January 15, 2008 - Whangarei

On Tuesday morning I headed into town for yet another dentist appointment (where we decided to hold off on crowning my Tongan root canal for the time being) and to swing by Neil McLeod's to place my reticulated foam order. While I was in town, Sten talked to the guys at the local chandlery, All Marine, to get pricing for the breakers. Then he dropped into another marine electronics shop and scheduled a technician to come by this afternoon to spend a few minutes consulting with him on the various projects he has going. After checking to see if anyone was about in the rigging shop (they weren't), he came back and worked on parts list. By the time I got back for lunch, he had also disconnected seawater hose from main engine and removed the strainer for cleaning. The boy is on fire.

While we were having lunch in the office/clubhouse, Sten asked Charlie if he knew a shop that regalvanized chain. Coincidentally, Dockland 5 had just been called by a place that galvanizes chain to see if there was any here that needed doing. We told him how much we needed done, and Charlie put in a call to them to get us on the schedule. After lunch, we lowered both anchors and all of our chain so that it could be picked up by the regalvanizers.

In the midst of that project the electronic technician came by for the consult. While they were occupied, I tore apart the forward stateroom to get to the chainlocker and unhook the bitter end of the chain. I stuffed all the stuff that had been piled on the bunk in the forward stateroom into the port stateroom. After the technician left and we finished the chain project, Sten came down and tore apart the port stateroom to get to the rigid boom vang, which we had stored under the lower bunk the last time it failed, so that he could order replacement cable for the vang from the rigger. He moved a bunch of stuff from the port stateroom into the forward stateroom. I swear, we spend half of our time rearranging the stuff on board.

Living aboard while doing a refit is a lot like living in a house that is being remodeled, only much more frustrating. I'm so thankful that we can cook our meals in the office/clubhouse and that we can shower elsewhere, because right now the forward head are chock full of deck gear and the shower in the aft head is full of the stuff that had to come out from under the galley sink while the transformer installation is ongoing. I am also grateful for the dishwasher in the kitchen and the washing machines in the laundry - both seem like the height of luxury after a year of washing dishes and clothing by hand. However, I'm not thankful that we have to pee in a bucket at night (especially since someone stole our bucket last November; we were quite literally left without a pot to piss in). The alternative is to climb down a wobbly ladder and walk across the well lit but shadowy boat yard to the bathroom. I'll stick to the bucket. We are learning to be grudgingly thankful for that wobbly ladder - climbing up and down it umpteen times a day is helping us both work off the 15 pounds we each put on while home for the holidays.