The Battle of the Scanmar self steering, Whangarei NZ

Scanmar self-steering unit on the brackets Dave built to hold it outboard of the solar panel.


Another rainy day.
There is one small event to report: the rudder hinge piece for the Scanmar self-steering has returned after passing through the hands of yet another metals shop.
The little bit I've learned about self-steering: Self-steering options include electronic (course is sensed and directed by electronic gear, and course changes are made, in the Marquesa's case, by a hydraulically-assisted motor mounted down by the lower steering column) and mechanical. Mechanical self-steering systems are wind based, which work well offshore, where wind direction tends to be steady and sails can be trimmed and left for hours. Mechanical systems include trim tab, auxiliary rudder, and servo-pendulum- e.g. the Monitor.
In a trim-tab system a wind vane directs a tab on the trailing edge of the boat's rudder. While the windvane doesn't produce enough force to turn the entire rudder, it can turn the smaller trim tab on the end of the rudder.
Similarly, in an auxiliary rudder system, the relatively small force of a windvane directs a secondary rudder which is smaller than the main rudder.
Servo-pendulum systems were a real breakthrough in the cruising world. They use a pendulum, servo gear, and a small oar/rudder to hydraulically enhance wind force so that it is sufficient to turn the main rudder. The stronger the wind/faster the boat speed, the more force created. The system that produces the force is complicated and both the windvane and the rudder end up rotating around a horizontal axis as well as a vertical one. Motion is passed on to the wheel via gears and ropes.
Scanmar touts themselves as the 'world's largest manufacturer of self-steering equipment', and their Monitor model is described by Bluewater Sailing as 'the most popular windvane ever built'. Dave wishes he'd bought an Aries (tougher but more expensive).
The self-steering has been the bane of Dave's existence for some time now. His college degree is in metallurgy and he comes out with some pretty good diatribes when he encounters shoddy metal-working jobs. The unit hasn't seen a whole lot of use prior to this trip, but apparently it's poorly designed. It's broken 4 times so far. Near Tahiti the hinge needed repair due to stress fractures in the welds; the welds hadn't been stress-relieved and the metal is too thin to be durable. In Samoa the hinge pin broke and had to be re-ordered from the States. The servo rudder hinge broke twice partway through the crossing from Tonga- New Zealand, due to what appeared to be metal fatigue. We're lucky we didn't lose the bottom half of the self-steering.
Dave took the old pivot piece to a guy in Opua who cut metal for a new one, but couldn't weld it up. Then he took the pieces to Terry Symonds at Alloy Stainless and Marine Ltd in Whangarei. Terry not only didn't finish the welding, but did such a slap-dash job of it- not bothering to block it or pin the holes - that the thing is next to unusable now. It took half an hour of filing to get it to the point where it can be forced into place, and the bolt holes don't line up. The new piece cost a total of $500 NZ.
The last bit of welding was done by Northern Marine Machining in Whangarei. We've had a great experience with them - their work is generally of good quality and speedy. Dave took an order back once after they messed up a measurement on his masthead fitting, and they re-did the work for free. They're a great resource.

Day 2 of the Haulout

The hardstand electrical supply jury-rig

The battle with the cutlass bearing and improvised tools...


An old zinc plate
Marquesa in her new home



Well, Dave hopes to get done in a couple weeks. We shall see...
Today I learned a bit about drive train components. The cutlass bearing is the bearing that holds the shaft after it exits the hull. It's a bronze tube with a very hard carbon/rubber-type interior that contacts the shaft. It is pressed into a bronze housing that bolts to the hull. Slots in the housing let seawater in to keep things cool. Everything is pretty big and strong and redundant. The 'bronze' is silicon bronze, which is made of copper and tin, plus 1-3% silicon and 1 % either iron, nickel, or manganese. You wouldn't think something made of copper and tin would be a lot stronger than stainless steel, but it is. Most fittings on boats are made of it. Even the rigging up top that looks like stainless is usually silicon bronze with a shiny chrome coating. Dave actually missed getting all his original stainless steel rigging hardware replaced by superior silicon bronze for free when Taenna did a recall (he heard about it 2 months after it ended). Another benefit of silicon bronze is that it's a natural dielectric - electric flow called electrolysis has a potential to eat up metals on boats if they are placed next to a dissimilar metal - a dielectric metal doesn't provide a pathway for this electrical flow. More on electrolysis later when I understand it better. It's a phenomenon that constantly comes up in conversations at the boatyard. I notice with interest that everything in the cutlass bearing housing is bronze except for the studs which hold it on. They are stainless steel because they screw in to a stainless steel plate inside the boat (cheaper than bronze for the manufacturer) and, more importantly, because stainless is more corrosion resistant than bronze. The housing is held on redundantly by double nuts - the outer nuts have holes drilled through them for cotter pins. The bearing is pressed into the housing and also held in place by set screws.
Dave normally replaces his cutlass bearing whenever he has the drive train apart - every few years. It gets a lot of wear, and isn't too expensive, so it just makes sense. At home, he has a press to take out the bearing. Here in Whangarei, we end up heating the housing with some MAPP gas, and alternate hacking at the bearing's plastic and sticking a socket into the housing and banging on it violently. In typical beginner's fashion am starting to have visions of an elaborate pressing contraption involving an overhanging concrete wall, some boards, and a bottle jack, when finally what's left of the thing reluctantly slides out. Improvisation is fun.
I wet sanded the cuprous-oxide antifouling paint with 60 grit and stressed out about whether I was actually removing the green algae layer or just making it disappear behind a thin layer of liquified red paint. I'd be very anal if this was my boat, so I really try to be up to what I take to be Dave's standards. Though the hull looked clean from a distance, there was a lot of algal growth and embedded little shells to be removed, especially at the waterline, the bottom 2', and the rudder.
I finished sanding the hull while Dave did a blur of other things, including weirdly jury-rigging one of the batteries to power the boat (which had to be removed to take apart the propeller shaft) using a cable and a couple sets of locking pliers. I try to stay away from that general area now. He also cleaned all the drive components, took the prop to be polished and balanced, took the cutlass bearing housing over to be sandblasted, took the propeller shaft to multiple shops to be inspected as it had some major wear, ordered a damper...

Hauling Out In Whangarei

Setting up the hardstand.



Farewell, Whangarei Port Basin Marina. Your pretty sunrises will be missed, your scummy tidal river waters will not.
Hauling out at Dockland 5 in Whangarei. This is Dave's first time coming out on a travel lift, as his home port has ways.
Hauling out on a travel lift is sort of a scary-looking process. We motored in to the square cut-out under the lift and they positioned the straps in what seemed like a very casual way. We just fit, winding up with only inches to spare between the keel and the ground, and between the forestay and the frame of the travel lift. Though the lift looks small, it can lift a boat four times the weight of the Marquesa. The forward-looking radar transducer got tweaked a little by one of the straps, but otherwise everything went OK. When she arrived at her slot, they lowered her down on a couple transverse steel beams, shimmed underneath with three piles of scrap blocks, and pushed the 4 vertical steel supports that slid along the steel beams against her sides to keep her from tipping. Very haphazard looking! But stable, of course.
She's pretty clean underneath. Relatively little grows in the tropics- warm water tends to be oxygen- and nutrient- poor compared to rich cold fishing-ground waters like California, Maine, western South America... After being power-washed, she hardly even looked like she needed paint. Curious potential boat-buyers who are doing the rounds of the boatyard gravitate to the clearly well-maintained Marquesa and pelt Dave with questions daily.
As soon as she was out of the water we took a look at the prop, which had been vibrating. It had an inch or so of rotational play- not good. The moment she was set up on the hardstand Dave went to work taking apart the drive train to make sure the play wasn't coming from a damaged gear box. He rebuilt the engine and gear box just before leaving on this trip, so that would have been a real shame.
Dave used a home-made prop puller to remove the prop, and unbolted the collar, waterless packing, and cutlass bearing so he could remove the shaft. This is the first time I've seen a drive train taken apart, so I was a bit disappointed to be underneath the boat, sanding, while all this interesting stuff was going on! Fortunately the issue turned out to be due to a known problem- a worn key in the collar. That should be much easier to fix- we can cut a couple inches off the propeller shaft and fill the space with a damper, then re-key the shaft lower down.
The hauling out and power wash cost only about US $115. A hardstand at the yard costs $15/day and includes power, environmental fees, and cooking and hygiene facilities. As I soon discover, this is one of the very few things which is reasonably priced in New Zealand. Power here is 220V, and the boat's wired for 110V, so we'll be running off battery power while we're in the yard unless we can get ahold of one of the scarce transformers.

The Yacht Marquesa

Dave's boat, the Marquesa.

I met Dave in November at Mariner's Cafe in Ha'apai, Tonga. I was looking for a ride to New Zealand and he definitely wasn't looking to give anyone a rid. But somehow, nudged along by the prompting of the friendly cafe owner who was perpetually giving him a hard time, and in light of the fact that I was weird enough to go to Antarctica, Dave grudgingly agreed to take me on for the crossing...

Since then, I've been traveling the South Island, and all the cruisers like Dave have been holed up in North Island ports like Opua and Whangarei, waiting out the South Pacific hurricane season and futiley trying not to go broke in New Zealand. In May, when the weather improves, people will start heading out for Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, and other exotic destinations.

After a month volunteering in Christchurch, I'm back on the North Island, ready to do whatever grudge work might come up when the Marquesa gets hauled out for maintenance tomorrow... !

Whangarei Oil Refinery

NZ’s only oil refinery is located at Whangarei Head- an area deemed to be geologically stable and conveniently located.  Tankers from the Far East, Indonesia, Australia, and NZ deliver up to 130,000 tons per load- enough to run the refinery for 10 days.  The crude is stored in 2 mil gal and smaller tanks. 
From there it is boiled and the resulting gas is pumped to the distillation columns where its various components condense onto trays.  Products with high boiling points, such as residue, heavy gasoil, and light gasoil cool quickly and condense low in the column.  Higher in the column kerosene, gases, TOPS, and naphtha are deposited on trays.  Light and heavy gasoil will be refined into diesel, kerosene becomes jetfuel, and TOPS and naphtha become petrol.
From here the products are forwarded to desulphurization plants.  Under heat and pressure in the presence of a hydrogen catalyst, sulfur is separated in the form of toxic H2S gas. 
Next, the platformer utilizes a platinum catalyst and hydrogen to raise octane levels from around 50 to standard 91 and 95 petrol levels. 
Elsewhere, the Long Reside from the original distillation column goes through the most complex series of treatments.  First, it is pumped to a High Vacuum Unit, where  Waxy Distillate and Vacuum Gasoil rise up a column under vacuum conditions, and leave Short Residue at the bottom of the column.  This Short Residue goes to the Butane De-Asphalting Unit, where it meets a counter flowing stream of hot Butane.  The lighter components are absorbed into the butane and leave the top of the column.  Heavy asphalt components remain.  These are further distilled in a High Vacuum Unit to produce Bitumen.
The plant features a hydrogen manufacturing unit where a catalytic furnace combines butane, plat former gas, and steam to produce hydrogen gas.  A byproduct of this process is CO2 gas, which is sold for soft drinks. 
The Hydrocracker is the heart of the refinery.  Inside four giant reactors, under great pressure and heat, long hydrocarbon chain molecules are broken down (‘cracked’) into shorter chians.  This process turns  the heavy waxy feed into petrol, kerosene, and diesel components. 
Waste sulfur dioxide gas form various processes is transmuted to liquid sulfur, which is transported by road tanker to a Whangerei plant where it is used in the manufacture of fertilizer.  Old systems recovered 96% of sulfur, and new improvements have upped that number to 99.8%.  In order to depressure the plant, gases are disposed of safely using 90m high flare stacks, where a pilot flame burns continuously. 
End products are pumped down the 10” Auckland pipeline at the rate of 400,000litres/hour. 
The New Zealand Refining Company Ltd is one of the biggest employers in the Northland area, with 300 staff and up to 180 contractors on site. 

The Catlins

Rocks off Nugget Point

Nugget Point lighthouse

Inside the tunnel at Tunnel Beach.

Tunnel Beach. A prosperous farmer had a tunnel drilled down through the limestone bluffs in the 19th century so that his family could enjoy the beautiful beach below his fields.

Tunnel beach from above.

Purportedly the steepest residential street in the world. I now have complete and utter faith in the Orthia's brakes.

Beautiful old train station in Dunedin.

Taieri Gorge Railway - yes, this Was the easiest way into central Otago.

Otago

Lupines (introduced to NZ) and the Clay Cliffs.

The crazy crevasse-riddled landscape of a fault zone at Earthquakes in central Otago. Sheep wandered around, unconcerned about the big holes hidden by the long grass.

Ancient whale bones in limestone.

Only in NZ. And maybe Australia.

Moeraki boulders- concretions caused by the gradual buildup of layers of calcitic algae. Some of the finest examples in the world.

Concretion boulders, Moeraki.

Otago Peninsula

Otago Peninsula -

My day trip out on the peninsula was very enjoyable. I hiked partway out to Sandfly Bay- a beautiful windy track with nice views of bright sand dunes, blue sea, and beautiful greenery and flowers. I wish I’d had time to run down the dunes all the way to the beach. I raced a big cargo ship out to the very end of the Peninsula where the only mainland-based breeding colony of Royal Albatrosses was located. The area was a reserve, carefully protected from predators. I took my time in the good museum display and had a tour.

Royal Albatross are one of the world’s biggest birds, with a wingspan of 9’6”. They are superb gliders, reaching speeds of 75 mph and staying aloft at sea for months at a time. They sleep on the wing, only for a couple minutes at a time. The museum had a wall mounting of a huge amount of indigestible trash-mostly plastic- taken out of the stomach of an albatross.
The colony contained 99 birds which had probably moved in from overcrowded offshore island rookeries.(Chatham Island has 20,000 birds) The head became a good location after the shrub was cleared for defense structures during the Great Game tensions between Great Britain and Russia. The first recorded egg was laid in 1920. But it was not until 1938 that a chick fledged successfully.

Eggs are laid in November, and incubation takes 11 weeks - one of the longest avian incubation periods. Chicks emerge in February, taking an average of 3 days to break out of the shell. For the next month they are then guarded and kept warm by one parent while the other searches for food. Thereafter the chicks are left on their own for 2-4 days while the parents leave to fish. The downy chicks are comically large. At seven months of age, they weigh 10-12 kg (adults are only 8-9 kg). The extra weight sees them through the September fledging process. After chicks fledge, they take off for the rich fishing grounds off the coast of South America. Here they spend 3-5 years continuously at sea before coming back to the colonies to socialize and select mates. At 9-12 years they breed for the first time, and continue to breed every other year. Royal albatrosses can live longer than 60 years; average lifespan is 30-40 years.

The headland also provides safe breeding grounds for several other endangered species. On its upper side, the Royal Albatross colony is abutted by a colony of Red-Beaked Gulls, a crowded acre rife with noisy chicks. Down near the water, Stewart Island Shags incubate eggs on volcano-shaped mud mounds. The world population of Stewart Island shags numbers about 400. They are solitary hunters, flying fast and diving up to 100’ deep for fish. The more common Spotted Shags are communal hunters the fish mid-level waters up to 10 miles offshore. They have lovely breeding plumage. The peninsula is also home to penguins. Blue penguins are quite common. They’re tiny- only 2 lbs. They fish over the continental shelf and come home to ground burrows at sunset in large rafts. Yellow eyed- penguins are rarer, larger (10 lbs), and very shy. They go back and forth in the afternoon, feeding chicks in ground burrows. They dive to the seafloor and mid-level waters to feed.

Wanaka Rodeo

Last night I stayed at Matterhorn south, which had a nice vibe. The TV room was full of Israelis and French speaking their respective languages in little clusters, but the kitchen had a big group of odd-looking Canadian college kids playing cards. The girls all had half-shaved heads etc. Things drifted into a game of slap-nose, but the girl who lost was so scared they all just gave her little love-taps with her deck of cards.

In the morning I went to the rodeo. It was awesome. Things started out with perfect weather and the 2nd division- entertaining due to the number of falls and mishaps. I was hoping to see a woman in the bull- or broncho-riding events, or even in steer wrestling, but they were only in course-races. And there were quite a lot of female contestants in those. The first one out was a little thing in a bright green shirt. She spurred her mount hard and bounced around so much I was amazed she stayed on and figured that must have been what I looked like on the Dart Stables horse. Second class had steer-riding, steer roping, steer wrestling (fun to watch), 2-person steer roping (featuring several husband-and-wife teams and one father and son team with a 14 yr old, broncho riding, and the barrel course. Some really little kids did the barrel race- the youngest looked about six and fell off at the end. He was carried off crying into daddy’s shoulder. NZ is awesome, have I mentioned that? Around the time the second division ended, it started to pour rain. Of course the hardy kiwis just stayed for the most part, many of them just sitting out getting soaked in sweatshirts and shorts. There were a lot of romantic old-timey-looking types in dusters and cowboy hats. One woman I sat near was telling stories about breaking her back and being medevaced by the Flying Doctors. First Division was quite exciting. I went down off the hill and took up a position right next to the ring to watch the riders’ technique. The broncho riders really got tossed around- made me want to try it! Most of them leaned way back, almost laying on the horses’ back. Most, but not all, made the requisite eight seconds, and were awarded points based on skill and style. Some of the horses made a lot of noise kicking at their pens, and a couple burst forth on two hind legs, rearing high as soon as they had room. More than one rider was stepped on, but none spent more than a couple minutes doubled over in pain afterwards… The highlight of the rodeo came last- the bull riders. The bulls were big and looked like they were made of pure muscle. They averaged 1500 lbs. A couple guys ended up getting stepped on here too, but didn’t seem to suffer any permanent injury. They had only a rope wound round the bull’s middle to hold on to. After they fell most bulls would continue bucking until the rope came off too, giving the rider some time to move away. When a bull went for the rider, the young, nimble bull fighters (dressed in rugby uniforms, what else?) would deftly distract him, working in teams to allow each other to escape if the bull came to close. Everyone was wary of these animals, leaping up onto the fence if one came to close. One bull went into a rage and rolled a barrel all around the ring, which was hilarious. They were all worked up and great strings of snot hung from their noses. A lot of the games seemed cruel to the livestock, but then again I suppose they’re all destined for the meat market soon anyway. At times throughout the day the bull fighters would have a hard time getting one back into the pens, and the announcer and his friend would clown around and entertain the audience with unflagging energy. Of course this included a few oaths, dirty jokes, kissing of random ladies, and buttock-baring, in spite of the family venue! I’m very excited to start riding now. My first lesson is the day after tomorrow, and I’ll be telling her I’m interested in riding fast and jumping.