We had a new North gennaker (Cruising Spinnaker) made and we have been installing all the hardware for it, a much bigger job than expected, new tangs being fabricated, new snatch block for the tack line and new blocks for the sheets. We will undoubtedly have some nice pics of the gennaker in April when our journey begins again.

     The new Gennaker attachments we installed today.

We also changed fuel filters, serviced all the winches on-board (8), and are preparing to do a cut and polish on the topsides, the work NEVER stops on a boat, when it does it goes down hill fast. In addition we installed an AIS (automatic Identification system) this will show all vessels in our area on the chart plotter. We drained the bottom of the fuel tanks to eliminate water contamination, this was after several boats discovered the “Black demon”, it is a bacteria that feeds on water in diesel, we had a little water, nothing serious and added “Fuel Doctor”. We also charged the refrigeration (and found a loose nut that was leaking gas) and added a thermostat to enable us to travel for a few days on land and not worry about the reefer staying cold, in the past we had to turn on a switch. While cruising we will turn off the  thermostat, it is basically for use while on shore power. We also took out the Sea Recovery watermaker and serviced it, replaced the mounts (one of which was broken) and the high pressure pump had a plastic cap broken which cost $110 NZD to have sent to TCB!.

    We super glued it together until the new one came.

And in our spare time we keep crab pots set up the creek and we are blessed with lots of mud crabs and blue swimmer crabs, we have of late become a bit over indulged in crabs and have not set the pots for a while. This all while dodging insistent rain, sometimes very heavy in T-Storms, still a few months of wet season before it dries out.

The newest plan is to have a leisurely sail north to Cairns or Port Douglas, taking in lots of cool anchorages we have been to several times in the past, and some new ones as well, we will have six weeks to do the trip before I again return to work.

On the next trip back to Cairns from work we will make a serious move North to Gove Northern Territory, clear customs and off for Indonesia, and our main destination of Kota Kinabalu, northern Borneo Malaysia. We will have 8 weeks to complete this trip at a leisurely pace. We have the entire trip planned with all waypoints already on the chart plotter. More on that in the next post.