Late start to 2016 Blogs-apologies!

27 June 2016

Sheer Tenacity being moved to the Sin Bin......for bio-hazards!

Our last blog covered our passage from New Caledonia to Bundaberg, and our rush to sort out breakages, repairs, and preparing  Sheer for her long stay on the hard, before flying home to Cape Town for a good long home visit in time for Christmas…our first back home for 7 years!

Well, time since then has flown, and life has been hectic!

 This first blog is a feeble attempt to justify my blog blockage and fill in the gaps! Cape Town proved to be a social whirlwind of catching up with friends and family. I must have added 1kg per week to my already too large midriff! It really came to my attention when I had to squeeze into my black tie and dress suit for a Bishops 50 year matric reunion!

A second mission was to go through our medical audit and overhaul, before returning for our last cruising session. Mary had her other eye’s cataract done while in Cape Town, and it has proved to have been better, less invasive, and half the price of the NZ one!

A 3^rd mission was to start looking ahead at life in RSA once we had swallowed the hook. Retirement Villages were an obvious solution, but after the independence, freedom and space, of our cruising life, we found looking at this option both expensive , and a bit depressing! Buying a smaller home as a stop gap before going the RV way also did not make financial sense…. 2 transfer costs, commissions, etc, in a short time period.

One other option existed. We had as a family, often talked about the family compound concept, where a larger home would offer both the independence, plus the security, proximity, and there for each other options! Kate had always been keen on this lifestyle, and liked the Sunset Links estate in Milnerton. We had never heard of it, let alone been there, so we arranged a visit to be shown the estate, and the type of homes that were on the market. We were very impressed, and one particular unit had exactly the type of configuration which lent itself to the concept.

Now Kate is not one to let the grass grow under her feet! In less than one week, her offer on the new place was accepted, and she had sold her lovely townhouse in Tamboerskloof!

Mary and I packed up her old house till we dropped (Kate working herself to a standstill earning the bucks), and then we negotiated access to the new house before the move date, so that we could drop off and store all the packed cartons in the flat. Then we moved in together, and unpacked our butts off! Within 3 or 4 days, everything was more or less sorted…. pictures were up, TV’s working and music was playing! (a pictorial blog will follow!)

With our post sailing future sorted with Kate, it was time to fly back to Australia to prepare Sheer for re-launching, and to start considering how and when to quit.

Our first surprise was to see the state of her antifouling. It had all cracked in the dry heat, and looked like crazy paving! This was no wet sand and anti-foul job! After considering all options, we elected to have the hull sand blasted back to the gel coat, and to re do all the epoxy barriers before spraying on the new antifoul.

All wrapped up 

Sandblasted right down to gelshield

See how we have raised the waterline since launching

Resprayed bootstrap

Epoxy subcoats go on

Altex 5 antifoul .......3 coats

Being in Australia, this is a bio-hazard job, and requires a special isolation pen….. with commensurate costs! To give Marine Services credit, they did an absolutely superb job, including re-spraying the red bootstrap, which they knew would get damaged with the sand blasting. The sandblasting itself only took 4 hours, but due to the mess it makes, the boat has to be totally wrapped up beforehand…. which took 2 days!  The new coatings, and anti-fouling  ,prop speed etc meant the whole job took a week in the expensive pen. The bill came to AUS $14 000! ( x 11.5 for Rands!) 

We also  couldn’t stay on the boat during this procedure, so we moved into a teensy chalet in the caravan park and kept the hired car that we drove up from Brisbane to Bundaberg for another week.

Sunset roos

Honeyeater in the bushes outside our hut

Lorakeets in the bottlebrushes

One of our options was sail back to New Cal, and to spend a few months there, during which we could consider the boat market there ito selling, and if it did not look good, we could then sail back down to Newcastle, where we could put it on the market, in the hands of a broker. That way we would be able to pay the import duty and tax out of the sale proceeds.

Walking along the beach, we came across these crab "balls"......
we thought must be the inspiration of the dotty aboriginal art

"Big Foot"......the human dynamo who almost singlehandedly did the job!

Job done and looking good

Ready to splash....such a pity to put her back in dirty water!

Another thing we considered, given the market conditions here, was to join the Arc Rally for the leg from Darwin to Richards Bay. The combination of the entry costs which were insane plus the routing and time of year (October/November), put paid to that idea! We are also smaller than they like to have on the rally!

The one we finally settled on was to enjoy the Whitsundays, rush up to Cairns, and join the Indonesian rally, which would allow us to visit Singapore, and Malaysia, before heading home via Chagos, bottom of Seychelles, Mayotte, through the Moz Channel to Richards Bay , in March April next year…. That’s the gentle time and route!

So, we sent our passports off to the Indonesian Consulate in Sydney, for them then to be posted to Cairns. We joined the rally, paid the fees, online purchased the cruising guide book (in Adelaide!!!), had it sent to Cairns , and ordered our Navionics electronic charts also to be available in Cairns!

All set to go, then the weather goes bananas, and an east coast low makes sailing impossible for a week, and smashes up Coffs habour  en route!  Thankfully Scott Free who were in the marina at the time were unharmed, but their blog describing conditions, and pictures, is terrifying!

Finally, the weather improves and we head for Cairns!