This morning John brought me the repaired manifold Whangarei.

By using a highly heat-resistant epoxy for bonding and applying an additional layer of epoxy at the junction of the aluminum manifold and brass filler neck, the leak was effectively sealed. With a proper manufacturing process, the leak could have been prevented from occurring in the first place.

John did an excellent job! Thanks John!

Now, all systems are running on board the way they should.

Tomorrow morning, I have to tidy a few things up and prepare the boat for departure. By noon I want cast off for Marsden Cove Marina for refuelling and outbound clearance.

Diesel-John who worked on the closing of leak and gave me 2 calls today.

The first one was the information that he found the route cause of the leak. The filler neck was not properly sealed with high temperature epoxy and through the gaps he identified, the coolant was leaking out of the manifold. This was caused by a too poor manufacturing process and/or an insufficient quality control.

John also send me image which shows the problem very nicely. I’ll send an email to Onan NZ and ask for pay back due to the poor quality. However I expect they will only replace the part. For this I need to stay at least 6 month longer in in NZ…. Get lost Onan.

The second message I became was that he completed the sealing and will bring tomorrow morning the repaired manifold to Whangarei marina.

I’m looking forward like hell to his call tomorrow morning.

I hope I can reinstall in an hour to two and run a test….

This morning I went to get a new lid for the cooled manifold of the genset hoping it will stop the leakage on top of the manifold. Once I had this new lid attached, I saw that the coolant leaks out between the aluminum diecast and the brass made filler neck.

This is the worst I could imagine!
The part is brand new with a maximal running time of 5 h. It’s should be good for at least 1000 h. Extremely poor quality.

Calling Onan NZ I was told they ordered one for another customer and are waiting since 3 month already. I only can repeat what I wrote already several times before. Never, ever an Onan or Cummins generator!!!
It appears to me that they don’t understand that generators are needed for daily life; not only on boats.

Fortunately there is Diesel-John, the diesel engine specialist I know. I called him and explained the situation. He immediately understood the situation and had an idea on how to fix it. To make sure his idea is right, he called another diesel engine specialist to verify his idea. Both have the same idea. The manifold-filter neck area needs to be heated to loosen the epoxy bond, then while it is soft, pull the filler neck out, clean all, and bond it in back again.

So I remove the manifold – I’m an expert on this on the meantime – and Lou, the admin lady from Cove Boatworks, picked up the part.

Now I keep fingers crossed that John can fix it tomorrow and I can get it back the day after tomorrow.

In respect to departing from NZ I get another 3 – 4 days delay. The wind looks then pretty good to sail north towards the Minerva Reef, Tonga… A small consolation for the problem that occurred.

Right now I just wait for John’s call that the leak is closed…

I was considering all things to be done before leaving NZ for good and wind conditions.

The wind is not very good to sail to Bay of Islands Marina (BOI). We would need to leave very early from here while it is still dark. And then would be forced to sail in very week winds or even be forced to use the engines over night.

At the end I decided not to go to the BOI in Opua but stay 2 days longer in Whangarei.

Tanya, who has a clinic close to BOI gives a great help by picking up the parcels, which where sent to BOI. Thus, the need to sail to BOI is gone.

Now we will leave from here in the late morning on Wednesday, go down the Hātea River into Marsden Cove Marina, refuel, stay over night at the Q-dock, make outbound clearance in Marsden Cove Marina and take of immediately thereafter and head out to Minerva Reef. The wind looks much better for this.

Monday and Tuesday I’ll do some boat jobs.

Preparations for departure are going on well. If all runs fine today and the wind forecast is good, we will depart tomorrow very early morning from Whangarei.

Outbound clearance documents are already prepared for the procedure in Bay of Islands Marina in Opua.

It’s really cold and humid now here on the North Island of NZ. Time to sail north. We just need a back of a low pressure system. This will decide on the day for the outbound clearance.

Payment for the fees in the Whangarei Marina is discussed. They will send the bill by email and I can make a transfer from my account Germany. I really appreciate the trust they have in me.

Please keep fingers crossed for good winds.

We worked most of yesterday again on storing provisions. On all cans we wrote the content and the date, removed the paper around, and washed them in soapy water.

Unfortunately the content of about half of the can was written with an Eding 330 permanent marker pen which turned out to be not permanent on the cans. Fortunately my OBM brought me last year also Eding 3300 marker pens which stick nicely on the metal of the cans. A lesson learned.

Joe had a good idea of what she wants to be stored in the storage cabinet of the inner side in the PRT hull. Thus we arranged accordingly.

The bilge on STB for canned food is well re-organized and really full.

Today I need to get 3 boxes to store the remaining food and 6 additional 5-l water bottles for the rest. I hope rain stops in the morning; a huge rain front passed over NZ.

Grace – Tanya’s youngest daughter, who was considered to join us on the 2 – 3 day sail to Opua in the Bay of Islands unfortunately fell sick. I wish her all the best.

This morning I started early.
First I worked for a while on the food we bought yesterday. Then I took off to get my gas bottle tested. Found the shop pretty quickly. To make it short the test engineer, a charming lady, told me they can’t test it because I need 4 different NZ documents before she is allowed to test the bottle. “Have a nice day” I said, and while we all had a good laugh I took my bottle and left.

Now I will ask around for a fuel station here in Whangarei which re-fills my bottle just as it was done before in the Marsden Cove area.

Worst case I have to rent a car and drive down to Marsden Cove.

Shopping canned vegetables in NZ turned out not to easy. Could not get mic l canned mix vegetable, sliced carrots, sliced mushrooms not being prepared with a sauce. I could get diced red beets, chopped bamboo, green asparagus, and water chestnuts.

The shelves are full of fully prepared meals. Open the can, put it on a stove, eat, don’t all for a good taste… Fortunately, I’m very lucky having met ladies and a man who cook very delicious meals from fresh vegetables.

My new cutting board made from 30 mm thick boat plastic arrived this morning. Now, we only need to catch the fishes. To eviscerate fishes I want to use this board because it’s easier to clean than my wooden board, which is also the outside step into the salon. One checkmark more!

Next, I have to continue with storing the food we bought.

More tonight.

It was a major task yesterday to prepare the shopping list. However, today it was a 7 hours action from going to Pack’n’Save until shopping carts were returned and the cockpit enclosure set-up.

We had 2 big shopping carts inside the shop. At the checkout we repacked into 3 carts.

The cashier turned out to be a lady from Nara in Japan. It was to be seen that she liked the chance to speak a bit of Japanese. She packed the registered goods pretty well into the carts.

The supervisor was a lady from Australia but originally from the Philippines. She also was happy when I told her that I’ve good friends in the Philippines. She offered us to leave one cart with her until we pushed two to the marina.

Lucky I could manage to push two carts and Joe took the third one.

When we reached the marina gate, we needed to go down the gangway to the floating pier. Lucky as we are, it was almost the lowest water of low tide thus the gangway was steepest.

We tide a morning line at a cart, turned it once around a round element of the fence. Joe eased this line and I steered the cart down. Three times the same and all carts where on the floating pier.

When we arrived at MaRe Joe first fix some quick open-faced sandwiches. Gosh it felt good getting something into the rumbling stomach.

Then we moved all goods into the salon and the cockpit, returned the carts. Thanking again the friendly supervisor (the cashier was already off duty), we walked back.

Joe prepared the dinner while I did some remaining work.

Another checkmark on the to-do list until departure.

The new GA200 booster GPS antennae for the Axiom chartplotter is built in and it works.

I started early in the morning because the weather did not follow the forecast, which said it’s will rain all day. Bright sunshine in the early morning hours, followed by rain showers, light and heavy ones and no rain periods in between. During rain showers in the morning I worked on my second task of the day. Installation of an auxiliary alarm. I need this, because I don’t hear so well anymore and thus don’t hear the normal alarms.

This auxiliary alarm is pretty noisy. 85dB says the spec sheet. I found a place and a way to mount it so I can hear all alarms traveling through the network, this outside and inside. Will have to do some tests to get the right volume inside the salon. Quite some work left for tomorrow.

…to open the 10 mm hole of the old GPS antennae mounting stud to 16 mm in 4 mm marine grade GPS antennae bar. Now it’s ready for mounting the new GPS antennae.

I prepared a bunch of other things already and tomorrow I want to finally install the new GA200 antennae.

I also want to connect the auxiliary alarm to hear alarms of the Raymarine network better. Then a big step of the final preparations is done.

Joe already established a list a food still on board, thus creating the shopping list should not take to long.

The to-do list is getting shorter.