Tuesday 14th Jan '25


It now looks like the southerly will be further up the coast than previously forecast so the plan is to divert somewhere.  There lies the problem.  The only marina that can take us is too far down south so now we are diverting to the Gold Coast.  Not a bad thing as the owners decided to get some work done on the boat while in on the Coast in Boatworks+ up the river in Coomera.  So we will get into our berth before dark tonight, hopefully and we are getting hauled out tomorrow at noon for a check of the hulls and some anti fouling along with anything else we can get done at short notice. 

I now have a flight home booked for Thursday getting to Auckland at 17:20.  
The weather is forecast to be crap for at least a week if not longer so I will come back when it's looking good to finish the delivery to Sydney.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Hong Kong commissioning "Pikorua"

Image
Today is Saturday 23rd Nov '24 and we are in Hong Kong on a beautiful 2024 GranOcean 60 that we are delivering to Sydney.  We have been here for just over 2 weeks now.   We are tied up to a barge in Kwun Tong typhoon shelter which is along side the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong.  We don't have the luxury of a "normal" marina as in the western world, no power or water connection and a very large construction site 200m away bang poles into the ground all day!  The only place to tie a tender to if we go ashore is a concrete wall covered in barnacles, not a good match with inflatable tubes so we have to use the local sanpan (water taxi) whenever we want to go ashore. Commissioning any newly launched boat always has a long the list of jobs to get ready for the maiden voyage.  It seems you tick jobs off the list and all of a sudden there are replacements at the bottom of the list!   We are now at a stage where virtually everything has been ticked off...
Read more

Tuesday 3rd day 4

Image
The higher fuel consumption and slight vibration mystery has been cleared up.  The pic above is of the starboard propellor and rudder.  Unfortunately a Chinese fishing net has decided to tag along for the ride.  At lunchtime today the conditions were safe enough for us to stop the boat, go out onto the duckboard and put the afore mentioned camera and 3m selfie stick underneath the water and have a look and would you believe it we are trailing what's left of a fishing net.  Now real surprise there! The sea conditions are not safe enough to go diving down under a 30+ tonne boat bobbing up and down in 1-2m swell so that is going to have to wait.  In the meantime we are now running the port engine at 1800rpm (30lph) and the starboard just in gear (600rpm) to lube the shaft.  With this set up the vibration has stopped and we are burning 32lph at an average speed of 7kts. As for the fuel contamination, the port side which had the major problem yesterday is lookin...
Read more

Saturday 30th Nav - Departure day!

Image
Today we finally departed Hong Kong!   There were a few last minute organising and making sure the boat was ready for the passagand by just after 10am we cast our lines off and away we went. We had to dodge all the shipping entering and leaving HK and there were quite a few!  We picked our spot between ships and went for it crossing the shipping lanes without getting in anyones way.  Once past them we then had to navigate our way round all the local fishing fleet with the multiple longlines streaming out the back.  I somehow managed to forget about them from previous trips but it all came flooding back once we were in amongst them all. “Pikorua” is going well, we are running along at 1550rpm averaging 8kts and sucking 15lts per hour on each engine.  It's just under 1,100nm to get to our first fuel stop at Kota Kinabalu in Borneo.  We should arrive on Friday or Saturday all being well. 
Read more