Preparing for Passage

One of the definitions of sailboat cruising is “fixing your boat in exotic locations”.  It’s true, to enjoy the cruising lifestyle, you need to be adept at maintaining your floating home and fixing the things that are bound to break along the way.  Sadly, this is has become even more true for us.  Since the attempted start of our full-time cruising life at the end of 2019, we’ve only managed to accomplish one passage – from Dubai to India. Credit where credit’s due – that’s no mean feat! COVID has then meant we kept Aroha in Kochi International Marina for two years (it’s not as grand as it sounds!) and only now are we getting Aroha ready to sail again.  It feels like we’re missing the idyllic part of cruising, of bobbing off beautiful and remote beaches without a care in the world!

We’d drafted a list of jobs about a month prior to flying back, prioritising particularly important ones that would be “showstoppers” if we didn’t sort them out, right down to “nice to complete if we can” level.  The photo in the header is our suitcase load of boat jobs – many of them have travelled from Aotearoa to UK and back to India!  In the case of the AIS unit (Automatic Identification System for collision avoidance), it’s travelled from India to NZ to UK to NZ to UK to India!  Our friend Peter flies in tomorrow to join us on this upcoming leg to Thailand, so there have even been a few items that have crept onto his packing list for last minute jobs. 

Helen and I have split boat jobs between ourselves for a long time.  We often consult each other, but it’s easier if each job has a “responsible” person attached to it.  Generally, I look after the mechanical and plumbing ones, and Helen the tech and domestic.  We knew that Aroha would quickly become a mess once we started doing jobs, so we decided to keep our lives simple by checking into the marina hotel for the first few nights.  This allowed us to conquer some of the bigger, more disruptive jobs, and sort out the marine air-conditioning before moving back on board.  Our first day here had us rise from our bed at about noon, having arrived at the hotel at about 5am.  Initial impressions were that Aroha looked in better condition than expected.  After a day or two we slipped into a comfortable routine, including making sure we took a break for lunch, and wrapping up the day with a Kingfisher beer in the hotel bar.  I suspect that maybe we didn’t always look like the most sociable bar patrons, usually on our phones chasing up a few loose ends, but needing the time to decompress after anther busy day.  We realised early on that we need to remember to celebrate the wins, and the evening beer was a simple way of patting ourselves on the back, as well as thinking ahead to the next jobs.

The hotel is quite simple – the hotel and golf course grounds were our lockdown world for five months back in 2020 so it has an air of familiarity.  Likewise, we feel like we know our way around Kochi town and the myriad of shops.  It seems like you can’t just go to one big shop for all your marine needs, so any trip out inevitably includes multiple stops.

At times it’s felt overwhelming, like we weren’t making forward progress.  But sure enough we started to get through some of the big ones and each day we feel more prepared for the long passage ahead.  Some, like servicing the engine, seemed to develop a life of their own.  I usually service the marine diesel myself but decided to call in the experts this time.  But before that, I had to polish the diesel (run it through a special fine filter a couple of times), replace the corroded exhaust waterlock and a section of exhaust hose, and scuba dive under Aroha to clean the propeller and cooling water intakes.

Other jobs, that should have been easy had me sitting cross legged on the bathroom floor for most of an afternoon.  Servicing the toilet isn’t as gross as you may imagine.  I guess you get used to it, but it’s mainly water, and the only real “deposits” accumulating inside the pump is a calcium silicate build up, which forms when urine reacts with sea water.  When we were living on board during lockdown, I got in the habit of doing a quick overhaul each week – I had it down to about 15 leisurely minutes.  Sure enough, replacing all the wearable parts with a service kit took about thirty minutes…. then another two hours to find and reseat a problematic leaky O ring.

Likewise, servicing the shower drain pump shouldn’t take too long – just take the pump apart and replace the bits one by one.  It was only after high-fiving Helen and patting myself on the back for a job well done, that I was cleaning off the old parts (I keep them as back up parts) that I noticed that there was an extra piece that should have been fitted but I’d missed it.  So, back into the tiny bathroom for another 45 minutes cross legged….  I could barely walk after.

One of Helen’s big ones was reinstalling our AIS.  We’d noticed it wasn’t working during the 2020 lockdown, so she sent it back to the manufacturers in the UK who sent back a replacement unit. There was a fair amount of cursing coming from the cramped workspace under the chart table as she reconnected the 15 or so cables, but happily it booted up and worked. Helen’s back took a few days more to recover! We’ve got used to waking up feeling aching muscles that we haven’t used for a while! We were not so lucky with the auto pilot.  This piece of kit steers for us and it is pretty much vital for long passages.  The control head has died, and even though we can still operate it using the unit’s remote control, we should have a last-minute replacement installed before we leave. The new unit is currently sitting in Mumbai waiting for customs clearance after getting it sent across from Dubai so looks like this one is going to be cutting it fine.

Our dinghy has been doing a rather sad impersonation of a hovercraft – too long in the Middle East sun has destroyed the glue and some of the seams have come apart.  I’d brought back a couple of pots of the special repair glue and Peter’s bringing some larger hypalon fabric patches tomorrow, so hopefully that’s the last of the big jobs.

We still have a few more things to do before we can clear out of India next week and sail to Thailand, but our preparation and hard work look to have paid off.

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