish Market where we had lunch with our good friends Brett & Stacey on sv Bella Vita and Peter and Robyn on sv Tiger Lily. The fish market was incredible, one of the largest ones we have seen and the food was very fresh…..we have really bonded with the Australian seafood….prawns, oysters, scallops, lobster, tuna, snapper et al!!!

On another occasion, after 12 days on the hard, Mark Tilden, our good friend, owner of a Selene 60 and who voluntarily runs the Selene Forum, came to visit for a day. Mark had been in Australia for 2+ weeks working for his church. The last day of his visit he came to Mystic. We were able to gather 3 other Australian Selene owners, Terry on Calypso, Darryl and Liane on Saphire Blu, and Brian and Fiona on Argosy, plus Mark and Wendy Halvorsen attended. Terry hosted the event since Mystic was still somewhat torn apart and barbecued some steaks while Kathy made all the other fixings. Plus we had ice cream….well, of course!!! It was such a delight meeting other Selene owners and then Mark H regaled us with some very interesting Selene stories. Mark and his dad partnered with Howard Chen (the owner of Jettern, builder of Selene’s) in the late 90’s to design and build the first Solo’s which eventually became Selene. It was great to be able to talk with the designer of our boat and understand all that went into this wonderful design!!!

So here we are still working like mad dogs to get the boat back together and cleaned up. Monday (tomorrow) we leave for our 2 month road trip around Australia!!!! I’ll be blogging on the trip so stay tuned for some down under stories!!!

Boat Stuff:

Bottom Paint: 60L (15+ gal) of Altex #5. We have been 3 years on Seahawk 44 Plus put on in Panama and for the most part the bottom was still in pretty good shape. Unfortunately Seahawk has just been introduced into Australia and is very expensive and so far does not have a good reputation. Altex is very popular in Australia and what the boatyard recommended. It is a semi-hard ablative but I think softer than Seahawk so we will probably only get 2 years. Most boats here in Australia just plan to paint every year or so. We normally use 12 gals so we have about 25% more paint….we shall see how it does!! This is our first time having the paint sprayed on which is standard here in Australia.

Stabilizer Fin Seals: It has been 2.5+ years since Wally came to Papeete to replace our fin seals as both had started to leak seawater crossing the Pacific. Both sides looked pretty good this time, with only a little water on the starboard side when we dropped the fin….think we caught the leak just in time!!!! We still used a speedy sleeve, a very thin sleeve to cover the fin shaft where we had a little corrosion 2.5 years ago. However, Wally discovered most of the electrical connections loose…..we are not sure how that happened but maybe from all the headseas and bouncing we have done in these South Seas!!!

PSS Seals for the rudder, Cummins and Yanmar: The PSS seals are the dripless seals that seal the rudder and propeller shafts. They have worked great for us now over 11 years. They actually looked in good shape but the manufactured recommends changing every 6 years so we did after 11…yep, a little late on this one:(((( In the process of putting everything back together Wally discovered that several bolts on the Cummins motor mounts were loose…..OMG, not good for your main engine….and indeed it was slightly out of alignement….again a mystery and the first time this has happened…..again maybe from all the pounding in the headseas. This is now on my maintenance list to tighten these bolts every so often. Wally also discovered the wrong bolts used in one of the Rudder blocks….they had used threaded bolts which were carving out the hole and eventually would have failed!!!!

New batteries: Wow, what an ordeal this was. First, we bought 15 new batteries from the USA….with the dollar being so high it was 50% less buying and shipping from USA. We started this process 6 months ago!! The good news our Northstar AGM’s have been upgraded with a newer technology that will gives us even more life and cycles. We got over 1500 cycles on this last set, better than the 1200 cycles the last two sets. We have done a much better job of keeping the batteries cooler, especially those in the lazarette. These new batteries are advertised to get somewhere between 2000-2500 cycles at 70% DOD!!!! That will for sure get us back to Seattle and then many years thereafter. The bad news is the dimensions changed. So, it took 2 techs 2 days to modify all the brackets that secure the batteries….ouch, $$$$.

Other smaller jobs: detail the entire boat, 2 more coats of Alwood on the caprail, service the AC units (we will need these units alot in Indonesia as we get closer to the equator), service the Honda and Yamaha outboards…..the poor Honda which rarely gets used had a corroded carburetor!!, some various canvas work, recaulked all the rubrails, hawseholes and portholes and some windows, inspect and tighten rigging and the list goes on:))))

One job we did not plan on was the master toilet hose that goes from the anti-siphon valve to the thru hull developed a plug….ugh. I had changed out the macerator during the haul out as it was getting slow but we did not count on the plugged hose. As our buddy Les always says, you do not want to be #1 with #2…..ugh, ugh, ugh!!!!

So that is how we have spent our last 3 weeks….a lot of hard and sweaty work with some good times thrown in!!!

Now to go visit 7 of the 60 different wine regions in Australia!! Let the road games begin…think left, must go left…as in left side of the road!!!

Cheers,

John
Mystic Moon

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Mystic in the travelift slings….and a puckered John

Looking good!!

The travelift setting Mystic on the blocks

The port stabilizer fin

The port fin shaft….you can see the speedy sleeve at the very bottom. This doesn’t look all that good but once it was cleaned up it was in good shape!!

Wally and a worker dropping the starboard stabilizer fin

The rudder top locking collar….see the worn hole….we replaced the bolt with one with a shoulder and used washers to secure the bolt so no more movement