Haul Out

Paul and I had Kabuki hauled out at Riverside Drive Marina here in Whangarei on the 30th September. We had a list of things that needed doing, check the rudder pintals and gudgeons for play, fix a bent bow roller, cetol our teak caprails etc, remove some dodgy bogging and replace with epoxy filler etc, etc, etc. Our plan was to be out for 4 weeks, spring is not the best time for doing a haulout though, as the weather can be pretty changeable. This year we were lucky, we had a series of 6 reasonably fine days to do the painting and filling. The other jobs were not so weather dependent, removal of the rudder being the big one.

We had no real idea how heavy the rudder was going to be when detached it from the boat, so fortunately we conned a friend into helping out. Thank goodness we did, the rudder would have

been about 90-100 kg, the lads (Paul and Womble) bravely put it on our little trailer for a trip home to our carport. The top gudgeon (see photo above taken after Paul had filled the hole with epoxy) on Kabuki had received some wear over the years, from the bronze pintal, also the top bronze pintal had worn as well (see photo right). Paul proceeded to fix the gudgeon using a length of Aluminium pipe the same diameter as the pintal, he applied grease to the area of the pipe that would be inside the gudgeon, wrapped over that in black electrical tape, slid it into the gudgeon with bluetack/plasticine placed around the base to stop the epoxy running out and hold the whole lot in place. He then poured epoxy resin into the resulting gaps and left it to set. When set he cut the tape off the pipe where it had not been greased and slid the tube out, the tape peeled off the epoxy without to much bother. We then had a new pintal made out of bronze (pretty aye).

The next step was putting the rudder back on the old girl, we had tried

to dry it out a little before we did this, but with not much success.

Womble our old mate was called on again for the re-install, Paul used a block and tackle hung from some trestle type scaffolding beside the boat. I lifted the rudder with the block while Paul and Womble guided, pushed, tilted and jiggled the rudder into place. It went like clockwork, we did a dry run fit first before the final installation. See the photo of the boys with the set up for the rudder lifter ( Occupational Safety & Health may have a bit to say about it).

So after that task was done, morning tea was called for, and then on with the other projects. More on them later.