Circumnavigation without power

The Repowering Project: Days 11&12 (weekend)

We were only circumnavigating the marina, not the world, but it was still a challenge, made much easier because we had three real circumnavigators assisting: Rolf and Deborah from Northern Light, Horacio and Lisa from Nada and Dave Cerutty, a local who made his round trip some years back. The decision to swap the engines over with the boat in the water meant that we had to get it out of the pen, right round the marina and into the cradle for the slip without power. Typically, everyone came to help. Danny the bosun, Danny's dad Ridley and a couple of others were in the workboat. Rolf and Horacio (whom Rolf and Deborah already knew from sailing in South America) were in a big inflatable with 40hp. Deborah, Horacio's wife Lisa, friend Brian and son Didi were aboard Nahani with the captain and mate, and Dave, Bill and John were at the wharf by the slip to help us pull in to the wharf, and then manoevre her round the corner and into the slip cradle.

Getting her out of the pen was tricky as the wind was blowing her in and Danny had to wait for a lull to get the workboat into the appropriate position. Another helpful couple of passers-by thoughtfully unhooked the bridle from the anchor as we came out. The hardest part was getting her turned around and out past the rocks, and we had one anxious moment when she drifted sideways back toward the stern of an elegant little fibreglass number called Wombat, but Deborah was there with a big ball fender to hold us off while Rolf pushed in the inflatable and the workboat slowly pulled us round. The captain did a first class job of steering, the mate had almost nothing to do but to throw lines to tow boats and helpers on the wharf at critical moments. What was particularly notable was that despite the fact that we had over a dozen helpers, all of them were so experienced that there was hardly any problem with who was giving orders to whom - everyone just did what needed doing.

So by midday Sunday Nahani was safely up on the hard stand in her cradle. On Saturday the engineer had found someone to make up starter cables, and on Sunday afternoon our priority was to get the prop off the shaft ready to send back to Melbourne to have larger blades fitted. We got all but the base off, which meant we could work on getting the old blades nice and clean. We'll borrow a "puller" from Keith to get the base off the prop and can then send it all on Monday.