The Lau Group (Fiji)

Kids from Cicia visiting Perry. Not many cruising boats get to this island.

Our nearly month long (so far) visit to the Lau Group has been very different from our visit last year. Our work with Sea Mercy has kept us busy doing assessments of the needs of hard-to-reach villages after the destruction Cyclone Winston and delivering donated and purchased aid.  We've also done a number of projects within the villages including clearing and cutting logs, building fences, wiring generators, installing water makers, and anything else that the villages need help with.

 

Other Sea Mercy vessels have provided education to the villagers in gardening and provided drinking water. Volunteering has given us a way to connect with villagers, as well as to spend time getting to know the talented and fun group of cruisers that are also part of this Sea Mercy fleet. There are about six to eight boats in the group at any given time, with a boat leaving and joining every now and then.

The remains of this building are being used as a make-shift church.

Despite the destruction to homes, sources of food and water, and income-producing copra (that's coconut to you and me), the people continue to be friendly and gracious. Mark and Conrad have been able to witness first-hand the damage that a cyclone can bring, as well as to help out. Conrad helped Matt and others build a fence around the garden in Boitaci to keep pigs out. The kids are also getting adept at riding around in the back of pick-up trucks and sometimes sharing the space with the odd pig or goat.

The finished 'pig' fence in Boitaci

Some of the food donated by local Fijians to the Lau villages.
We and other boats stored it aboard and then helped distribute it.

We will spend another week or so with the Sea Mercy group.  Matt and Mark from Amelie IV are building a wooden skiff that one of the villages can use for fishing. All of the boats from this particular village were destroyed during the cyclone and fish is their main source of protein, so getting them a means of being back on the water is a priority.

Matt and Mark from Amelie IV fixing school desks in Cicia.

Speaking of fish, we are back to catching fish on a regular basis. Unfortunately, we lost our gaff to a 100-plus pound yellow-fin tuna. Being stabbed (inadvertently) too near its tail energized the tuna and Matt was only holding on with one hand and at an awkward angle. So we lost the fish and the gaff, and the bit of innocence that was left in our children's vocabulary.

One of the ones that didn't get away.

 

We have been flush with yellow fin for sushi.

We'll add the gaff to the growing list of items needed for the boat, including parts for the traveler and an AIS antenna. Matt is currently getting our water maker up and running after a long sabbatical. As with most things on a boat (the boys included), it doesn't like sitting idle for long periods of time.

We saw albatross feeding on a shark carcass on our way from NZ to Fiji.
According to Conrad, our resident zoologist, they are waved albatross.

We met this cutie in Mualevu during our needs assessment.

Matt played volleyball with this group in Malaka. He was very
impressed with their bump-set-spike skills

The school in Mualevu

Making lumber

Riding in style

Having fun in Avea

The kids in Susui aren't sure what Mark's doing.

One of the kids at the school in Susui.

Pounding kava for a feast in Susui.

Men and women don't drink kava together.

Women and children feeding first. Works for me!

 

Spraying and splashing and leaking (just a bit)

Cam from Port Whangarei Marine Center spraying on our Coppercoat.

Kiwis swear a lot. At first I thought it was because we were in a boatyard and that's just how the tradesmen talked. But in the time I spent at playgrounds and walking along the scenic waterfront paths in Whangarei, I was continually, mildly surprised to hear the F-word casually uttered in conversation by moms pushing young kids in strollers. Seems that just the way it 'effin is here...

We think this gun was the primary reason for the
long lines to get on the NZ Navy boat.It caused a logjam
 as people vied for a turn to fire it (unloaded of course).

Some folks do seem to try and "hide it from the kids".  As we stood in line to tour the New Zealand Navy patrol ship Roititi, the grandmother of a 5-year old boy in front of us said, "sh*t" and the parents tried to play it off ("Uh, the ship?  What about the 'ship' Nonni?). I guess it's all part of the laid-back, irreverent Kiwi attitude that I like so much.

Mark from s/v Field Trip gave us the idea to have the Coppercoat
sprayed on and we're glad he did. Matt and Mark mixing paint.

Ooh, ahh...

While on the topic of swearing, I had a few choice words streaming through my head as we were finally lowered into the water the other day. In addition to the spanking new bottom, we have all-new thru-hulls and the shafts and rudders were removed and put back in. So while we were still in the slings of the travel lift, we rushed around to check all the various fittings and seals. A trickle of water was coming out of the shaft seal for the engine propeller shaft and several of the thru-hulls had some water leaking. There was no gushing but, for obvious reasons, any water coming in is bad.

Matt had us lifted back out of the water (in place) so he could address the various leaks. He felt the pressure of the consequences if he couldn't fix them in quickly: the waiting travel lift operators (who were very patient) had other tasks and the next boat to be hauled out was waiting for us to be done (Mark from Field Trip was on board to help and was extremely gracious about saying that there was no rush). The pressure was mostly self-imposed, but very real. We both felt it.

Matt replaced and moved the hose clamps on the shaft seal and fixed two of the three leaky through hulls. The third through hull connected to a sanitary hose that wouldn't come undone even after softening with boiling water and with almost all of Matt's strength. Just as an exhausted Matt had given up and asked Mark to come give him a hand, his eensy-teensy, manly pride rallied his strength and he was able to get it loose.

It was a tense few minutes after we were re-lowered into the water and checked the shaft and through hulls. All was good and we could breathe again. We motored over to the dock across the bay, where Mark helped us dock. After that, Matt went over and helped Field Trip get hauled out, which is another story that I will let them tell. Matt spent the rest of the day fixing residual leaks in hoses above some of the through hull valves (these can be done in the water and any leaking can be stopped by closing the valve) and tending to the toilets, whose seals had gotten dried and cracked after more than three months of disuse while out of the water.

It has been a couple days since we splashed and Matt is getting close to finishing 'the list' of boat tasks. We have sold our car, ordered our Fijian money, and completed our final provisioning. The wind for the near future is pretty light and/or from the wrong direction, so we'll have time to hang out here while we wait for a good window to head to the Lau group to meet up with the other Sea Mercy vessels (please consider donating on their site if you're able). We're looking forward to seeing our buddies on Amelie IV, who just left for Fiji the other day..

Two steps forward, one step back--Cha-Cha-Cha

The view of the boatyard from the top of our mast. It's
much higher when you're out of the water because we're blocked
up 8 feet higher than normal.

Conrad has been knocking the socks off me in the 'updating blogs' department. And I need those socks because it is cold here. Yes, it's only in the 60's overnight and 70's during the day but keep in mind that we don't have heat and still have thin blood from living in the tropics for the last few years.

Our naked hull

After returning from Chicago, the reality of our boat project list hit us square in the face. Also, a rock literally hit us square on the underside of our car, causing no injuries but aimed just right to jar the sensors and set off the driver side airbags (geez, those things are LOUD when they go off).

This rock = $1500

Naturally, we had just (as in 2 hours prior) agreed to sell the car to a guy in the boatyard but that deal fell through for obvious reasons. It will cost most of the value of the car to get the airbags fixed.  Unfortunately for us, New Zealand cars must past a bi-annual Warrant of Fitness and if a car was fitted with airbags, the airbags have to be working (so just cutting them out and ignoring them wasn't an option). Fortunately, someone else is willing to buy it for the value of the car minus the price to fix it. It could have been worse and even with the lowered resale price, we got good use and value out of the car for the six or so months we've owned it.  Still extremely annoying, since now the beer budget has been reduced...

Our boat projects seem to be tinged with the same feeling that nothing is going as planned. The hull seems to have dried out pretty well while we were gone. We proceeded with our plan to inject fiberglass resin into holes in the hull where some voids seemed to have developed in the kerfs of the core (fortunately, based on some core samples Matt drilled, there doesn't appear to be any delamination). After we had completed injecting resin on one side, it started to pour rain and we noticed that the vacuum pump was pulling water all of a sudden where it had previously been dry. Fortunately, it was fresh water but we had no idea of the source.

After panicking for a day (actually only I was panicking) and envisioning the havoc that would be caused by water coming into the hulls from an entirely new source, Matt tracked down the cause of the leaks. There were two drain holes for our forward lockers that had a small cracks that were connected to the core.* As it turns out, it was fortunate that it rained when it did or we would never have known to plug those leaks. I can do without the emotional ups and downs though.

Fiberglass templates that Matt and Glenn made

Other minor issues included Matt climbing the mast to install our new main halyard but not noticing until after it was installed that the line was a narrower gauge than what we had ordered and paid for. Also, and this was the icing on the cake, small wasps were laying eggs in the small drain holes we drilled in the hull and covering the holes with a sandy/waxy substance that was almost the same color as the surrounding fiberglass. This required us to literally carefully inspect and poke at every square inch of the hull, lest we miss a hole and forget to fill it back up. I heard somewhere that holes on boats are bad.

On a positive note, Matt has added yet another skill to his extensive repertoire: fiberglass repair. He did a fair amount of fiberglass patch work and worked with Glenn of Immaculate Marine for the bigger fixes. Glenn's work was top notch and Matt learned a lot from working with him. And he managed to get epoxy resin in his hair only twice. It's time for haircuts anyway.

During our 'downtime' (which is code for the plentiful rain and not an actual cessation of work), Matt has kept busy checking off the millions of other smaller, non-weather dependent projects from our list. We have our new mainsail, the trampolines have been reinstalled, the transmission has been reinstalled, the engine injectors have been removed for servicing, expanding foam has been put into the port keel (which was hollow for some unknown reason, instead of containing a foam core like the starboard keel).

There is a 30-second window from the time you pour the
2 components of expanding foam together to mix and pour it.

The paint crew here has started the filling and fairing, which is basically like Bondo-ing your boat. It has to be dry for this work, so we watch the radar like a day trader watches the stock market. Except that their goal is to make money and our result will be to part with a good chunk of change. Speaking of money, our friends at the Monkey's Fist have compiled a list of blogs that publish their spend for this lifestyle, including ours (http://www.svperry.com/p/costs.html).

Mark busy with a book report. He is always reading.

The kids have been troopers through all this. Conrad has been helpful as a gopher and his natural curiosity has him asking tons of questions about everything that is going on. Fortunately, Matt loves explaining what he's doing when he's focused on something. Okay, not really but he is good at explaining things and mostly patient. Mark and Conrad were ecstatic when our friends on Field Trip showed up in Whangarei, so they have some kids to play with after school is over.

Hopefully we'll get things sorted in the next couple of weeks and get back in the water.  Once floating, the plan is to make it to Fiji to assist with the post-cyclone Winston relief efforts with the Sea Mercy folks.

*For other Privilege 482 owners out there, check those drain holes!  Privilege did a good job of creating a round section of solid glass so the drain hole wouldn't impinge on the core BUT, in our case, they then drilled the actual hole too close to the edge where the core starts up, and a small crack developed where the two layers of glass came together, allowing water a route in to the core.

Chicago Visit 2016

Conrad and Grandma

When you grow up in Chicago, you don't usually think of it as a vacation destination, especially in the winter (even the 'end' of winter). Add to this the fact that we have spent the last several years in places dominated by beaches and tropical weather and you can see why I found myself cringing at the idea of intentionally subjecting ourselves to long pants, possible snow and--the horror--shoes.

Sliding down the Picasso statue in Daley Plaza

We were looking forward to spending much-missed time with family and land-based friends but weren't necessarily super-thrilled as we envisioned shivering in a place that is as familiar an old shoe. Turns out that Chicago is a pretty great place to visit--even more so through the filter of young kids who don't remember that much about it. The time with family and old friends was the highlight of our trip but we definitely enjoyed the sights. It didn't hurt that the weather was mostly fantastic.

Seeing the Chicago River being dyed green with Uncle
Andrew and Uncle Art, who made a special trip to come see us.

Mark and Conrad at karate lessons that were a gift from Nana.

The grandparents did their best to make sure the kids never wanted to leave by filling their time with fun activities, generous gifts, and other various goodies. I believe they may have succeeded. Of course the 'amazing' normality of land-based living may have contributed: 'Mom! There's ice and water...out of the fridge!!' and 'Dad! There's internet here...and it's soooo FAST'.

The boys working on their Lego cars at LEGOLAND Discovery
Center (the visit was a gift from their Grandma and Grandpa).

'Sue' at the Field Museum.

Nana treated us, Uncle Andrew and Uncle Art to the visit
to the Field Museum.

IMAX Galapagos. It was well done but the real Galapagos
was better, says Mark.

Part of the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the Field Museum.

The boys had read about the Terra Cotta Warriors and
were really interested to see them in real life.

We finally made it to one of those trampoline places.
Mark and Conrad were the first ones on this ride.

The sparring was their favorite activity. Go figure.

Matt and the boys with Nana under 'The Bean'.

So...heavy....

Nana demonstrating her balancing skills on the shaky bridge
at Maggie Daley Park.

Conrad and Mark with Francesca, Marcello and Macy
(most likely a couple of future speed-skating Olympians).
Photo courtesy of Michele Gaus-Ehning.

Egg hunting with Conrad's bestie Nolan and his sister Zoe.

We borrowed my parents' car to drive to Detroit to visit our
good friends Jeff, Laura, Alexis and Nicky. Alexis did these
portraits of our boat.

Now that we're in New Zealand again, we're back to the reality of boat projects. Ugh.  We have probably 3-4 weeks worth of work (if the weather cooperates) before getting afloat again.



We miss you already!

Grandparents don't make goofy faces...