A beaut day's sailing

A beaut day's sailing - thanks to Stephanie and Alice for making it a great day out.

9-10 knots through the water. Perfect.

All female anchoring crew - as it should be.  :-)

Scrape...scrape...scrape...scrape.........

About two hours work so far. But not all in one hit - it's bloody hard on the back!

Bliss

Big congratulations to Kamalii off-shore alumni Duff, for his purchase of a Hans Christian 41. Off into the wild blue yonder...  Good on you, Duff!

Duff en route to Hawaii - in the process of catching the cruising disease...

Squabs Completed

We have finished the cockpit squabs! Yay! Many, many hours of work...  We have had an even division of labour: I cut the fabric, Sharon sewed it together. All screw-ups were therefore the other person's fault.

Actually, we still have some final tweaks to do, tightening up a few seams, but the guts of it is done. We went with a firm free-flow foam and an up-market Sunbrella-type fabric (thanks, Becs!) that is very water repellent, and the result is great - very comfortable and no more water squirting everywhere as you sit down.  The cockpit is now a place you actually want to lie around in, where as the old PVC upholstery was just gross.

Next sewing job: new mainsail cover. But we will do that over winter.

Exfoliation

I have done a "test scrape" on the main cabin top paint.

The paint is completely stuffed, but I have been putting the job off because, well, it's a big painting job, and, you know, they suck...  Also because to do it properly will mean removing the spray dodger, which means striping out the aft end headliner in the upper salon, which means general inconvenience and chaos inside.

The good news is that the paint scrapes off relatively easily and cleanly, and because the cabin top has been glassed over and then epoxy levelled the surface is left quite fair and even, even without any sanding.

Comes away pretty clean.

But there is a lot of it...

So, I reckon a team of four could scrape her back and have her all sanded and ready for initial filling in well under a day. Any volunteers...?   :-)


PS: By publicly declaring that I am going to do this job I am now compelled to stop finding excuses and just get on with it. This is the actual purpose of this post.   :-p

A great weekend out

Some great weather over the long weekend. Got some good sailing in on Monday, though unfortunately we got a tear in the jib....it's off at the "doctor" now. Thanks to everyone who came out, it was a great weekend.

Not a lot of wind on the Saturday....

Takahe and chick on Tiritiri Island. Once thought extinct, now there are a few hundred left.