Gidday, mates, from Australia!!!

The Bravo crew has landed in Oz, and been hard at work getting acquainted with the land of Oz for the past three weeks.

Flying in to Melbourne after a quick hop across the Tasman sea from Auckland (it's true.....nothing sails to weather like a 737!!!), we were met at the airport by mates Don and Deb.  We first met them sailing in Mexico several years ago, where they were cruising their boat, Buena Vista.  Though since "swallowing the anchor" (selling the boat and moving ashore), we've kept in touch, and it was great to reunite at their place outside of Melbourne.

D&D had an action packed 10 days or so in store for us.  After taking care of the usual chores on entering a new country, such as cell phone cards, Aussie bank account, etc., and touring the terrific, vibrant downtown of Melbourne (a large city, over 4,000,000 people, greater than the population of all of New Zealand!!!)  we took off on an 1100 km road trip throughout the state of Victoria.

Yes, it's bloody cold here in winter!!!

Street art on Melbourne's famous Hosier Lane.  Think if we were a band, this would be our album cover!

Royal Arcade, Melbourne's shopping "mall" dating back to the 1860's

Don's bro Kieth, a wool broker, has quite a collection of shipping stencils.  Cool!

Headed up to Euroa, for a fine visit with Don's brothers and mom, then over the mountains (ski area at Mt. Hotham, base elev 4,700') and on to visit with Tony and Carol at their ranch near Buchan.

The road to Mt. Hotham.....snow still a bit bony for the area to open.

Would have been great to get in a few turns.....ah well, maybe next year!!!

No, sheep ranchers do not like dingos (Australian wild dogs).....this rather creepy sight on the back road of Victoria.  

Animal tracks were everywhere on the banks of Snowy Creek

Had a fantastic tour of Tony and Carol's 800 acre spread (not the ranch (station) in the photo above!!!) in Tony's 4x4 ute, as we made our way on the muddy tracks down to the Snowy Creek at Jackson's Crossing.  The area has a rich history of gold mining and running cattle back to the late 1800's.  Still had a feeling of going back in time, not hard to imagine drovers with herds of up to 100,000 head of cattle.

Carol's "Big Red", an Australian wild horse, or "brumby", similar to the mustang of the American west, that she saved from the glue factory

Fresh wombat turd adorns a rock.....hey, we just call it as we see it!!!

Old homestead......"Perfect fixer upper, some work needed"

Old drovers' settlement along Snowy Creek

Jackson's Crossing, site of the old cattle drive.  The water was a bit high for us to cross.....ummmm, yeah, I guess.....

Don and Deb with Tony's ute.

Definitely 4 wheel drive country!

Saw lots of wildlife on the trip, including a little echidna (spiny anteater) ambling across the road, many wombats (since they are primarily nocturnal, we drove around the paddocks in the dark with a spotlight, to see the little guys waddling over the hills), lots of kangaroos, and several birds new to us, including cockatiels and crimson rosellas.  Great stuff!

Why did the echidna cross the road?

We followed him for a few yards until he curled into a little ball of quills

A typical "mob" of kangaroos

Great surfing all along the coast road.

But it was finally time to say our goodbyes to D&D and get a rental car for the drive to Adelaide, where we would pick up our new steed, a 1995 Landcruiser named 'Tojo', as, we've come to learn, all Toyotas are nicknamed.  The route took us along the Great Ocean Road, one of the classic Australian touring roads.  Beautiful views and surf breaks everywhere, and we of course had to spend a day in the Coonawarra wine region, filling up the shiraz tank for Australian adventures to come.  The Aussies take their red wines seriously......so did we.......

The "12 Apostles" sea stacks at sunset were beautiful

Arriving in Adelaide, we were warmly greeted by Tojo's owners Pete and Polly.  They hosted us for a week, time spent getting Toj ready for upcoming outback travel.  P&P were terrific, giving us heaps of info on the outback, 4x4 driving, and gave us a great perspective of travel in the remote regions of the country.

I guess we didn't fully appreciate just how remote much of Australia really is.  Preparations for 4x4 exploration in this country are nothing like getting ready for most road trips.  Spare parts, tools, vehicle recovery gear, desert survival supplies, navigation gear.....full self sufficiency is required.  We even took a day long course in 4x4 driving techniques and vehicle recovery.  Tojo has been there before, and though she's just had her 20th birthday, she's in very good shape   (knock on wood!!!).

"Some assembly required".......yup.

We added a rooftop tent for desert camping (keeps us up 6 feet above the many poisonous snakes and spiders, not to mention salt water crocodiles (salties))  Sweet as!!!

Tonight's camp alongside the road.

Home for the next several months

Also added several antennas to satisfy Adam's inner geek.  (The geek even applied for an Australian ham radio call sign....just received VK3SYB).  Tojo now sports 5 antennas around the hood (bonnet)....  UHF CB (needed to talk to road truckers about passing options), cell phone booster, ham 2 meter/440, ham hf, and am/fm radio.  Most important is the HF ham antenna, as long range communications while in the desert are considered essential.  Talked to a hamster in California today while motoring down the road, so it must be working.  We also carry a satellite epirb (emergency beacon), much as we do on the boat.  This will notify search and rescue teams via satellite in case of serious emergency.

We studied many maps and guidebooks, and spent a lot of time online looking at road conditions and weather.  Unfortunately, though this should ordinarily be the dry season (winter), the country has been hit by record rain and cold, basically since we arrived three weeks ago, coming up from the southern ocean and Antartica.  This has rendered much of the outback roads, especially of South Australia, impassable, forcing most of the best 4x4 roads to be closed.  Major bummer!  So we've had to alter plans a bit, and rather than heading out to cross the Simpson Desert early in the trip, we are instead heading up the paved Stuart Highway through the center of the country, heading to Uluru and Alice Springs.  That will give us a bit of a hub of exploration in the region, until we head up to the Kimberlies in north west Oz.

Typical gps screen.....this road is STRAIGHT!!!

Home for tonight!

It's all good, this is an amazing country to explore, and we're settling into the road camping mode with the new rooftop tent nicely.  Tomorrow we'll head through Coober Pedy, an opal mining village where all of the homes are built underground to keep cool in the summer.  No, we're not in Kansas anymore!

When you get a bunch of lemons.......

it's time for an icy cold lemonade!!!


Wow, hard to believe a half a year has passed since the last blog post.....Once again, I'd ask indulgence from you, dear loyal readers, but I can hardly blame all of you for long ago abandoning this ship!!!!  Nonetheless, I do see that the blog still gets several hits a day, so at least someone must be out there looking for an update!!! 

So here's what the Bravo crew has been up to.......and where it's heading.......

Happy Thanksgiving crowd!!!

In the last post we mentioned that we were heading back to the US for Thanksgiving. And yes, that happened.....the usual annual fest at the Hawkens Frog Dog Farm in Anacortes was wonderful as always. And it was terrific to see other friends, mates, and family from the Seattle area as well.


But one thing wasn't quite so terrific on this visit. Cindi had been continually bothered by pain in her left wrist, the one that she broke in the fall 6 months earlier. While in Seattle we decided to see an orthopedic surgeon specializing in hands and wrists. He took one look at her wrist, quickly measured angles, and confirmed that she needed full surgery. Rebreak the bone (which had set at a bad angle), do a bone graft w/ a putty of cadaever bone and her own stem cells harvested from her hip, slap on a titanium plate with 10 screws, sew her up and she'd be right as rain!

Didn't seem to be any other options, so she went ahead with the surgery.  Afterwards, we flew back to New Zealand, and she has been a physical therapy fanatic ever since.  We go to the gym every day, and she's been doing 3x daily wrist exercises.  She's even been wearing an electronic gizmo, a "bone growth stimulator", which keeps zapping her wrist, 24/7, with electric currents through electrodes.  Seems a bit like snake oil, kind of like strapping a magnet to your arm, but what is there to lose, and perhaps it will help. 

Unfortunately, on x-rays taken 6 months after the surgery, the damned wrist didn't look like it was healing. The doc in Seattle was useless as tits on the proverbial boar, saying that "his screws" appeared to be holding and "until it hurts, you should be fine with sailing this summer.....and if it starts to hurt, it means the screws are pulling out, and you should come in for more surgery!!!)   Meaning the Seattle summer sailing the light winds in the San Juan Islands near Seattle, not dealing with offshore weather as we voyaged next to Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Palau, none of which are at all famous as Centers of Orthopaedic Excellence.

It seemed like a second opinion was called for.  We found a terrific doc in Auckland, another hand/wrist orthopod, but an avid sailor and kayaker as well.  He was down to earth, frank and open, and not at all of the "holier than thou" school of medicine of which it seems most US surgeons are enthusiastic alumni.  Mr. Foster (that's right, MR., not DR.; even the sign on his office lists him this way!  No white coats here) agreed that the wrist x-rays showed little sign of healing.  But he felt that a CT scan might show better resolution of what could be shadowed by adjacent tendons and the other arm bone.  He got us right into imaging, and within an hour we were back in his office to review the digital slices.  It was more promising, as we could now see threads of calcification starting to bridge the gap!!!  Fantastic!!!  We are now much more hopeful that with time, this may yet heal without another surgery!!!

But our 1 year extension to our New Zealand visas, granted due to the accident, expire in mid June. And the post-cyclone cruising season is upon us, with most boats already departed to the tropics. We don't feel that it would be a really smart idea to risk rebreaking the weakened bone in a fall aboard, especially hundreds of miles at sea.

THE NEW PLAN

So, where does that leave us?  

Well, remember that pitcher of lemonade??  We've decided that rather than risking the wrist with passagemaking, especially in remote regions, to take a new direction for adventure.....  After our current 2 week sea trial cruising the Bay of Islands of northern New Zealand, we'll store Bravo back on the hard in NZ (in the same boatyard that we've lived for the past 1-1/2 years!!!) and fly on June 5 to Melbourne, Australia.  Stop in and visit former cruising mates Deb and Don of s/v Buena Vista.  

We had originally fantasized about finding a suitable off road Unimog like this bad boy:

These rascals are the holy grail in the subculture of international off-road adventurers, but they're just a bit (like $200,000) over our budget.

Instead, we've found and purchased an old beast of a Toyota LandCruiser, a grizzled outback veteran fully equipped for stream crossings, rock hopping, and desert storm, and with a roof rack and a roof top tent, we'll take advantage of the southern winter (the dry season in northern Oz) and head out to explore the Australian desert and outback for the next several months.  Searching for Crocodile Dundee!!!  What could possibly go wrong?????   Stay tuned.....


Our 2 year permit to keep Bravo in NZ expires in November, at which time she must either leave the country, or be officially imported, paying many thousands of $ in tax and fees.  Not good. 

The plan is to leave our truck in Oz in October, and fly back to NZ.  Cindi will get new scans, and assuming all is good, we will sail Bravo over to Australia.  Possibly via New Caledonia. Put her in a marina there, and continue to explore by land until roughly April, when we'll sell the truck (original owner wants to buy her back!!!), jump back on Bravo, and explore the Whitsundays and Great Barrier Reef, before departing Oz in early June, likely for Indonesia and SE Asia.

So that's been the change in plans. The pitcher of lemonade, if you will.......It's been a frustrating and disappointing last year and a half, as we now watch the international cruising fleet depart without us from New Zealand for the second time. But we're excited about the new Oz adventure in front of us to explore some of the really remote regions of the Australian outback, Tasmania, and the inland deserts for the next year, before resuming our water borne lifestyle once again.  Our 1 year visas for Australia have just been approved, so we'll be good to go in about 2 weeks!!!


PAST 6 MONTHS

What have we been up to for the past 6 months, anyway, besides dealing with Cindi's recovery?  Well, for one thing, Bravo's projects continued to take up most of our time.  Now this next bit may get a bit.......ummmmmmm.......ok, BORING for you non-geek types who have managed to read this far.  Sorry 'bout that, but it's what we do when not out cruising.  

Electrical:  The lithium battery project proved to be a challenge.  Working with electrician Scott, we designed and installed what we think is a state-of-the-art lithium battery bank.  As we learned, changing over from traditional lead acid batteries is not simply swapping like-for-like.....rather it required a full rethink of all systems even remotely related to batteries and their charging, monitoring, and use.  We installed a BMS (Battery Management System) more typically used for electric vehicles.  It sends the 12 individual cell parameters (temp and voltage) to a computer brain, which monitors and can shut down either charging or loads via large relays to ensure the safety of both the batteries and the boat.  It reads out via Bluetooth all of the battery info to an Android phone app.  Sweet as!  If anyone has questions re: the installation in more detail, feel free to email for the good, bad, and the ugly.

One of three modules of 4 cells, w/ cell monitors attached

Testing and programming each module before installing

Getting all of this to work properly was not for the faint of heart.  Due to firmware and software growing pain issues (the system is designed and manufactured by some genuinely bright engineers who happen to be in Lithuania) it took a while for all of the components to play nicely together in the same sandbox.  New voltage regulation and battery capacity monitoring was required.  Some systems need work arounds to deal with the different voltages and charging algorthms.  But, knock-on-wood, things seem to be working very well at this point, and we're really enjoying the benefits of the lithium world, mainly amazingly fast charging, and deep level of allowable discharge.  We can now utilize approximately 80% of our 600 amp hours, instead of the 35-50% we were able to use before.  Also, the batteries stay at approximately 13.2 volts for most of their discharge cycle, which makes all electronics and motors very happy.




Other projects we've recently completed include:

• New navigation station
• New B&G instruments, including forward scanning sonar
• New VHF radios and antennas
• New wifi router and hi-gain antenna
• New upholstery, both interior and cockpit cushions
• New mainsail and yankee headsail
• New roller furler for the staysail
• New prop shaft, cutless bearings, and PSS seal
• Reinstall the rebuilt rudder
• New stereo (this is an important one!!!)
• New dodger and bimini
• New series drogue and attachment chainplates

All projects have proven to be great successes, albeit not without a couple of teething pains discovered on sea trials over the past couple of weeks.  More on the sea trials in subsequent blog post(s).

In an effort to quickly get us caught up and back into the blogging mode, here are just a few vignettes of the past 6 months.....

Other than boat projects, we've enjoyed our further explorations of NZ's north island.  

We've had a couple of house sitting gigs for kiwi friends away on holidays.  Great opportunity to get out of the boatyard life for a while.  Both were on small farms, so we got a taste of cattle, sheep, donkey, and chicken husbandry (do you Americans remember the TV show "Green Acres".....thought so.....) as well as looking after two great labrador retrievers.  Good fun!












We never grew tired of the constantly changing view from Bridgette and Dave's deck.....

New Years Eve in Auckland with mates Graham and Diane from s/v Maunie

Steak and prawns on the barbie.....hard to go wrong!

Graham shows all symptoms of a successful New Years Eve celebration!

Cruising the Bay of Islands, new sails flying!  (photos of Bravo courtesy of s/v Maunie)

This country of New Zealand and her people are special indeed.  We feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend the past couple of years here.

"Here comes the sun, little darlin' "

Apologies to the Beatles, but it does feel great to feel spring blooming here in New Zealand.  Days are long, and the longer "fine spells" are welcome after the winter doldrums.

Life goes on in a rainy boatyard.....not always so glamorous!!!

It's hard to believe it's been 3 months since the last post, but life really has felt a bit like the Kiwi version of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day.  The days blend into weeks and then into months, w/ a fairly regular routine....We're still out of the water, and living in the boatyard.  So the projects continue....boat work till the afternoon, then off to the gym, groceries, dinner and a movie.....repeat....

Cindi's recovery has gone reasonably well.  She continues with her excellent physical therapist, undergoing all types of manipulations and exercises, including acupuncture for both the back (helps heaps) and arm (ummmm...not as much).  The back is much better.  Her arm break didn't set quite correctly, so she's looking into options.  Possibly see a surgeon when we're back in Seattle for Thanksgiving to look into arthroscopic possibilities.

Rugby:  ALL BLACKS, Baby!!!  It's been rugby fever here in NZ, as the All Blacks won the World Cup for the 2nd time in a row (held every 4 years).  In the pub for the final game by 4:30 am to get a seat for the 5am start.  Great game, great outcome for NZ.  A real sense of pride for a little country of 4 million to win an international event like this. Richie McCaw and the boys got the job done in style!!!







Boat projects have grown as we take advantage of our year off in NZ, and the great exchange rate to get work done.  Here's the update (sorry, may be dull, but it's what the Bravo's do these days!!!)

Propeller shaft:  While repacking the stuffing box (important bit that keeps the sea water out of the boat, a good thing), we noticed a fair bit of corrosion of the shaft under the packing, a bad thing.  When stainless steel is wet without oxygen, it is prone to crevice corrosion which can extend deep.  Apparently we've been hauled out of the water so long, with water trapped in the stuffing box but not circulating, that it was the perfect breeding ground for this sort of thing.

Calling in a trusted mechanic for a look, he took a quick glance and right away said "I sure as hell wouldn't trust that thing to go to sea"!!!  Not a good thing.  So we needed a new shaft (1.5" diameter by about 9' long), new cutless bearings, and a new dripless shaft seal.  Done!

Rudder:  While working on the prop shaft, we spent a lot of time at Bravo's tail end.  Looking at the rudder one day we noticed a lot of hairline cracks on just the port side.  Grinding off all of the antifouling paint didn't give us a clue.

It ain't pretty work!!! 

Waddaya think.....remember "Back to the Future???

Not sure what the deal was, but it couldn't be good.  A rudder is not something you want to fail when it's blowing like stink in a big sea, which, of course, is when it most likely would!!!  So we decided to remove the rudder and do a bit of exploratory surgery.  Not an easy job.

The rudder lives below our bunk.  So the first thing to do was remove the bed to access the top of the rudder shaft.  Then all of the steering systems needed to be removed before Mr. Rudder would drop down.

Finally, using the jack out of our van, (aka Dirt Bravo) we lowered the beast to the ground.  Inspection proved really puzzling.

Fred Flintstone rudder repairs underway.  See the bog depth on the right.

The port side, with the cracks, had been faired with up to about 1/2" of bog (hard putty used to smooth the fiberglass).  Why?  And why none on the starboard side?  It looked like it had been there since new, over 30 years ago, but hard to say.  And why was it cracking now?  A fiberglass rudder typically has a stainless steel internal frame to transfer the steering loads from the shaft to the rudder blade.  Was this stainless steel giving us it's last gasp??   Do we need a new rudder?????   Ughhhhh.....


We chipped away the excess bog to figure things out.  It took Adam a few days of chiseling, at the Fred Flintstone Academy of Rudder Technology (fFART).  Then we drilled a bunch of holes into the rudder to figure out what the internal condition looked like.  The stainless steel looked ok, but there were some large voids where there would ordinarily be a rigid foam core.  WTF???

The only thing we can think of is that the port side of the rudder was facing the sun for the whole summer. With the black bottom paint it did get very hot, every day.  Perhaps the expansion/contraction of the thick bog finally did it in, causing the cracking.  Until we get a better explanation, that's our story and we're sticking to it!!!

Working with trusted shipwright Kris Dyer, veteran of the builds of the last two Kiwi America's Cup boats, we decided to fill the rudder with expanding epoxy foam, reglass the whole shebang, and call it good enough.  Hopefully this will be the right call!!!

Pencil lines show extent of voids that we probed with a wire

Propped up and ready for foaming

Kris pouring in one of many foam batches

Foam fully filling all the voids

4 layers of biaxial glass all around

Baking the whole rudder in makeshift autoclave to post cure the epoxy

After baking the rudder for about 8 hours (only burned up 1 space heater, and you can see the red water bucket in the background "just in case"!!!) we've been busily fairing both sides.  It's getting very smooth, so we may be ready for a trial fit tomorrow.

Planning the new sail

Other projects include new sails by sailmaker Dave Parr w/ Caliber Sails.  He built our new genoa this past season while we were in Fiji (measured before we left), and now we're having him build a new main, as our old one, after 12 years and MANY miles, didn't look like it had too many ocean miles remaining.

The fabric is plotted by the computer onto the fabric, ready for cutting

Coming together

We're also building a new nav station, as the old one was getting badly cut up over the years by the changing electronics.  The new panel will neaten things up a lot.  Cindi the varnish queen has been hard at work in the shed that we've commandeered, with both sewing and varnish projects.  And we're getting all new upholstery made for both the interior and cockpit.  Bravo's definitely stylin' these days!!!   Summer has finally arrived, it's TIME TO GO SAILING!!!

Another barrel of IPA ready for bottling!!!

We're now off to Seattle for our annual 3 week visit, then be back to Whangarei in early December.  With any luck we'll finish up the projects and be back in the water before Christmas.  Plan is to cruise around New Zealand until May.....stay tuned!