Last Minute Projects

Tao's nearly ready to push off

This whole month has been filled with tasks as we have slowly worked toward setting sail south. It started with ear appointments, sewing machine repairs, standing rigging replacement, bending sails, Kona visit with Dave, Toni and Ty and even a quick Honolulu visit with Grandma. It continued with Morning Star solar charge controller installation, sewing and installing a new galley strap and above fridge pocket, restringing our food hammock, searching for seeds to sprout underway (you can’t have them mailed from the mainland), and a large amount of time has gone into wedding planning up to launching our wedding website and sending out invitations. We found new favorite mediums and spent days shaping foam and attaching industrial strength Velcro: to cover Sunny’s corners atop the dodger, to hang Chris’ soda charger along the cabin wall for easy access and storage, and to create plugs for inconveniently placed spaces where our dodger attaches to our cabin top. Then came the last minute shipping frenzy when first our back up camera died (it might have had something to do with a drink getting spilled on it) and soon after the local propane store would not fill our two severely rusted 2.5-gal propane tanks (and of course no one on the island carries that size tank). Ebay with 2-day shipping came to the rescue. Shawn’s continual provisioning at every store in town led to requirement of creative storage, including finding a secret bilge space area just the right size for an entire case of bottled Kona brewery beer, adding two new hanging bins in the V-berth, and three new plastic bins (created by cutting the top off of collapsible 5-gal water jugs for bomber flexible storage containers) filled with cans. We thought we had filled every space as we left Berkeley and then again as we left Mexico. Still, with reorganization, we found more space under the navigation station, below the galley sink, below the new refrigerator, in the V-berth after moving water jugs aft to the quarter berth, in Grizzly's food area, and even Grizzly's shelf became available space for storage.

Chris and his first engine mount (the original?!)

While Shawn toured CostCo and each grocery in town, Chris had some solid Yannie time. Favorite project medium switched to using Lanocote and WD-40 while hanging upside-down in the lazarette. Chris replaced the engine zincs, then attacked a lingering project by replacing the aft engine motor mounts, which went well enough that he chose to replace the forward two as well (holding the engine up with our 5:1 pulley). This success was followed by engine alignment, and finally engine governor idle control lubrication as Yannie recently does not want to turn off. While in the lazarette he decided to repack the shaft packing nut in preparation for motor time. While awaiting our new propane tanks, one of the fishermen that we see nearly daily, Randy, offered a propane tank for the interim and practically forced us to take some beautiful ahi tuna fish as he had too many. So much aloha, mahalo! Nearly ready to go, we celebrated Chris’ birthday with a “Matrix Marathon” at BY Kona director, Mark’s pad (we only made it through the first 2 of the three but also had wonderful food and even some hot tub time in there as well). Tying up loose ends, we threw together two boxes full of gear that didn’t have to be aboard, but we weren’t ready to give/throw away, and mailed them back to mainland along with a cleaned organized and filled backup hard drive and even squeezed in attending the BY Kona annual potluck between final runs to the post office and stores.

And now we are playing the weather game. Safe in harbor, we check the weather forecasts and try to decide on the right moment to untie from the dock and get underway. One more “channel” to cross, we carefully watch the forecasts for the South Point of the Big Island, looking (in vain?) for a weather window. South Point is infamous for being rough, with winds and seas running into land in the middle of the ocean, creating swirling washing machine along with a constant promontory effect. The later days of each forecast tends to look a little milder and then intensify as they get closer. It is like pushing off from the raft put in and running the biggest rapid right off the bat. We are trying to set ourselves up for success to time our crossing of the intense 50 or so miles off of South Point. Another sail boat, Scotch Power, has pushed off for the same destination a day before us and hopefully we'll get fills regarding their conditions along the way. Until then, we continue to run final checks retying everything down, testing the HF radio connection, downloading gribs, adding e-mail addresses to our white list, updating the blog, and checking the weather yet again. So we wait, and sleep, and cook, and prepare, and maybe we’ll push off later today.