Speedwell of Hong Kong

Hatea River, Whangarei

Author: Shirlz

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Friday, 17th July 2020

It’s raining and dark clouds cover the sun. Speedwell is back in the water, anchored in the Hatea River a little way down from the boatyard.

 

 

After nearly four months on the hard, connected to shore power, I suddenly find myself dependent on solar panels to keep the ship’s batteries charged. I have one approximately 40 watt panel mounted above the stern which does the job happily on long sunny days, but at this time of the year in New Zealand, the days are short and not very sunny. To complicate matters, the boat swings with the tidal current and/or the wind which means that unless I keep a careful watch and manually adjust the angle of the panel to the sun it is often directed away from the energy-giving rays.

Annie and the informal JRA once more to the rescue. A stack of old panels resides in Annie’s boatshed and I was invited to take my pick. I couldn’t imagine where to mount either of the large, rigid ones but there were also two promising-looking flexible panels. After testing with a multimeter we found one that had an open circuit voltage of over 17V. Great! I hooked it up in parrallel to my existing one and voila! Of course, this is not a perfect world and now that I am seriously in need of the extra amps I have discovered that as the two panels are of very different efficiency, there is a need for bypass diodes in the circuit. Fortunately my little charge controller gives a clear indication of whether or not current is actually flowing in the direction of the battery and as soon as this stops, I jump up and disconnect the big flexible panel which is the culprit that is dragging down the voltage. Like magic the controller is happy again. My energy needs are very low so I’m content to put up with this less than ideal arrangement. Having the extra input when conditions allow, makes a big difference to the hours that I can indulge in using my laptop. I just have to be careful not to become mesmerised as I gaze bemusedly at the flashing led that indicates the charging status of the system. If all else fails, I can always resort to the brutal solution of running the engine to revitalize things.

 

 

The anchorage is very well protected from all wind directions and the muddy bottom provides good holding. A fact I was very grateful for two nights ago when a cold front passed through bringing heavy rain and gale force winds. It struck after dark, as these things do, and interrupted my dinner preparations. After being warned of other boats dragging, I hastily struggled into full foul-weather gear and ventured on deck to pay out another 20m of chain. The wind raged on but as there is no fetch in the river the water was relatively calm. I was able to finish my dinner (a rather good kumara, onion and garlic frittata) but spent a restless night keeping anchor watch. By morning enough rain had fallen to refill all my water tanks.

About a week before relaunching, while Speedwell was still cradled ashore a tornado swept through the boatyard creating some shocking devastation. I was very lucky and Speedwell was not directly in it’s path and was only a little roughly shaken but other boats were lifted or blown over with a lot of chaotic damage.

 

 

Annie was incredibly fortunate that her boat shed was spared. Another shed a few feet away was demolished. Annie describes it all very well in her blog.

My last few weeks in the boatyard were spent refurbishing the dinghy. It had been getting more and more difficult for me to lift it out of the water and stow it on deck. Either the dinghy was getting heavier or geriatric decrepitude was taking it’s toll. Not much I could do about the personal aging problem so I decided to try to lighten the dinghy by stripping off the multiple layers of paint that had accumulated over nearly 20 years. It was a messy job.

 

 

I carefully collected all the old paint scrapings in a bag and it weighed in at over 3kg by the time I was finished. Some had to be added back with a new coat of epoxy and paint, but the difference is very noticeable and I feel quite encouraged about my remaining lifting ability.

By the time launch-day arrived I had managed to tick off most of the items on my job list. A major achievement was being able to lower the mast, repaint it and check all the masthead fittings. We had been through some rough times and it was reassuring to see that all seemed well. I replaced the lazy jacks with new dyneema line which I covered with water hose to protect both lines and sail from chafe. I patched and restitched most of the sail and one fine day, Marcus arrived to help to raise the mast and settle it back in the tabernacle.

 

 

Now it was my job to reassemble the sail. I had smartened up the boom and yard with new paint and fendering and it was a pleasure to insert the shiny new aluminium battens. This was all done in the boat shed lean-to and then Annie and Gordon helped by transporting the sail bundle on the roof rack of Annie’s car to a convenient spot next to Speedwell from where I was able to winch it aboard and complete the rerigging exercise.

 

 

The launch proceeded smoothly with only one delay caused by an airlock in the new cooling water intake hose that I’d installed in the engine. David who was directing the proceedings, very ably fixed the problem and showed we what to do if it should ever happen again. Once floating, there was space for Speedwell to be warped around in the channel so that we could chug out to the river without having to manage an awkward reversing procedure. Many thanks to the Norsand Team!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2020 at 20:19 and is filed under Cruising, New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.