Testing, Testing, Testing

Things are looking more positive here on Maunie - and thanks so much for the supportive emails which were hugely appreciated!

Gorgeous Easter Monday sailing

On Monday we went out for a great test sail in the Bay of Islands and we could tell Maunie was pleased to be allowed out after nearly 3 months on the mooring. We anchored for lunch and then Graham donned wetsuit, mask and snorkel to check under the waterline. We'd been warned that the mooring's proximity to a number of mussel farms in the river would result in some unwanted guests clinging to the hull but overall things we're pretty good. The fancy yellow Propspeed coating on the propeller has done a brilliant job and our faithful Coppercoat antifouling had a thin layer of slime, easily scrubbed off, and a few barnacles with a very light grip on the hull. The shock was the huge growth of creatures on the fridge cooling plates and the radio grounding plate, which are all bronze but which can't be painted with antifouling. It took quite a few dives and some hard work with a scraper to get them cleaned off and Graham was pretty cold by the end.

We ran the watermaker whilst we were out in the clean water of the bay and it seems fine so our little test sail was a success - we even remembered how to do it!

We're now in the marina for a few days and as soon as the businesses open after the Easter break we took our poorly water pump to a company called Sea Power. Within an hour it had been completely rebuilt, with new bearings and seal, (brilliant service) and is now fitted back to the generator.

A new lease of life for the water pump, with the old bearings and seal

So all's looking good but we're still trying to figure out the weather forecasts. The possible weather window on Saturday is looking a little less promising so we'll wait for the next weather update. Meanwhile Stormvogel has just arrived up from Whangarei, looking very smart with new cockpit canvas and very highly polished paint, so it was good to catch up with Heidi and Peter last night.

Well, better get on with the list of little (e.g. time consuming) jobs..