#90 NOW February 16, 2006, 0130—UTC +11 hours (Eastern Australia Daylight Time) S43’52.4 E151’22.9 Temp. 61, Pressure 1018 mb, Heading 087’ magnetic Wind from 010 degrees @ 8 knots, Sea swell 8 feet, Para-vanes down, Miles Completed 192, Miles to Go 740, SOG (speed over ground) 6.4 kts. 1600 RPM Good Morning, Yes, we are underway to Bluff, New Zealand, which is actually the harbor for Invercargill. This is a town on the very south tip of the South Island. This past week I have been very busy getting Done Dreamin’ ready for the passage. I left Dover early in the morning and proceed up the coast to the small town of Kettering. Here I made arrangements with Ray Kemp to pull my boat. This wonderful fellow has been building and maintaining boats for half a century, and has his own slipway (method to pull a boat out of the water on a track). Even though I had cleaned the bottom only three months before in Brisbane, I was having problems getting enough water through the seacocks and the bow thruster had become almost ineffective. Once the boat was out of the water, it was easy to see why—the prop and all seacocks were covered with barnacles. These tenacious little creatures had taken over and were not about to let go. I removed all the seacock covers and spent the day cleaning them off. The paint job, which was done in Puerto Vallarta, was still good and a high pressure wash brought it back to like new condition. With a north wind blowing and the sun about to go down we slipped the boat back into the water and I headed to nearby Quarantine Bay for the night. This was a nice protected spot in the lee of Bruny Island. The next morning, while heading back to Hobart, I ran the watermaker for a while. It suddenly decided to go “south,” and I had water flying all over the lazaret as the pump’s head seal failed. This was the second time for this and I had only 414 hours on the pump head. I docked at Elizabeth wharf, as Constitution Dock was full and called Spectra watermakers in San Rafael, California. If these wonderful people were not so nice I would have been very upset. However, they made arrangement to overnight a new pump head up to Seattle where Captain Dick Ferg was about to leave and join me as crew. The next day my old friend Jim Barstow flew in, and we set to work stocking the boat and getting it ready for departure. When Dick arrived on the 13th I installed the new pump head, which ran for about five minutes and finally the motor stopped. In disgust, I shut down the system and filled the water tanks with 220 gallons of water from the dock. This would have to do for our crossing to New Zealand. Valentines Day was shaping up to be a perfect weather window for our departure. So clearing customs, and taking on 813 gallons of fuel at $3.50 per gallon US, we departed. Jim and I had rigged up the “galerider” drogue, just in case we ran into some nasty weather. After all, this is The Tasmanian Sea, known for its rough waters. At 1630 we slipped the dock lines and with a crew of three retired airline captains (that’s scary), we set off for New Zealand. So far conditions have been very good with winds in the 5 to 10 knot range and confused swells around 10 feet. Life is a cruise, Larry, Jim, and Dick. -- Larry Rick Done Dreamin' Nordhavn 40 #33 Site: http://gricknet.homedns.org/Dads%20Web/doneDreamnHome.htm