Fortnight with Maia

After two weeks in our new home, much has happened, unfortunately it isn't very interesting. The first couple days we did a complete inventory of everything on the boat, started organizing how we would live in our new space, bought bedding, utensils, food and generally set up house. We also had to select some power tools (grinder, sander, drill), buy supplies for the haul out and make a reasonable effort to get a decent price on all of these items among the seven different sources we found. Needless to say we didn't really complete everything. Two days later I started the engine for the first time and we motored over to the travel lift. The haul out proved to be the long(7 days) expensive and stressful. We had to get some welding done on the deck, the bow needed re-fairing, we needed to deal with the rust on the deck, and this on top of the regular job of scraping and re-painting the bottom. We ended up hiring some help for the welding and the fairing on the bow. Even with that, we had pressure from the yard to complete the job. We were worried about the drying time for the paint, and rains were coming in. At the end of every day, we were back shopping for more items to complete the work. The whole job was not too bad in the boating world, but each of the jobs turned out to go deeper than expected, and cost more in labor and materials. Ouch. Anyway, we are glad it is over.

It was the first haul out for Kavika (David), who dove right in, getting thoroughly covered in blue bottom paint, and working long hours to get the job done. Evvy put a lot of sand paper to steel, and Craig was trying to keep all the balls in the in the air to finish on time.

It was an experience living in the boat suspended in the air. We did not have water, nor could we dump water from the boat, so we were more like camping out. We breathed a large sigh of relief when we completed the jobs on time and the boat splashed down in the water again.

There is quite a list remaining to get Maia sailing out to sea. The first is getting all the documents to get a New Zealand built boat registered in Australia to United States citizens. We are involving bureaucracies from all three countries, it looks like it is working. We are still figuring out how all the systems work from the engine to electrical, plumbing, and lines. We have obtained second hand chain for the anchor, and traded for charts both physical and electrical, ordered a new main sail, new batteries, we have roughed out a bimini structure and tomorrow we will order a bimini top. It has been busy days and nights we have found a great group of cruisers here in the marina next door whose advice and assistance has been truly invaluable.

Needless to say, the blog has suffered, but we hear the cries for more. Evvy is about to post a whole raft of pictures, which we will annotate as we are able. Look forward to catching up with everyone. Keep the comments coming!

Maia crew