KatieKat 2002 Cruise Chapter Eight

This is the eighth webpage of our cruise covering the year 2002. This is one long continuous page, and clicking on any of the underlined dates above should jump your screen to the appropriate section on this page (or you can use the scrollbar on the right to navigate up and down this page). Joe Siudzinski

5 November, 2002 -- Southport

It's fun to be back in wacky Southport on Queensland's Gold Coast - Australia's answer to Miami Beach. Camera-toting tourists are offered rides on every conveyance imaginable - as I look out the window there's an antique red biplane, modern seaplanes and helicopters, amphibian buses, a floating wedding chapel, and boats of all sizes and shapes ranging from powerful cigarette boats and huge catamaran ferries all the way down to kayaks and a cutsie gondola.

This wedding party is about to make a dramatic entrance to the crowd assembled at the yacht club. Unfortunately, a few minutes later a weather front moved through and doused the event. From the sound of it, it was still a great party!

We grin and wave to the tourists every time one of these amphibian buses waddles past us - they've multiplied since we were here last.

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11November, 2002 -- Passage Preparations

OK, it's time to get serious. The passage to New Zealand is not to be taken lightly, and for the past few weeks we've been preparing the boat and ourselves for this voyage. After all, we're now taking a coastal cruiser offshore again. Among the many things we've done are both upgrades and routine maintenance items -

• Had the rigging professionally checked. KatieKat was given a very clean bill of health (the rig is over-designed and thus has a large safety margin), with a notation that the main halyard termination with its exposed core was not a good idea from a UV-protection standpoint. Splicing in a new eye is on my ToDo list.
• Had the mainsail luff repaired and reinforced. After 10,000nm the batten termination wore through the sailcloth and damaged the luff rope - still usable, but something I wanted to fix before going offshore. The sails are still in wonderful shape despite the fact that a friend who races a lot allowed as I should be on my third suit of sails by now.
• Had the forward trampolines repaired and reinforced. Don't really want to end up like Rob James (a famous ocean racer who perished when he fell through a trampoline).
• Had the sailcover repaired and reinforced and re-engineered the starboard-side lazy jacks. Leaving the portside factory-stock (for comparison) except I now bring the lazy jack holdup line down next to the mast so I can release the lazy jacks if I need to hoist the mainsail while not pointing the boom directly into the wind.
• Performed a detailed stem-to-stern boat inspection. Other than some water in the port forward compartment (the pulpit fittings leak a bit), all is well - especially the steering gear. I had replaced the autopilot drive belt a few weeks ago - it served for about 8000 miles (last replaced in New Caledonia).
• Did away with the remotely-adjustable outhaul and instead utilize that third boom-end block for a built-in fourth reefing line. Can still adjust the outhaul car by hand.
• Re-routed some of the running rigging coming back to the cockpit so it is now more functionally organized. Notably, I'm now running the jibsheets through rope clutches instead of Clamcleats so I can quickly unload a winch and use it for something else (having the main and jib halyards at the mast instead of bringing them back to the cockpit allows me to do that).
• Rigged the para-anchor retrieval line with the option of bringing it all the way back to the boat when conditions are not too severe. This will greatly speed up the para-anchor retrieval process. Also, installing a high-visibility bright orange fender as the primary para-anchor retrieval float.
• Added plastic cleats to the shrouds to hold up the jacklines which are routed overhead. Up there the jacklines provide a convenient handhold and clip attachment.
• Lubricated the three winches and all 24 snap shackles (three for the liferaft, five for BikeBoat, four for the preventers, one spinnaker halyard, six snatch blocks, two spinnaker sheets, and three spares) - oh, and the three spring-loaded jib turning block and outhaul stoppers.
• Changed the engine oils and cleaned and lubricated everything that moves. Would have liked to have changed the water pump impellers and changed the lower unit oil, but that requires either getting the boat out of the water or else disconnecting and lifting the engines into the cockpit.
• Repaired a broken weld on the portside motor restraint flange. Epoxy-filled the damaged thru-bolt hole and will re-drill and reinstall a new bolt.
• Stuffed some caulking into the underdeck wing joints which had opened up slightly.
• Installed SailMail which will allow us to send/receive e-mails using our HF transceiver. Not only that, but we will be able to schedule and retrieve weather predictions and simple charts via e-mail while out there. Sending/receiving messages for practice. Not quite up for a full-fledged satellite transceiving system yet.
• Added a new HF antenna onto the starboard lifeline stanchion just forward of the shroud. The previous antenna which had been stanchion-mounted just aft of the shroud was broken during a severe thunderstorm by the mainsail as it was being lowered. This antenna is used for weatherfaxes to the computer down below, but can also serve as an emergency backup for the large primary aft-mounted antenna.
• Finished a partial upgrade of the battery monitoring and control system which allows me to keep track of the system voltages and I/O amps (no, I didn't splurge for an ampere-hour I/O monitor). Although the stock factory wiring scheme is just fine, the most significant change I made was a rewire which ensures complete battery isolation via the master switch (the factory system leaves the solar panels and refrigerator attached with separate circuit breakers for each, which does make a lot of sense, especially for the charter market).
• Break up the abandon-ship bag into two separate bags, with one sitting in BikeBoat's basket.
• Intently studying the weather patterns - six-day predictions are now getting reasonably accurate. The problem is one of having too much information available - I could easily spend 24 hours a day on the Internet just visiting all the weather websites. Listening to Russell Radio to get a feel for what other cruisers are experiencing and downloading HF weatherfaxes into the Mac daily, although reception is quite poor here in Southport Yacht Club Marina. Let's face it, to a sailboat crossing an ocean, weather is the most important variable and thus gets the most attention.
• Bought a bunch of New Zealand charts, including one of Lord Howe Island. Pre-setting some GPS waypoints as part of the passage planning process.
• Made new mounting bases for the table-mounted instruments and interlocked them. I can now clamp the instruments to the table so they won't fly off if we get really whapped by some nasties (to date, nothing's ever fallen off the rubber mats on the main saloon table).
• Still need to find a New Zealand courtesy flag and a 2002 Nautical Almanac.
• Kathy's provisioning and pre-preparing many easily-fixable meals
• Moving the heavy stuff to the center of the boat down below. As soon as we clear the coast I'll bring the anchors and their chains down there as well.
• Will have the boat bottom scrubbed just before we leave
• Both Kathy and I are swimming and exercising daily to build some physical reserve into our bodies.
• So, what did I forget...?

I've lowered the sailcover for this photo, which clearly shows the newly-added triple turning-block for the reefing lines as well as the new pin-stopped outhaul car. I feel the block is necessary to avoid chafing the aft end of the sailbag - my previous double-block worked out very well. The loop in the topping lift is used to hold up the sailbag. Also visible is the external boom-mounted turning block for Reef#1.

Our new and improved instrument setup, sans some of the wiring. For this photo, I arranged them in the following order, starting from the left: radar, the HF with the PactorIIe modem and speaker behind it, the VHF, table light, GPS, autopilot remote controller, and iBook (with charts, SailMail, and display of all the NMEA/SeaTalk onboard instruments if I want). Not shown (but usually residing) on the table are the barometer and about five kitchen timers. The timers are used to remind us of radio schedules (weatherfax, voice broadcasts, radio nets), hourly logbook recording, and the usual ten-minute interval for a full look-around (especially at night). Until I build a nice instrument panel, underneath the windows are some of my temporary power systems monitors - battery voltage, I/O battery current, windgen current and output voltage level LED display (nice at night). Under the table is the orange float for the para-anchor retrieval line, and the big yellow bag is the primary abandon-ship bag.

A simple little bungie slipped over a knob keeps all the instruments interlocked. Together with the nonskid-rubber bonded bases, this method should immobilize the instruments. Will let you know how it performed after the passage. Having standardized the size of the instrument bases (mounting plates), I can mix and match them in any order

Navigator's eye view of the instruments, showing the boat instrument pod rotated 90-degrees. The first one shows the compass and autopilot settings and response, the second is windspeed and wind direction (true or apparent), and the third shows water depth, boatspeed, log, and - this is decadent - water temperature. These instruments can also be programmed for a bunch of other functions which I rarely use. The SeaTalk/NMEA/RS232 converter sits behind this pod and is interconnected to the tabletop instruments so both the radar and computer can display this information. In actuality, unless they are being actively used, the radar, HF, and computer are normally turned off to conserve power.

Rather difficult to see, but the lazy jack lines on the starboard side are a cascade of 2:1 pulleys (going through small rings and not blocks), the idea being to distribute the lazy jack load evenly across the length of the boom/sailbag (increasing the mechanical advantage the further aft along the boom the connection is made - does this make sense?). The portside is left factory-stock except that the primary holdup line is now brought down alongside the mast.

The stanchion-mounted backup HF antenna is now located forward of the shroud. The primary HF antenna (the black whip) can be seen in the background. Still need a better scheme for routing the wire back into the boat. The new shroud-mounted jackline cleats are visible in this photo.

The rearranged running rigging, starboard side. Starting from the left, we have Reef#2, Reef#4, Spinnaker Halyard, Jibsheet, and the green Spinnaker Sheet. That black wire snaking around the stopper is the new HF antenna wire (temporary) leading down into the starboard aft cabin and the receiver there used for weatherfaxes. The Clamcleat is unused on the starboard side, but on the port side I use it for the externally-mounted (on the side of the boom) Reef#1 line which is rarely used.

Nothing to do with passage preparation, but I thought I'd show off this trash lid ... uh, tidy bin lid, picker-upper which automatically lifts the lid when the door is opened using a simple piece of string. Rube Goldberg would be proud! I stole this idea from Tom Piotrowski who built it into his Lagoon much more elegantly. This enables one-handed wastebasket operation and automatic lid and door closure.

Ok, that's it for now. Need to focus on the weather, and I'll try to do a last-minute update before we leave, which may be anytime from three days to three weeks from now. Bye. JoeS.

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