Jim's blog

I need a tender for Dovekie - and there isn't much room to carry one on deck.

An inflatable has some advantages from the ease to carry perspective but I am less happy with an inflatable's ability in windy conditions.

On the other hand a rigid tender is easier to row in the wind, can be towed easily but is less convenient if you want to carry it.

I have the free plans for the D4 Dink which is a 2meter stitch&glue pram dinghy. It seems well thought of from what I have found through web searches. I also like John Welsford's Tender Behind. It is similar to the D4 Dink but a bit more complicated to build I think as it has more panels and maybe stringers.

I have rowed a Tender Behind a short distance and while it wasn't going to set the world on fire it was good and stable to climb in/out of from a boat and easy to manage in and out of the water with wheels on the transom.

Not sure which way I'll go yet.

Time has been slipping by. I found I was unable to log on here and have just reinstalled Serendipity. Fortunately I didn't need my backup as it just used the existing database, except for replacing the admin user rows in the authors table. There is still some tidying up to do though - plugins to re-enable etc.

I haven't done as much sailing as I had hoped in Dovekie as I keep finding little areas of rot. 3 of the 4 corners of the cockpit were rotted from seat top to floor and I have cut out and repaired two of those. The other will keep until the soft area of paint covered wood annoys me too much. And there is an area of the coaming inside the port side spinnaker sheet winch that is rotten. When they fitted the roller furler they removed the spinnaker halliard block so I can't raise the spinnaker anyway - the sheet winches are not useful.

The is a little area of rot inside the stern locker in one corner of the cockpit. It is on the underside of a deck beam and the top of a post. I have cut out the worst of it and will paint on rot killer, saturate with Everdure and patch it up. I'll bolt in a couple of strong pieces of tanalised pine I think to brace up the beam. I have found a couple of small leaks around staunchion bolts so I'll need to pull those and reseat with new bedding compound.

On Sunday while contemplating how to rig reefing tackle at the mast I found that the bottom 200mm of sail track has pulled off. The screws/nail have just pulled out so I need to remove the mainsail and sort that before I head out again.

Once the immediate problems are solved to the point I feel happy taking her out into Cook Strait again I'll start stripping paint from the cabin top down the sides and across the decks to get that back in good shape.

Good Friday seemed better weather-wise than predicted so when Gordon turned up to see how progress with the rot repairs was progressing, I finished the template for the plywood patch I was cutting out and we headed out for a sail. The wind was fresh but not too strong and we tried sailing on just the heads'l + mizzen. Dovekie loved that combination - very well balanced and nicely powered - not too much, not too little.

I had also fitted the first patch piece of kauri below the companion sill board so that is now done. Still one more piece to make and fit there. I went back on Saturday and started soaking the cutout area with thinned Everdure to try and seal in any rot spores that I haven't managed to remove in the ply edges. Sunday added another coat. It's close to ready to patch up now once I do the cockpit seat front corner. That will need a good couple of dry days to ensure there is no damp left around, and more Everdure in the edges once I cut it out.

I caught up with Gavin Pascoe - my one-time crew mate on Lady Mink when we helped Dave Parsons back from Vanuatu. Gavin has several projects under way including "Lizzie" that he was busy fitting a new beam to on Saturday with lashings of red-lead+putty bedding under the joins and around the bronze screws. "Lizzie" should be magnificent once he finishes rebuilding her with new mahogany brightwork. Gavin also owns "Shemara", another 50 something year old kauri yacht like Dovekie.

Jo made the headlines a couple of weekends ago with this article in the DomPost.

A chocolatey love affair

Life can be pretty sweet when you're a chocolatier.

Jo Coffey has run Berhampore's L'affaire au Chocolat for two years, selling her handmade chocolates, and her favourite ranges of imported bars.

She's a late bloomer in the food/ confectionary area, but it's always been an interest to her - it's just taken a while for her to get around to indulging her interest in a professional way.

Read the rest of the article at the DomPost

The Economist has a good article on IPv6.

The internet: Just as car number plates and telephone dialling codes need to be updated every so often to allow for growth, so does the internet's addressing system. But it should not need updating again any time soon

REMEMBER the panic over the "millennium bug", when computers everywhere were expected to go haywire on January 1st 2000, thanks to the way a lot of old software used just two digits to represent the year instead of four? Doomsters predicted all sorts of errors in calculations involving dates when the clocks rolled over from 99 to 00. In the event, the millennium dawned without incident.

Read more at the Economist

10 days ago Jo's Holden Barina became undrivable as we headed home on a beautiful Sunday evening after meeting friends for coffee and then walking around Evan's Bay, seeing Orca and generally enjoying ourselves in a relaxing way.

Half way home the clutch started getting sticky and not disengaging properly. Then it wouldn't disengage at all. Stopped on the side of the road in Houghton Bay unable to drive - no cell reception - so walked around the bay a bit and I managed to make a call to the AA, and to our friends we had been meeting with who were not far away. Friends turned up in a few minutes and took Jo home to pick up our other car. An hour or so later the man from the AA turned up, did an investigation and said that he couldn't fix it. We'd need to get towed to a garage. Three hours after coming to a stop we made it home.

Two day later the garage said we needed a new clutch master cylinder - price $400 - which seems outrageous but so did the possible cost of repairing the old one once they factored in unknown costs of sending it out to be machined or whatever else it might need, plus their costs to disassemble, reassemble etc. So overnight the new cylinder came down. Then we hear it will need a new hydraulic hose plus clips at $200. I assume all these prices exclude GST so really the cylinder is $460 and the hose $230.

A day later we hear that now there is a leak from the slave cylinder and that the gearbox would have to come out to investigate! I checked with the AA help line to see if that made sense - and it did to them.....

The slave cylinder is inside the bell-housing. Talk about designed for maintenance (not). Add on the cost of the new slave cylinder and 5+ hours to remove, replace, reinstall and there is no change out of $1200 (presumably +GST as we haven't got the car back yet).

Called last evening to find out what was taking so long to find that the replacement "new" slave cylinder was faulty. Another day or so we'll find out what the total damage is but I am expecting it to be $2000+

Not at all impressed with the Holden Barina - it should never have been allowed to leave the factory.

At 28000km it had a new top end on the motor as one cylinder was badly worn and it was going through oil at a great rate - warranty repair fortunately.

At 32000km it the clutch started slipping - I reckon they got oil or something on it while doing the motor but it was repaired under warranty again.

At 45000km we had a service check just before the warranty expired and found a stuffed wheel bearing - repaired under warranty.

The car has now done 78000km and the clutch hydraulics are totally stuffed.

Of the 10+ cars I have owned and I don't know how many thousand KM of driving over 40 years, I have never had problems with hydraulics before even in old cars. I have never had engines wear out in under 200000km, let alone 28000, I have replaced clutches - with something well over 100000kms on the clock - not 32000. Wheel bearings do wear out - but not at 45000km.

Modern cars are reputably a lot more reliable than older ones. They are plainly not designed to be serviced. This Holden Barina, (designed and/or manufactured in Europe by Opel I believe), is one that would not have had acceptable reliability 40 years ago, let alone in the 21st century.

Holden may have upped their game with newer models. They are designed and manufactured by Daewoo in Korea. Would I go to Daewoo to improve my product's image? Maybe that is all Holden can manage.

Saturday I went out to the boat and started on some of the small jobs that need doing. I sanded and primed a couple of areas that weren't accessible when she was on the hard due to the arms of the cradle. Then I tried to sort the wiring to the mast head and spreader lights. Unfortunately I am going to have to re-think that as when I refitted the connector that was screwed to the deck the wire from the mast wouldn't reach it.

Chatting to Peter in the marina office I found that Arthur, who I bought Dovekie from, has a house that is severely affected by the Christchurch earthquake - close to the edge of a cliff too. I wish him all the best for getting it sorted out but I guess it will take quite some time.

I refitted the catches to the forward hatch so that that is now well secured and headed off to get some minor bits and pieces like brass screws and some dock-line (the ones on my 'temporary' berth are a bit dodgy.)

Stepping back aboard I managed to drop my wallet into the water - only about 4 meters deep. The day went downhill from there.

Shortly after Gordon (who appears frequently here) arrived and offered the use of his snorkelling gear. Half an hour later I was following the anchor chain down into the murky water of the marina. Three dives later with visibility close to zero my left ear suddenly decided it had had enough and got very painful very quickly. Small amounts of blood appeared as I dried off feeling a bit deaf, disoriented and unbalanced - no more diving that day. The doctor said it wasn't major damage and would come right in time.

Sunday would have been good on the water but that didn't happen. My ear is still blocked and uncomfortable and instead I had my neighbour Brett down with his scuba gear. No sign of a wallet in 45 minutes of searching so we flagged that away. Yesterday was logging the loss with Police, visits to the bank to get new cards, VTNZ for a new drivers licence etc. It turns out that Brett is civilian police staff and was behind the counter when I went in to report the loss. Small world in Wellington.

Today its back to work with a few more similar calls to make.