Living & Learning Aboard the Good Ship Learnativity

Our 3rd Circumnavigation of LOVE Begins!

This very first photo captures the moment two years ago today, December 19th 2013, when this beautiful person walked off a plane at Fiji’s Nadi International airport and into my life. 

 

Nothing has been the same or better since the day I met and kissed this most amazing love of my life and life of my love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As per my recent post Thanks for changing my life forever Barney!! it had all started with a cute little video of Barney the Yorkshire Terror as he was called and my seemingly innocent question to his owner who had created this little My Talking Pet video.  But that simple question led to more Emails, then even more phone calls, then even more Skype calls and less than a month later she was on a plane from her home base in Ft. Lauderdale Florida to meet this weird wandering fellow single handed Canadian sailor who was floating on his boat with his little dog in Fiji. 

 

If you are a sucker for romance like me, you can read much more in my previous posts such as:

Wayne Finds His Blankie!

Wayne gets Entangled, Enchanted and Engaged with his Blankie!!

 

 

A few hours after Christine walked off that plane while I was still wandering around dazed in the twitterpated fog I’m still living in,we were aboard our dear friends Colleen & Ian on their neighboring boat m/v Summer Spirit with Ruby the Wonderdog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That evening we had Ian take the picture on the left looking off to the west from Vuda Point Marina and then this past August Ian took the photo on the right from the same spot to mark our “circumnavigation of love” by returning to the spot where we had met for the very first time two years ago today.

 

 

 

 

In between those two photos we filled our life as “we” with more adventures, love and learning that either of us sexagenarians had ever experienced. (a more appropriate term than you might think!) 

The list of our travels and adventures is MUCH too long to write out here so just to mention some of the most relevant ones for this anniversary post:

We spent 3 weeks in magnificent Malta researching what was then Christine’s next book, now known as “Knight’s Cross”  which was published just last week.  I took advantage of this magical place to ask what my heart had been shouting for some time and she said YES!

 

 

 

We took advantage of a brief break in our travelling adventures to begin another grand adventure by first getting officially married on August 4th in Deland Florida.

Then thanks to the help of our awemazing daughter Lia, who is organizer par excellence and over 60 of our best friends and family we had the most incredible four days of wedding celebration in San Diego California on March 21st.

 

Along the way we have traveled through more than 15 countries around the world and covered over 100,00 miles on land, sea and air using planes, trains, automobiles, trollies, ferries, sailboats and motor boats.

 

Since that first day we met, our lives have been filled to the point of bursting with adventures, friends, families, learning and love.  We count ourselves amongst the most fortunate and certainly the richest people on the planet when measured by what matters; profound joy and love.  We have all of YOU, our friends and family, to thank for all this.

 

Most of all for me, on this special anniversary day I have the most awemazing person I’ve ever met to thank. 

I LOVE you Christine Louise! 

Here’s to making our third circumnavigation together of the sun and of love the best one yet!

What is she thinking?

Ruby and I make it a habit to start and end each day watching the sunrise and set wherever we are.  We have been here in Fiji at Vuda Point marina since the end of August and I’ve been in full tilt work mode getting Learnativity all super ship shape for the next few years of remote sailing as we make our way west over into Indonesia.  So my daily sun worshiping provides welcome breaks and reminders of just how fortunate I am and what a charmed a life I live.

I like this first picture a lot with Ruby’s cute little head silhouetted by the setting sun which always prompts me to wonder “What is she thinking”?

 

We were last here in Fiji and at Vuda Pt. marina a year ago when we lived here for a full year doing the big repaint and refit on LTY, and since then the new marina management has put in the most wonderful addition of a small sloped patch of grass which is set right on the edge of the coral shoreline and looking straight out over some of the smaller of the over 360 Fijian islands to the west.  Which as you can see, makes it the perfect spot for our nightly sun downers.

I don’t know what motivated the marina to put this patch of grass in, but it is obviously someone’s pet project as the grass is some of the softest and most well cared for grass I’ve ever experienced.  It is absolutely perfect for me to sit on the sloped bank with my tired tush nestled into the slight hollow I found in the upper level of the grass which is also perfectly positioned in front of one of the big rocks they set in place with just the right hollow in it for me to rest my aching back against and enjoy the most amazing “hot rock massage” from the almost too hot to touch rock mass that has been storing up the sun’s heat all day.

Ruby LOVES grass, always has since she was a puppy and so she spends part of her time racing around in circles, her ears like mini wings that give her a flying “bat dog” look as races full tilt in long circuits from one end of the grass to the other.  Ian (seen in the silhouette here) enjoys throwing sticks and rocks which she races and pounces upon, does her duty of protecting us from these “killer” rocks and sticks by shaking the daylights out of them and then comes back and flops down beside us to enjoy chewing them.  She never quite returns them to either of us and any suggestions of “fetch” are met with a look that surely says “You talking to me?!!  What do you think I am, a DOG or something??”

 

And it all seems to be custom built just for Ruby and me as it is somewhat hidden and undiscovered by most others and so we are usually the only ones there each night.  We do welcome and invite others to join us though and now that Ruby’s “Uncle Ian” from mv Summer Spirit is back from his trip to Australia, the three of us have made this our nightly ritual. 

 

 

 

 

It has been awesome to watch the progression of the sun over the past two months as it moves a bit more south each day with the approach of summer down here in the southern hemisphere as it silently slides below the western horizon each night.  The foreground we have is equally perfect with a series of Fijian islands off shore from us which are bathed in the setting sun’s fiery glow and up above there is a new mélange of clouds which provide the perfect medium for the full pallet of colours from the sun long after it has disappeared below the watery horizon.  Again, pictures are SO much better than my meagre attempts to describe with words so I’ll let you browse through a few photos of some of the horizons from the past few weeks.

 

		Fijian Sunsets 2013 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Halloween 2013

I was feeling a bit melancholy this Halloween as it is the first time in 12 years that I wasn’t able to be back in Florida to be with my “second family” with John, Michelle, Kate, Jaci, Genna and Jack for pumpkin carving, dress up, makeup, parades and Trick or Treating.  This is partly because they are also now “liveaboards” and having a blast as you can see here on their catamaran “Discovery”.

So imagine my delight when Learnativity was honoured to be selected by the talented and energetic organizer Katja to be one of the boats in Vuda Point Marina to be called upon by six beautiful little Trick or Treaters and their Mum’s.  I’ll let the photos do all the explaining so you can see for yourself.

Unfortunately, the new paint on the decks of LTY was still wet so I wasn’t able to get Ruby’s Bat Dog costume for her but she had a great time with all these little girls as you can see.

		Halloween 2013 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Learnativity “20 year” Refit: Sept 5, 2011 to Aug 10, 2012 Vuda Point Marina, Fiji

Many of you have asked to see more of the work involved in doing this major refit and repaint of Learnativity and so I’ve gone through the collection of photos I have of the work and put together a series of online albums you can look at as you choose.  I divided them up into some of the overall stages from Before, During and after going back in the water and Assembling the giant jig saw puzzle.  I don’t have photos of all the work, nor would anyone but me likely want to see them but this should give you more than enough of what was entailed in repainting the entire exterior, replacing and doubling up the steel on the bottom of the hull, rebuilding all the major gear and systems, replacing all the glass and then putting this all back together and getting her all ship shape and ready to sail the world again.

For future use I’d be interested to know how well this these photo albums work, suggestions for better ways of sharing photos and the like so please send me your reactions and comments as you have time to look through these.  Thanks and enjoy!

		Learnativity Fiji Refit-Before VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

		Learnativity Fiji Refit-During VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

		Learnativity Fiji Refit-Back in the water VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

		Learnativity Fiji Refit-Assembling the Jig Saw Puzzle VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Farewell Fiji; Hello Mother Ocean!

Well, the time has come to finally cut the dock lines, both literal and figurative and leave the country I’ve become SO fond of; Fiji.  On Friday (Aug 10), ELEVEN months and five days after I entered and with the help of some of the great friends I’ve made, I slipped the dock lines and motored out of Vuda Point marina.  This was the fabulous spot where I was able to do a complete “20 year” repaint and refit of Learnativity and spent almost the entire past year enjoying a very different kind of land based life with Learnativity out of the water for nine of those months and then tied to a dock for the remainder.

As seems to be the norm for me the whole thing was a serendipitous and phenomenal experience.  I originally thought I was going to be there for a few weeks and ended up being there almost a year, I met and got to know some wonderful people who are now dear friends, both fellow cruisers as well as the gift of getting to know many of the local people who I worked shoulder to shoulder with every day on Learnativity as well as several who worked at the marina.  I was invited into their homes and truly shared life with them for the past year.  What a rich and charmed life I lead!

As for Learnativity she is quite literally a whole new boat and I’ll simply let the before and after pictures tell the story for now.  Thanks to my friends Volker & Michaela on La Gitana, who have been in Vuda Point even longer than me, I have these before and after shots of Learnativity on the day she sailed into Vuda Point and then the one where she went back in the water.  Just a bit of difference as you can see!

 

And you are only seeing the outside!  In addition to sandblasting the whole exterior, which required removing EVERY part that wasn’t welded on and even a few which were, she now has all new solar protected triple thickened glass, new prop shaft, new solar panels, new nav system, and a very long list of other improvements and rebuilds.

While an immense task, it has been a labour of love and I’m VERY happy with my “new’ boat and looking forward to making the transition back to sailing and life on the water.  I have an equally long list of people to thank for making this all possible.  The truly wonderful team from Baobab Marine who worked with me every step of the way to get this all done and who did the lion share of the work.  My special thanks to Lorenzo for his constant supervision and assistance and to my “boys” especially Isikelly, Jim, Imran, Daven, Nadeem and the many others who worked with us at various stages.  I also received lots of help from other cruisers especially Volker and Michaela on La Gitana and who were instrumental in me coming to Vuda Point in the first place, and then a few special others who became friends along the way such as Terry & Christine on Teka Nova, Steve & Selena on Windward II and Tony & Carolyn on Tuaki.  I’m leaving out many, many others, so my apologies to all.  Just know that my time in Vuda Point was so special because of the people I met and befriended more than anything else.

Through it all Ruby the Wonderdog truly lived up to her name and became the social butterfly of the entire marina.  She was easily the best known entity in the marina and many people had no idea who I was other than “the guy” who was usually with Ruby.  Ruby is a great teacher on how to live life well as she simply assumes that every living creature she meets is there to play with her and to be loved.  And guess what?  They do! 

 

 

 

So Ruby had an even better time in Vuda Point and is leaving with at least as many memories as I am.  She particularly wants to thank Christine & Terry for her time being spoiled aboard Teka Nova with custom made gourmet meals, lots of snuggles and most of all for walks on the beach at low tide where she worked on her crab digging techniques. 

And for the past few months Ruby has spent more time aboard Summer Spirit that was docked beside us as she was adopted by Colleen and Ian.  Most days I barely saw her as she spent all her time with them including many “sleep overs”.  As you can see in just this one interior picture and the big black & white boat docked beside Learnativity in the other picture, Summer Spirit is a pretty fabulous boat to be on and Colleen and Ian became her favorite Aunt and Uncle.  So much so that they are now busy making arrangements to find a Spoodle pup in Australia that they can bring over and have a “Ruby” of their own.  I think Ruby should be a Spoodle ambassador as this is about the fifth time she has been the catalyst of others we’ve met getting their own Spoodle after falling under Ruby’s spell of pure unconditional love.  It was no easy task getting her back on board Learnativity with just me but Colleen did make up some treats for Ruby’s withdrawal (and some for me too!) so I think we’ll manage.

And so it was that I slipped the dock lines at Vuda Point marina on Friday after over ELEVEN months there and am now anchored off the Customs wharf in Lautoka, the western most check out spot in Fiji.  I’m finishing up the last bits of getting LTY all ship shape, shopping ashore for the last of my provisions for the next few months and using up all my internet time for uploads and downloads like these.  It is now Monday morning here and I’ll row ashore in a few minutes to do my official check out of Fiji.  Though I’m not supposed to, I may stop at one of my favorite little deserted islands west of here for one last night to say goodbye to Fiji.  Winds are forecast to be VERY light for today and tomorrow so waiting a day or two may help out.  In any case the islands of Vanuatu are calling my name the loudest so my first landfall will be Anelghowhat Bay on the SW corner of Aneityum island which is also sometimes called Anatom island.  It is about 450nm from here and also the southernmost island in Vanuatu and just became a PoE so I can check into Vanuatu there.  The bay there is supposed to be very nice and the check in is very easy as there is almost no one on the island and you get good personal service from the lonely customs guy!   My kind of spot! 

My overall plan is to just start island hopping making my way north up through the various islands of Vanuatu.  There are active volcano's on Tanna and Ambrym islands where you can hike up to the top of the cone, lay down on the edge and poke your head over to look down into the lava pools so of course I HAVE to go experience that! ;)  Will stop at the two big cities of Port Villa and Luganville to avail myself of some good French influenced supplies with the likes of great cheese, breads, cafés and WiFi.  Otherwise will just live and sail by whim and weather as usual and keep sailing north till about the first week of October when I will start my sail NNE to Majuro in the Marshall islands.  I can get duty free diesel when I check out of Vanuatu and so I’m going to run my tanks as low as I can by then and do my annual fill up with considerable savings before I sail up to the Marshalls.

I’ve decided that I WILL fly back to Canada and the USA see friends and family at the end of October.  On the one hand I can’t really afford it after blowing SO much of my overall “life” budget here in Fiji but on the other hand it is a no brainer as I need my annual “fix” of family and special friends.  Plus Ruby already has her Bat Dog costume (really!) and how can I break my 12 year record of Halloween of being in the US for Halloween?  Still making those arrangements but will most likely spend November and December in North America and fly back to Learnativity in Majuro about Xmas time.  I’ve decided that the Marshalls are by far the best option for me, both to leave LTY safely as I did before, plus take one last advantage of a good US Post Office there for any last rounds of boat stuff as well as easy flights in and out. 

When I was there in 2010 I didn’t get to see many of the outer islands of the Marshalls which are phenomenal and it puts me in a great spot geographically for the start of sailing season up north of the equator.  Never plans of course, but my sailing intentions from there are to explore some of the Marshalls as I make my way west over through Micronesia (Kosrae, Pohnpei, Yap, Palau) towards the Philippines but I also have Solomon’s and PNG calling my name louder and louder so I think I may head south from wherever I am in Micronesia about April and go spend the sailing season (April-Nov) down there and then head back north of the equator to pick up where I left off in Micronesia.  All WAY too far ahead for me, but fun to do this kind of what if scenario thinking.

COMMUNICATIONS:

I’ll put a full list of all the various ways of communicating with me at the bottom of this post and just remember that when I leave Fiji in a few hours I will mostly be relying on my satellite phone for my internet connection and therefore I’ll be back to just sending and receiving text based Emails.  Therefore if you are sending me Emails please copy me on both my [email protected] and [email protected] with any Emails you send.  I’ll likely find some WiFi or cellular connections from time to time in the larger ports in Vanuatu but I spend most of my time on small remote islands or at sea so I won’t be on FaceBook or Skype much for the next while.  However I will get back to doing daily blog postings on the sail over to Aneityum like I’ve done in the past and frequent updates on my experiences sailing north.  I have it set up so there are automated updates sent to FaceBook and Twitter each time I post to the Learnativity blog so you’ll see those as they happen and can follow us as much or as little as you like.  Note that I put in the lat/long coordinates for each update report and you can cut and paste these into Google Earth or Microsoft Bing to see where we are in those satellite photos.  It will be a lot of open blue water for the next week or so but once I’m in Vanuatu you can have some fun flying around the sat photos of the various islands and bays to get a feel for these spots I’m in.

And with that I’ll bid you and Fiji a fond farewell for now.  Learnativity is in GREAT shape (better be!) so no known issues yet and everything is working well so far!  Should only be about 4-5 days passage over to Aneityum so a nice easy sail to get started and let me remember how to sail (or at least my version of it) again after being away from it for almost a year now.

Hope you will join Ruby and I as we set sail for our next round of adventures in life and that you too are living, loving and learning every moment of this grand experience called life and enjoying the gift of the present.

Vinaka Fiji and friends!

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog,
aboard the good ship Learnativity
currently anchored near Lautoka, Fiji
17 36.061 S, 177 26.442 E

Regular Email:    [email protected]
Email when @ sea or remote via sat phone:    [email protected]  (Yes! This is the correct spelling OCENS)
I typically retrieve and answer Emails to this account via our satellite phone at least once every 24 hours.  You can send as much text as you like but are asked not to send any attachments such as photos.

FaceBook page:        www.facebook.com/wayne.hodgins
Learnativity blog:    www.learnativity.typepad.com
Off Course – On Target blog:   http://waynehodgins.typepad.com

World Phone Voicemail:        +1-501-492-9634   (has voice mail that is forwarded to me via Email)
Text Messages:  (to my sat phone)
send short 140 character Text msgs via Email to:  [email protected]

Other contact info:
Skype:    Whodgins
Twitter:        WWWayne

Splashdown! Learnativity is back in the water where she belongs

One day short of eight months, Learnativity returned to the sea where we belong as we “splashed” back into the waters here in Vuda Point Marina on Thursday May 3rd.  I’m a long ways from being done but this kind of job only happens about every 20 years or so and it has been a fabulous experience and yet another adventure for me.  I’ve learned more every day not only about my boat but about this Fijian culture and people I love so dearly as I have worked shoulder to shoulder with so many of them over the past eight months, been invited to join them for lunch and to their homes.  How blessed am I?!

 

 

As you can imagine “splashing” back into the water is a major milestone in this 20 year refit and renovation and one I’ve been waiting and working for a long time.  It was all very much worth the time, money and effort mind you as she truly does look like an entirely new boat sporting her new dark blue hull colour and bright white everywhere else. 

 

I’ll try to put up an album with more before and after shots for you to see just how big a difference there is and how much work has gone into this but I will post a few of them here in this post for now.

 

 

It was a VERY busy last two weeks doing everything that needed to be done to get her ready to be back in the water again such as cleaning the AutoProp, installing new transducers and zinc anodes.  My great crew from Baobab were busy finishing the bottom paint and they rolled on the last of the three coats of anti foul paint on Wednesday, the day before we splashed so it is as fresh as possible and doesn’t dry out.  And then once LTY was in the slings and off the stands they were able to finish painting the last few spots they had been covering and she was all set for her much awaited journey back to the sea.

 

I spent over five days rebuilding the Maxwell windlass (electric winch that pulls in the chain and anchor) with all new seals and motor and then getting it all mounted in its newly replaced steel home in the bow. 

 

 

 

 

I also put in all new wiring and new foot switches and she works like a charm.  I am very dependent upon this bit of kit as I have a 75kg Rocna anchor and lots of 10mm chain to haul up each time I weigh anchor so I have now completely redone this vital piece of equipment.  As you can see here, it is like a whole new boat inside as well as out.

 

 

 

I also spent several days redoing my anchor chain, replacing some of the well worn parts with some of the spare anchor chain I’ve been carrying aboard for over 5 years and adding an additional 100 feet to give me a total of over 400 feet/120m.  This gives me more options and safety for anchoring in deeper water.  I painted a few feet of the chain at 50 foot intervals and marked these with colour coded plastic chain markers and zip ties to make it easy to know how much chain I have out when anchoring.  As you can maybe start to understand, each of these “little jobs” of putting everything back together takes a long time and I am sure I have at least a full month of work before Learnativity is ready to sail again and even then there will be lots of jobs on the list of things to do while anchoring in the upcoming remote spots as I head out again.

I don’t have the new starter batteries for my main engine and generator yet so I had Mo, the marina yard jack of all trades, tow me over to our new home in the basin of Vuda Point Marina.  We are all the way around the circular basin in a great little spot that looks out west to the outlying islands.  My friends and fellow cruisers Terry and Christine from Teka Nova were very kind and came aboard as the Travel Lift lowered Learnativity into the water and helped out with lines and fenders, and Steve from Westward II and some of the Baobab crew helped out ashore as we slowly nested her into the new dock. 

One of the first things I did after securing all the lines was to give Learnativity a good wash down.  It is going to be SO nice to not be tracking dirt aboard from the yard!  With the new nonskid paint holding not only your feet but all the dirt, the decks had become quite a mess from all those trips up and down the ladder as the work continued onboard in the yard.  We have not had any rain now for almost a month as the cyclone and rainy season has ended for this year and we are back to the fabulous weather I so love, but as a result there is a lot of dust and dirt in the yard that was getting tracked onto the decks.  Fortunately there is lots of fresh water supply here after all the rains and I have a hose bib right on the small wooden dock by the bow and it felt so good to have all that fresh water on my feet and watch all that dirt go streaming off the decks to reveal my like new brilliant white decks!  I felt a bit like the Kevin Costner character in the movie Waterworld as I rid myself of all that land based dirt and got back to life on the water.

In an odd inversion of the situation though, now that LTY is back in the water I’ve moved to a beautiful new breakfast spot that is ashore.  As you may recall from many previous posts, even though I was out of the water and “on the hard” in the yard, I had this great little “tree fort” on the aft deck because I had the Travel Lift put Learnativity stern first into the beautiful big trees surrounding the work yard of the marina.  We faced East and so Ruby and I sat out there each morning and enjoyed watching the rising sun surrounded by flowering tree branches, birds and bees.  Now that Learnativity is back in the water, you can see in the photo here that we have another fabulous new spot to enjoy each sunrise and have our breakfast out on the grassy area in front of Learnativity under the palm trees.  This is facing SE so we get a whole new view out the channel and across to the many Mamanuka islands as they pop into view with the rising sun each morning.  Ruby gives this spot a four paws rating as she gets to frolic in the grass each morning doing her running wild in circles routine and greeting everyone as the yard slowly comes alive with other cruisers and workers.  And so as strange as it may seem, though all quite fitting for me, when I was on the hard I had breakfast onboard and now that I’m back in the water I’m having it ashore!  It is a pretty great life for both of us and I take a few minutes each morning as I sit in this idyllic spot to remind myself just how fortunate and charmed a life I lead.

Once breakfast is done and we are sure the sun is rising well it is back to Learnativity to work towards the next milestone which is getting her seaworthy and setting off on our first voyage with all these new changes and paint job.  Having literally removed every single thing that wasn’t welded on it is truly one of the world’s larges jig saw puzzles so I am now hard at work putting her all back together again! 

The past few days I’ve been working mostly on reinstalling all the hatches in the deck.  As part of the renovation I added three large new hatches, two which are over 2 feet square in the ceiling of the salon and one that is above the galley table.  As you can imagine from this shot the addition of all these new new hatches have opened up the boat tremendously with so much more light and fresh air.  Last night I already enjoyed the fresh breeze flowing through the boat with this added new air flow. 

 

I actually bought these new hatches long before I left San Francisco over four years ago so I’ve been looking forward to getting them installed every since and their time finally arrived!  I graduated with an honours degree from the "No project left unstarted” university but I DO get them all done eventually!   And of course everything is being closely supervised by Commodore Ruby!

 

Each hatch takes me over four hours to install as I am also taking the opportunity to redo all the ceiling and trim on the inside of the hatch openings and the hatches have to be all rebedded using 3M 5200 sealant /adhesive to make them completely waterproof and able to withstand another 20 years of surging seawater when we are underway in heavy seas.  The 5200 is wonderful stuff in terms of how well it sticks, seals and glues everything together but it is also called “devil’s glue” for a very good reason as it sticks to EVERYTHING and is soon coating your hands, tools and anything within a few feet of where you are applying it.  All worth the effort but it takes me almost an hour to carefully mold the 5200 around each hatch frame and then clean up the surrounding deck area, tools and myself before it sets up.  There are eight hatches in total now and I’ve got five of them installed and should be able to finish the last three today (Monday here), depending on what else comes up during the day to distract my ADD riddled little brain. 

 

Once the hatches are all done I’ll start on the other big job which his putting in the new glass in the salon windows.  These are the last remaining areas that are still covered in black plastic and masking tape and removing that will be a wonderful treat as I finally get light back into the salon and inside the boat and have my views back again. 

So I still have a LOT of work to do but as you can see from these two before and after pictures it has come a LONG way already and I’ll keep you posted as the progresses continues.  Thanks again for joining me on this latest grand adventure in life, love and learning.

LTY Weekend Update: March 10, 2012

Another busy week here in Vuda Point Marina on the big renovation of the good ship Learnativity as we finished all the prep work for the topsides of the hull (waterline up to the deck) and started in on the preparation of the deck surfaces for their upcoming coats of glossy white and then anti skid paint.

The topsides are the most visible part of the boat for those ashore or when you are looking at her from the water so we have been working hard to get those surfaces as smooth and flat as possible.  This is especially important as I’m going to change the colour from white to dark blue and as you would know from looking at black or dark colour cars the darker colours show every little imperfection and ripple.  Of course Learnativity is a 20 year old steel boat so I’m not looking for perfection and what the crew from Baobab Marine and I have settled on is that if we can feel it with our hands we remove it, which would be small dents, dings and hollows.  We won’t be able to fully remove the larger scale waves in the steel plate surfaces but Learnativity was so well built originally that most people mistake it for a fiberglass boat because the steel surfaces are so smoothly curved.  Most steel boats are built with what are called “chines” which are hard edges that result from building the boat with straight sections of steel plate and forming the curves for the hull by creating these faceted surfaces.  But Learnativity was built by cold forming the 6mm steel plate over top of the ribs and stringers built up to create the shape of the hull and welding the plate in place as it was bent around these curved ribs.  You may recall seeing how we did the same thing a few weeks ago when we welded in all the new steel sections in the undersides of the hull for added strength and to replace some rusted sections.  So the last month or so has been a recurring cycle of priming, filling and sanding the hull with long sanding boards and orbital sanders to get the surfaces all smooth and flat.  That’s all behind us now and these surfaces are all ready for the final spraying of the dark “Aristo” blue polyurethane paint.  We are hoping to do that on Tuesday as the weather looks good that day with no rain and we will use Monday to mask off the bottom of the hull and the decks to protect them from all the blue overspray and do the last fine inspection for any small bits we might have missed.  You can try to imagine how big the surface area of a 52’ boat is and we have been over every square millimeter of that surface many, many times now.

I also spent quite a bit of time figuring out just what colour blue I wanted to have.  You don’t realize how many shades of blue, or any colour, there are until you start to look closely.  I had a good set of paint chips from the paint company to choose from and they were very handy as they had a hole drilled in the middle of each one which let me put it up against another boat or object that was painted blue and easily see how close or far it was from the paint chip colour.  So I spent several days wondering around the yard looking for every bit of blue paint I could find on other boats or tarps or stripes.  I wanted to have a blue that looked blue at any time, in strong sunlight and shade and so I didn’t want to have that really dark Navy blue that often looks black yet neither did I want something too light or “baby blue”.  Ahh, the troubled life I lead!  Finally settled on one paint chip and had the factory mix up just one liter of it and send it to us so we could paint a small test patch and see what it really looked like.  as you would know from painting at home colours look so different when they are on a large surface than on the paint chip in the store.  I thought we would have to go through a few rounds to adjust a bit darker or lighter but I was delighted when the test patch up on deck as you can see here in the photo, turned out to be just what I wanted.  Like Goldilocks and the three bears, it wasn’t too dark, not too light, it was just right!  The factory quickly mixed up the whole batch and all 20 liters of it arrived on Friday.  Now we just need a day with no rain next week and the hull will make its transformation to beautiful Aristo Blue.

With the hull all ready for final top coats our attention turned to the decks and as you can see in the photos here we are making good progress as we do the final stages of the paint, fill, sand cycles up here.  The deck is quite a bit more work and slower than those expanses of long flat steel on the hull as it is almost nothing but nooks and crannies where all the life line stanchions attach to the deck for example and all the areas around the hatches, fittings, tracks, windows and the like.  However if you compare these photos to the ones from last month you can see how far things have come.  The white is the primer/filler paint that was sprayed on a few weeks ago after we had finished all the major filling, grinding, welding and sand blasting and covered all the base primer that was that reddish brown colour.  The green you see in these pictures is the paste epoxy filler that is mixed up to the consistency of peanut butter, spread on with putty knives and fingers and then sanded down once hard. 

You can see that things are turning out so well because Commodore Ruby continues to be on watch at all times and we are all under close supervision.

So all is well over here on this side of the world.  My mornings continue to be wonderful sunny retreats up in my tree fort on the aft deck and life continues to unfold just as it should.  More to follow after the hull is all shiny and blue so stay tuned.

LTY Weekend Update: Feb 26, 2012

Hard to believe that it is almost the end of February already but then I don’t have too much sense of time anymore with my current lifestyle and one of its many benefits. As they/we say here in Fiji “ne senga ne lenga” which translates into “don’t worry, be happy” and is truly a part of the culture, attitudes and way of life here in Fiji.  I can’t articulate it well but have come to understand it now after living here for almost a year in total between my two different times here and especially these past few months from working so closely with so many Fijians.  It has truly been one of the great gifts of my time here and a big bonus for doing all this boat work here to have the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with these happy people, to eat and joke with them and to be given this in depth glimpse into their lives and customs.  You know how it is when you work closely and spend a lot of time with someone, when you break bread with them and when you share in experiences, how you develop such a bond and understanding of people.  So far beyond anything you can get from a visit or a vacation and I’m so fortunate to have this opportunity.

The weather here has continued to cooperate as we have returned to the daily rhythm of bright sunny mornings followed by hot humid afternoons and then thunder and rain showers which typically start about 3pm or so.  Not a lot of rainfall when it does happen and so things have been staying very dry and all the work on the topsides of the hull has been progressing very well.

As you can see in these pictures it is a cycle of spraying on thick coats of primer/filler, sanding with large flat sanding pads to take down high spots and then filling in low spots with filler.  So Learnativity has lost its all white surface from the last round of spraying you saw last week and is now this beautiful patchwork of colours as we sand through the layers of primer and filler.  The goal is to have as flat and smooth a surface as possible before the dark blue colour top coat is sprayed on.  The agreement I have with the crew is that if we can feel it with our hands as we run them over the hull we fill and sand them till they are gone and if you look closely at the photo above left you can see each spot we find circled in pencil.  This also means that the large wavy irregularities in the steel plate will not be removed so it won’t be a perfect mirror flat surface but that isn’t reasonable or even possible with steel or most other hulls.  Going with dark blue does mean that any irregularities will be more easily seen, just as you’d be familiar with on car body panels and other dark glossy surfaces, but I think it will still look very distinctive and will truly be a whole new boat by the time we are done.

Once we have the topsides all painted our attention will move to the biggest job of all, the decks.  Unlike the nice large flat surfaces of the topsides, the deck is nothing but nooks and crannies that all have to be filled, fileted, sanded and primed so it takes much longer.  Then when we have this all done and sprayed with the topcoat of gloss white, I need to reinstall all the hardware, fittings, hatches, windows and rigging, as everything that wasn’t welded on was removed and now has to be replaced.  This includes chasing all threads for the new fasteners, cleaning and rebuilding all the parts and equipment before it is replaced and re-bedding and sealing it all so nothing leaks.  Then we will mask off the area around all these and apply the non skid surfaces.  All well worth it but all very time consuming and laborious

If you look closely at some of the photos here you can see that I got them to put me in a very nice spot and position such that the stern nestled right up into the tree branches.  Look a bit more closely in the photo top left with Ruby in it and you’ll see that the trees border a large grassy field and behind that is all verdant wild growth.  Birds fill the trees with song and I can still have my morning routine of breakfast out on the back deck looking out over this scene as I enjoy another sunrise and quiet start to a new day.  About as good as it can get for being “up on the hard” as we call it.  Best of all, this kind of experience will lead to an even deeper appreciation of all those times I am up on that nice new white non skid deck enjoying yet another great sundown and put a smile on my face every time I row up to Learnativity that can only be earned through this kind of effort and experience.

Not too much else to report as this work takes up all daylight hours along with many small jobs, researching and ordering new parts as well as time helping and talking with other cruisers here, trips to town for groceries and supplies and lots of writing and reading. I’d prefer to be back in the water and anchored peacefully of some remote island, but it is still a very rich and full life that I’m blessed to lead.

Stay tuned, with any luck I’ll have a nice shiny dark blue hull to show you next week.

Time to batten down the hatches! Ooops I don’t have any!

Well it’s official now (Monday morning here) that Tropical Depression TD07F has developed over Vanuatu islands which are directly west of us and the chance of this turning into a named cyclone in the next 24-48 hours is rated as moderate to high as it moves E and SE right towards the west coast of Fiji where I’m at.  You can see a 3 day forecast map here if you’d like to get a better visual of all this.

According to the latest forecast we may take a direct hit if this cyclone forms and moves more west than south.  Hopefully it will miss us and all we will see is high winds, possibly +100mph but more likely +50 and lots of rain.  So we are all busy doing our best to prep for the worst and be ready for whatever comes our way Tuesday through Thursday.  Right now it has just been raining since last night and not too heavily but the wind and rain will pick up as the week goes on.  Unfortunately all the severe rain and floods we had last weekend has everything quite saturated and the two towns north and south of me, Lautoka and Nadi are still recovering from that so it is not a good forecast for land or sea dwellers.

 

This morning we took down all the large canvas tarps that we had draped around the boat to keep all the dust from sandblasting and painting contained and were being supported by lots of bamboo poles.  These two pictures will show you the before (on a much nicer day) and after shots.

 

 

 

My big challenge is that I have all the hatches and the six side salon windows out while we are painting and so I have the tented up the top of the boat to keep most of the rain out of all these openings.  The openings are covered up with black plastic but won’t withstand these kinds of winds of course.  So for now I’m going to leave the heavy duty plastic tarps up and have spent the last few hours tying them all down so that the wind can’t get under them quite as easily.  If we do get hit with sustained high winds I’ll do my best to monitor the situation and either take them down if they are being lifted too much or the wind will do that for me and then I’ll just have try to keep the openings all covered up and the water out as best I can.

Obviously we aren’t going to get any of the exterior paint or metal work done this week with all the rain and wind so I’ll be focusing on inside jobs and keeping the boat as dry as possible.

Wish me luck!  I’ll post updates along the way as things develop and change.

Wayne

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT for the WORK BEING DONE on LEARNATIVITY: January 2012

As per my all too lengthy previous posting with my overview of the past year, I’m going to start posting a weekly update while I’m working on Learnativity here in Vuda Point Marina in Fiji.  You can cut and paste the lat/long coordinates of 17 40.858 S, 17 723.211 E into an online mapping program or Google Earth if you’d like to see just where that is.

I hesitated to post much for the past few months or the next few going forward as I’m completely consumed by the major boat jobs I have underway here in Fiji and that’s about all I’ve got to report on.  But after receiving more and more inquiries and finding more and more of you wanting details of what’s going on, I’ve decided to post these weekly updates and pictures.  You are all smart enough to read as much or as little as you’re interested in and so I’ll do my best to keep it so an overview and provide lots of pictures to make it easier and hopefully more interesting. 

A BIT ABOUT the good ship Learnativity

First I guess it would help some of you to have a little bit of background to put this all into context for you.  Learnativity is my 50’ steel monohull raised salon sailboat and full time home.  She was originally built and launched in 1994 by Kristen Yachts in Sidney BC just outside of Victoria on Vancouver Island.  I found and bought her there from the original owner in the summer of 2005, spent just over 2 years refitting and equipping her for “blue water” long distance and single handed sailing and finally cast off on this grand adventure in March 2008.  She is built like a tank, and I mean that in a VERY good way in that she is way overbuilt being all solid steel and teak and she takes me everywhere and anywhere in great safety and comfort in spite of my complete lack of boating or sailing experience prior to buying her.  I don’t come from ANY nautical background, never wanted to sail before and just got more and more curious, learned as much as I could from others (online, books, charters) and then decided as is my norm that if I was still curious the only way to really learn was experientially.  And BOY what an experience it has been! 

I am now pretty much completely self sufficient with only diesel fuel that I take on less than once a year for my main engine and generator as I supply all my own power with wind and solar (haven’t used the generator in over a year), and propane for my stove.  I am otherwise self contained and self reliant as I do things like make all my own water with the water maker I installed, look after all my navigation (with the assistance of net connections via Wi-Fi and sat phone), look after all my own sewage, cook all my own meals and am a floating workshop and tool store to look after all the many repairs and maintenance it takes to keep such a floating “city” up and running, and to it all while at sea often thousands of miles from any land, let alone stores or services.

Over the past four years we have sailed over 25 thousand nautical miles and made it down the west coast of north, central and south Americas, across the Pacific with stops at countless and mostly remote islands and now back for a second time to Fiji.  While she is in great condition overall, the exterior being all steel was vividly showing signs of the wear and tear of so many miles and being in such salty tropical humid conditions.  It is not just a great song but an altruism that “rust never sleeps” and so I had been fighting a loosing battle trying to keep the rust at bay all by myself and with so many other jobs that keep filling up the “must do” list on a live aboard sail boat.  So I had been figuring out where and when to take on the major task of getting rid of all the rust and repainting all the steel. 

I was thinking I would need to go back to New Zealand or Australia where they have such good marine work facilities and craftsmen but as is the norm in my charmed life, I serendipitously discovering last year that there was a marine company here in Fiji, Baobab Marine that does very good paint and boat work.  After talking with fellow cruisers who had work done by Baobab Marine, inspecting boats they had painted over the past 10 years and meeting with the head foreman,I decided this was the perfect place to roll up my sleeves, spend more time in my beloved Fiji and work with Baobab to take on the task of a 20 year repaint and renovation of Learnativity.  I had Learnativity hauled out on September 5th 2011 and put up “on the hard” on stands here at Vuda Point Marina and have been working with the great crew from Baobab Marine ever since.

The original plan involved three major paint jobs and the replacement of my bent propeller shaft which is another story in itself.  The three paint jobs were as follows:

1.  BOTTOM:  Sand blast from the water line down to the bottom of the keel, repaint with new epoxy primer, barrier coat and anti foul paint.  Although I had already done all this back in 2006 after I bought the boat, there turned out to be a problem with the zinc that was used in the epoxy primer and was continuously causing small bubbles to form between it and the anti foul bottom paint.  The only solution was to take it all off down to bare metal and start over again so that is what we are doing.

 

2.  TOPSIDES:  This is the sides of the hull from the waterline up to the deck.  The paint itself was holding up well and only a few dings from the past 18 years of use but was loosing it shine and needed to be repainted.  The plan was (changed recently as I’ll cover in the updates) to just sand down and fill the chips and dings that had happened, repair the “tsunami souvenir” I had from the great tsunami of 2009 in American Samoa that we lived through. (3 part fully detailed story here on the Learnativity blog if you missed that adventure!) and then repaint the topsides with new polyurethane paint and trim.  I also decided that I’d take this opportunity to change the colour of the hull from white to Royal Blue as I’ve always like the looks of dark hulled boats and thought this would make it seem like a truly new boat after all this work.

3.  DECKS:  This is all the horizontal surfaces for the most part that includes not only the deck that you walk on but also the cockpit, and dodger (hard cover over the cockpit) or pilot house as it is sometimes referred to.  It is the largest job of the three by far as literally everything that isn’t welded on has to be removed so we can remove every bit of rust by sand blasting, grinding or needle gunning.  Then it all gets treated with metal prep, epoxy primer, and then lots of filling and priming to fair in all the surfaces.  We will then paint all of that gloss white and then mask off and spray all the areas you actually walk on with anti skid by mixing in some special sand like material so that all these surfaces are a bit like sand paper and grip your feet well when everything is wet and at angles as you sail.

 

All three of these jobs involve different equipment and different people helping out so it is quite literally a three ring circus for the last few months as work proceeds on all three at the same time.  However the people working with me are great, very conscientious, learn well and are a treat to work with and get to know.  They are both native Fijians and Fijian Indians who make up almost 40 percent of the current population of just under one million people.  They range from young men in the 20’s to more experienced men in the 40’s and after five months now we have gotten to know each other very well and this has added to my love of Fiji and its people.  They truly embody the saying they have here of “ne senga ne lenga” which essentially means “Don’t worry; be happy” as they are always laughing and singing while they work, always in great spirit and take on whatever new challenges and work that comes along.

There’s a HOLE in my boat!!!

The biggest new challenge that has come up so far has been the discovery of some severe rusting in the bottom of the hull that have eaten all the way through the hull in two spots, one at the bow and one just behind where the propeller shaft exits.  I’m still not quite sure what has caused this but it appears to be a problem from when the boat was first built in that it is a combination of some drain holes in the ribs not being large enough and so over the past 18 years they have clogged up with debris and rust and trapped any water that entered or formed from condensation, and the paint applied to these interior steel surfaces was not applied to clean surfaces or has otherwise broken down.  These are in remote, essentially impossible to see areas under some of the floors and just off either side of the center line of the hull that is left open (not coated with foam as is the rest of the hull) so that it forms a bilge drain channel that flows into the lowest sections where the bilge pumps take care of the water.  A steel boat rusts from the INSIDE out as it is relatively easy to keep the outside covered with paint and anti fouling coatings and is easy to see and inspect the whole surface.  But inside, and especially with a custom built boat like Learnativity, there are a few spots along the centerline that you just can’t get at or see because the flooring and equipment is covering them and these spaces are only a few inches deep at best.  I had always kept a close eye on the 95% of this exposed steel areas of the bilge and while there was some surface rust it was nothing to be concerned about and the plate steel is very thick.  For reasons I still don’t fully understand though there were these spots that somehow allowed the rust to start to form and over the years had turned into that layered flakes of rust and especially in these tropical climates these areas never dry out as the water is wicked in between all these fine layers of rust and it just stays “alive” and eating away at the steel beneath, forming more layers, trapping more moisture.

This discovery of such seemingly random areas that had actually rusted through the entire hull came as quite a shock as you might imagine and so upon confirming that the rust was this severe in these two sections I cut my Europe trip short and came back to Fiji last month to look things over and figure out a solution.  I’ll cover more of that in the weekly updates to follow.  The good news about steel is that it is relatively easy to repair and repair well by simply cutting out all the rusted steel and welding in new panels, so that is what we are doing.

Weather is the other major factor in all this work as it is the rainy season here in Fiji (their summer) and lasts through about March or April.  As almost all the work is outside and involves things like welding, sanding and painting, we can’t work too well in the rain but so far (knock on wood/steel) while it does rain pretty much every day, the pattern is that it doesn’t start till the late afternoon or evening and so it is dry and hot during the work day.  And I do mean HOT!  Usually over 35c/100F and with all the rain it is very humid so you sweat just sitting and it just pours off you as you exert yourself with the very physical nature of most of the work with sanding and grinding.  However great progress is being made and that feels great!  For all of you who have asked me about my “fitness program” and why I’m in such good shape, now you know; just do lots of physical labour in a sauna, drink lots of water, eat lots of fresh produce.  Sure is working well for me!! 

Well, hopefully that will have given those of you who are interested some background into the work I’m in the midst of what what’s keeping me busy of late.  As those of you who know me well will understand I’m very happy in these situations as I love working with my hands, will take hot over cold weather ANY day and it feels great to see such daily progress towards having an even more solid, prettier and shinier Learnativity to continue wandering and pondering the world one nautical smile at a time!!