410: Our Routine Haulout Just Became OUR BIGGEST Repair Bill

We thought this haul out would be all about fixing a few known problems. Instead, within the first five days, we found ourselves removing leaking sail drives, ripping out our generator, chasing leaks throughout the boat, and uncovering a massive problem that none of us saw coming. Good morning. It is our first morning on the hard and it is chilly. Oh, never turned off our GPS. Garmin's been running. Non-stop on the hard. Definitely don't need that. We slept like the dead last night. Went to bed at 7 30 and got up around 7. Started out with the rain so everything is wet which is not ideal but we're going to get started on removing the sail drives this morning. First unfortunately I've got to do the emptying of the nasty pee bucket. We pee in a bucket at night after the sun goes down because trying to get up and down this ladder and then walk the 100 feet to the bathroom, which is on the other side of the catamaran next to us, would not be ideal in the middle of the night. So we pee in a bucket. It's so good to be back on the hard with the bucket and the admiral. It's just part of the culture here and it's wonderful. It works, and... It's another use for a five gallon bucket and I'll tell you what we would do without those five gallon buckets. The hardest part is the most important thing is not to take the golden shower which is walking down the ladder and spilling the bucket. So that's the first task to be successful this morning. Getting ready to drop everything down, get working on the props. This was an This was an unexpected disappointment. The sander has just completely disintegrated. There's a pad that goes on the sander, so we'll have to borrow one. I'm sure someone has one, but that's a bummer. This one has something in it. Okay, good. It's lunchtime in the boatyard and everyone is taking a break. The captain is taking a snooze and I'm headed to meet with Dora in the main office to talk through just paperwork stuff related to our stay here in the boatyard. They have a fantastic Chandlery here and this is where the offices are as well. Ah I just had amazing amount of puppy love. Elena in the office just took this puppy off of a local family who brought the puppies in to get some treatment for fleas and for other things. Do you do this for all the dogs? Anyone who comes by. We work with vets in New Zealand and we get a bit of a supply. That was amazing and it just took care of all of the billing questions and all that. So, oh, Cyril's back up. We're finally getting rid of this generator. Props are off on that one and they're soaking. Now we're getting props off on this one. I'm going to have to lift this a little bit. This is the power of leverage right here. When you're ready. Yep. All right. Here we go. Did it? It popped off. Thank you, sweetie. Oh, we're getting there. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, we're getting there. Well, our first day on the hard is coming to a close and we've gotten a lot of stuff accomplished today which is great. The first is that the props are completely off the sail drives and Brown has sanded everything down so it's ready to be painted. One of the staff called Cyril has been disconnecting the jenny so that is going to be ready to be lifted on Monday. We're really excited about getting rid of that 400 pound weight in the front of our boat. I did some work on our first and second reef connections and just a lot of cleaning, a lot of prep, a lot of organization. So we are making headway. It is the weekend here now though, so we're not sure how much work is going to get done on Saturday and Sunday. It seems like most people take the weekend off. We don't mind that. We'll keep working. Good morning, it is our second day here on the hard and I am off with the bike to Saturday market. Saturday market is the best time to get fruits and vegetables, and we are out. It's a lot of up and down hills, so this won't be a whole lot of fun, but we'll get it done. It's the end of season and the pineapple prices are definitely going up. 12 is about 5 US. Beautiful low tide here right by the anchorage where we stayed before we hauled out. You can see the dock and it's definitely very low tide. Both of the pontoons are Resting on the ground on the reef and the boatyard is up there. You can see all the masts. I am back. Wow Super successful, of course, sweetie. You're in charge. Oh my goodness. Oh That was loud, baby. No, just emptied that my saddles out and I've got the backpack I'm gonna walk up with this but since Brown's bike went into the Drink I had to take care of this on my own. So Of course, I had to pop by the bakery as I was getting all of our provisions, but look at all this. 50 bucks, not bad. This was two grocery runs, two trips into town on the bike. Papayas. These are called bola here. They're a mix of mandarin and limes. Green peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, three watermelons, obviously carrots, and a cucumber really always gives us something free. She wanted us to try that kind of cucumber. Mandarins, bananas, pineapples, one coconut, apples, onions, tomatoes, and some cheese. Way cheaper than French Polynesia, that's for sure. We're both going our own way, only one bicycle. The admiral's going back to get more cash because this fuel is super expensive. It's like 60 bucks for five gallons and she's off. I've got enough cash to fill up two of those. And I'm really hoping somebody's going to feel sorry for me again on the way back. You can have everything be fun and a challenge, can't you, baby? That's what we do here on Blowing the Way, right, Admiral? Yep. Aye, aye. It only took about 10 minutes to get down to the cash machine. Just waiting to get access to it and get some money out. I'll get on the cash and heading back to the boat. Hopefully, Brown has gotten a ride. He's going back up to the fuel station with gas cans again. I am back from town. Everything went well. Brown went and got the two jerry cans filled up, but no one stopped this time. So he had to carry them, which was not good for his back. And now we're doing the bucket brigade so that we can do some laundry. Boatyard living. Trying to keep him from hurting his back by doing a lift system here. There we go. We have not dropped our rudder in a few years. Four and a half years and we really need to do that. We need to clean the bearings and Brown's measuring right now to see if we have enough space to be able to drop it while we're on the blocks. We might have to dig a little bit of a hole. It's 26 inches under the rudder so I'm going to go down and measure. All right it looks like we need to dig a hole about nine inches to get it get it out. Maybe even more. Let me see if I can find a shovel. No such luck on the shovel, and I was told we need a pickaxe to do this. This is going to be interesting. Well, it's 4:30. Even if I did get the pickaxe, I'd have to move the boat stands, which I don't want to do, so we're just going to wait till Monday. Okay, we have the sail drive, basically the propeller off. It takes a while to do that. The toughest thing is getting these bolts off without stripping them. We have sand down. The trunk of the sail drive down to the primer and we're just going to wipe this with acetone. After we get this thing put together we're going to paint it. So the last thing to do right here before we get inside is actually to get in. So I pulled these bolts out. There's one here. There's one here. They're really tight. I'm glad we got them out. Would have been in a lot of trouble. It's the first time that I've done it by myself. Let's see how we do here. This is gonna be ugly. This is the one with water in it, so it should be somewhat milky. Here we go. Oh, I knew it. This is why we need the big bucket. Wow. Oh, you have to loosen it up top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We forgot to crack the tank from up here. No, it's coming out. How bad does it look? Ah, it doesn't look great, but I've seen worse. Hey, we're doing this all ourselves this time. Got some more corrosion. All right, sail drives are... Ready to go tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get the help from Alan the mechanic. Today is Sunday and no one works on Sunday so we're gonna go take a hike up to Mount Talao which is the highest point in the Vava'u group. We also have a stick to ward off the dogs. There are a ton of wild dogs and they can get pretty nasty and bite so we definitely don't want to deal with that. We're on to you. Oh dear. I'm ready. So there's a myth why Mount Talao is so flat and the short story is that the mischievous spirits of Samoa wanted an unobstructed view past Tonga and this Mount Talao was in their way of their perfect view. So they sent these mischievous spirits to chop off the top of the Tongan mountain, Mount Talao. But the Tongans wanted to fight back, so everyone started to crow like roosters trying to pretend like it's morning because the spirits, the mischievous spirits, only act at night. Where they caught on to the whole rooster crowing thing, they knew that it was not going to be light anytime soon. So the mischievous spirits of the Tongans recruited the goddess to pick up her skirt and moon. the spirits of Samoa. It was a full moon and it was so bright because she has no sun on her rear end that they were tricked into thinking it was daylight and because it was daylight they never fully cut off the top of Mount Talao. I can't imagine a teacher teaching that in school. That would be pretty crazy. What a story. These are big winds. We've had Winds in the 30s. For the last three or four days, And it's going to continue for the next 10 days. So we're really glad we're on the hard and not having to worry about the wind. Our friends are in the anchorage down in Neafu and they say it is really sporty. So we're very happy to be on the hard and getting work done since you can't really do anything in this wind as it is. Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof! They like it when you walk along. Back to our beautiful boat yard. Oh, my God. Man. It's our fourth day here on the hard and this morning we went over with Alan who's one of the owners our list of things that we need to accomplish and now we're just waiting for him to come help with the things that we're doing today. We are also going to dig ourselves a little bit of a ditch under our rudders to drop the rudders today and clean out the bearings but Brown needs a tray for a roller to be able to paint the sail drive so I'm gonna get on the bike and go over to the hardware store and pick one of those up. All right I found a tray and a brush at this Chinese store and now I'm going to head to the bakery to get something fun to eat. There's not a huge amount of space under that rudder to swing a axe so we've got to dig about nine inches a foot underneath the rudder To be able to drop the rudder, so it's part of the daily CrossFit. A little manual labor for the captain here. This is the advantage of having herniated one of your my vertebrae discs two and a half years ago is that the admiral is slugging away over here. Great job sweetie. The tongan dirt is pretty compact so you've got to use the pick on it first and then the shovel. The hole is dug and Now, we're working on releasing the bolts. Oh, it came out pretty quickly. It did. Now you gotta get that side bolt. Oh, right, okay. We're not sure why. Oh! Okay, Brown. Yup. Be careful. Don't let it go sideways. Something happened. Yup, yup. The top bearing? It's through the top bearing! okay let it go down let it go down so it looks like it's uh caught in in the sleeve the fiberglass sleeve that was yeah it broke loose broke loose well down here look at that it's wiggling now No no no no I don't think there's any problems. Thanks guys it's probably not a bad idea to re-4200 it again you know. It's probably had glue around it and now it's that glue is stuck to the shaft and it's trying to go through the bushing. What do you recommend? Nothing is easy on a boat is it? So we've got a little bit of an issue. We were able to get the shaft down a bit. But it is stuck and now the whole sleeve is moving which is not good and we can't figure out why it is stuck. Anyway maybe not the smartest to have done it here in Tonga. We just didn't expect a problem with our rudders. We haven't had them in that long. We put in brand new composite bearings. We thought this would be easy but work is never easy. So anyway hopefully we'll We'll figure this out. Alan's here, he'll help us, and that's the good news. Okay, so what do I need to do? Just straighten the shaft. Straighten it up for me. So it fits in the hole. At the moment it's going off. Pull it towards the right. Yeah, and now. Is that good right now? No. Sorry. You can't see it. Oh okay, I got you. Yeah, there you go. Okay, got it. Let's just give it a light tap to begin with and see. Okay, just hold up. No worries. You're doing great. No, no, I just want to make sure I'm not hurting anything on top here. Right. Yeah, okay, It should just, it'll go now, it'll just drop out, it's just gonna land in the sand there. Okay let's go. All right, guys. Oh wow, nicely done. Can we save it? Uh yeah, the... The... You want me to get something to clean it? Let's pull it out and we need to clean it off and have a look at it. Alright. Let's see what he has to say. Oh Did I dig it deep enough? I don't know, we're gonna find out. The bearings are... You see this is, I still think it's 4,200 degrees. Right, it could be. Oh, there we go. Ah! Oh shoot, I didn't go deep enough. Not deep enough. Dang it. All right, we're going to have a performance review on this. Oh man. It's not going to be pretty. All right. How many more inches do you think we need? Just about anything. All right, super. I'll keep digging. Oh man. It's hard to tell. Well, it's not enough. That's what we do now. Every step is a little bit of progress. We are starting on the second rudder. Brown did an amazing job cutting through the dirt to make a hole big enough to drop the rudder. So we are ready to drop this one in. take a look at it hopefully it's not going to be the same issue that we have with the port rudder this particular rudder has already been replaced so the reason is four years ago three and a half years ago we sheared it under passage and so this is a brand new rudder and we're hoping that it is in good shape because if it's not that would be a lot of money to replace The hardest part about getting the rudder out on this side or the is the key and we have shaved the key down a little bit to make it easier that it swells and gets stuck and not coming out so easily. I'm not sure what's going on inside that tube but there's definitely some corrosion. Good. Oh my gosh. This almost has a chime. So does that mean the whole rudder stock is shot? Yeah. It's going to do the same thing that you had. Yeah. Yeah. My dad's just going to break up. Oh, I don't want that happening. Yeah. All right, well, at least we know what we need to do. You see that there? You see where it's cracked like that? That means the steel's rotten All right. That is a crack. That's right. I wouldn't say it's electrolysis. Oh, you don't think it is? Well, that's good. It is electrolysis, but it's of it's own making, it's not a leak in the boat. Oh, okay. Your sail drive leg would be chewed away way before this. It's just, stainless steel produces its own electricity when you dip it in salt water. And when you stress it, for some reason, wherever it rides on that bearing, it's always happening in the same story. All right. I mean, that's night and day. Yeah, that's a big difference. Day four, that's a wrap. I'm going to tap and... Some not so good news which is that we're going to have to replace our port rudder. Port rudder's been great but it's got some pit corrosion. I don't think we're going to do it here. I think we're going to get it manufactured and shipped to Fiji or maybe it could even go on a boat with one of our friends. That would be the ideal thing to save the cost of shipping. But we'll have to see when we figure out who can make it for us. That's the key is the cost of manufacturing and then getting it to us. Got some work to do on that. I just got back from a ride to town. Picked up some eggs and sourdough and I've come back to Brown working on getting the bearings out of it where the rudder goes. This one is a bit stuck. The starboard rudder fell pretty quickly and easily. The port one is the problem and we think there's a... probably the bearings are super dirty. We have not... Pull. You see corrosion? Yeah. He does see a lot of rust on it and that's what we saw on the stainless steel shaft was rust as well so that could be part of it. Anyway we got to get that out and we need to soak it in some soapy water and make sure it's doing okay. Never a dull moment on the boat. It'll be a miracle if neither of us falls at some point down this ladder. A little A little more than that and we're good. Oh yeah! Oh, that's really good. I think we got it. The admiral's so smart. Yes, she is. Me, not so much. I'm just good for digging ditches, maybe, and that's debatable. So this is the unit that we're trying to get out from the other one. This one looks like it's in fairly decent shape. I don't see any broken bearings. Do you want me to use it all? Okay, it's all in. It's a little bit hard to see this, but we are trying to fix this bad crack here. And it looks like they're gonna fill this with some kind of a... Softer material so that when the boat flexes, we don't have an issue with it cracking again. Hopefully it works. Not a huge amount of investment of time if it doesn't, but this has just been an ongoing issue for us. Let me see. It's got some equivalent of 52 million on there. Just come down and help me. This is the exact scenario that happened the last time. Stupid leak. Oh it's been pouring rain, driving rain. Cannot figure out where this is coming from. We've got a mess down here. Let's see what's going on here. So we got a bunch of leaks that this storm is showing us which is good because that's what we really needed to know is where the leaks are coming from. And this is definitely the worst of it. There's water coming in from A lot of different spots. All the rags are completely soaked. You can see the mold on our panels below the window. Rain coming in everywhere.