JasonRose.com

Jan
03
2012

Whangarei, NZ Dec 2011

Bodhran on a beautiful southern hemisphere Christmas Eve Eve:

It’s raining again here in Whanga-rain New Zealand (an apt name coined by my friend Camila). In fact it’s rained every day for over a week now. A damned annoying state of affairs if you’re trying to get any work done sitting in a boat yard. It’s been a month now since I’ve been back on Bodhran and despite the weather, things are going well. I spent a week and a half in Town Basin where I met up with some old friends and met a number of this year’s crop of Pacific crossing cruisers. It took a few days to get the boat cleaned up, and then sat and waited for over a week before I could schedule a haulout to get started on this years list of projects that I wanted to tackle. In the meantime, there was much wandering around Mount Parihaka and a big trek to the other side to explore the Abbey Caves.

Town Basin Marina, where Bodhran’s been moored for the last 9 months

Me atop Mt Parihaka above Whangarei

Middle Cave, cave 2 or the 3 Abbey Caves:

All that time spent in Town Basin wouldn’t have been much better spent in the boat yard. As it was raining pretty much all that time as well. La Nina in New Zealand seems to bring an unusual amount of rain. This year’s phenomenon is supposedly weaker than last years, so hopefully it won’t bring any full fledged cyclones, but I just say through the weakened remains of one over the last few days.

I hauled out on December 16th at Dockland 5 boatyard a little closer to town than the Norsand yard where I hauled 2 years ago. They’re a bit more expensive, but the little things that Charlie and Doug take care of here really make it as good an experience and you could hope for while living in a construction area. Immediately after pressure washing my boat, Doug went ahead and threw a 5000 watt transformer and long power cord on board so that I could use all my American 110volt tools. When he put up the ladder, he actually put a floor mat underneath it so that I wouldn’t track all sorts of yard dirt on board. The pièce de résistance came just before Christmas when Charlie fired up his forklift and placed a little shop for me to use outfitted with a work bench and windows right under Bodhran’s bow. The bathrooms/laundry is just just a few boats away and they’ve probably got the best internet connection that I’ve used in New Zealand. All in all, it’s the best boatyard setup I’ve ever had.

Bodhran being hauled out at Dockland 5:

My workspace in Dockland 5:

Twilight in the boatyard:

I passed the holidays without much fanfare this year. I spent Christmas Eve with Neil and his daughter Corie on Rutea along with a crowd of other American cruisers who’d crossed the Pacific this year. It was a great time, but I didn’t cut off work until about 5pm. Christmas Day and New Years were both spent working until late and then getting together for beers with Mike, an Kiwi/Aussie (he’s not quite sure which) who’s building a 15 meter steel Bruce Robert’s cutter.

I didn’t get any pics of Christmas, but here’s Rutea on an beautiful Christmas Eve in Town Basin:

So the projects slowly keep rolling on here. I’ve got the port windows plugged, glassed over, faired and ready for paint before I install the new smaller ports. The thru-hull fittings have all been replaced. I removed the trim piece that covers the hull to deck joint, and have re-caulked the joint around most of the boat. I’ve got the engine out and have stuck trying to get my prop off. I hope to replace my cutlass bearing and shaft seal as well as the motor mounts before the engine goes back in. I’ve got a new bulkhead glassed in at the foot of the vberth to expand the upper chain locker so that I can use it for my primary anchor chain. I’ve glassed a new little bulkhead in the port saloon and have rebuild all the cabinetry on that side of the boat. I’m sure there’s a bunch more things that I’ve done, but after 2 weeks in the yard things are starting to blur. Most of Kiwiland shuts down the week before Christmas and doesn’t come back to life until a week after New Years, so I’ve been having a hard time getting parts. Hopefully the next week will see an end to the rain and the re-emergence of the Kiwi economy and I can get out of here before the month’s end.

Here’s the point on the cap rail that’s been leaking over the years:

Here’s the port side windows all glassed over waiting to be faired

Here’s the new mini bulkhead on the port side which will hopefully help reduce the pressure on the hull to deck joint around the chainplates:

And here’s the port interior all put back together waiting on the new ports to come in:

I’ve thrown up an album here with more pics from December in Whangarei.
Here’s a quick photo album from Thanksgiving weekend:

Dec
08
2011

Back to New Zealand…..again

Reflection of the Sky Tower in one of Auckland’s high rises:

It’d been 8 long months since I’d last seen Bodhran, but my friend Amber was up from Christchurch visiting Auckland so I decided to join her and her friends Sarah and Tiddy for a few days sightseeing and hanging out before taking the trip up to Whangarei and my poor neglected boat.

We started out searching for something that I hadn’t really found yet in my previous trips to New Zealand…good food. Apparently I hadn’t been looking in the right places. The first night in town we had some fantastic tapas at a Spanish restaurant on the same block as the Sky Tower. The next morning we set out to dangle Tiddy from a bungee cord off the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Amber, Sarah and I all joined him for the walk out the bridge to the pod below the bridge deck. It was a bit silly to harness up and tether in to take a leisurely stroll out along a well railed walkway out to the middle of the bridge, but welcome back to New Zealand. It’s turning into a bit of a nanny state. Oddly enough we weren’t tethered in at the very end when we climbed the stairs up to the jump pod hmmmmmm.

Tiddy, Sarah and Amber just after Todd’s bungee jump:

All thether’d up to take a death defying walk behind that nice stout rail:

We next hopped on a ferry out to Waiheke Island, famous for it’s many vineyards and just a short trip from downtown Auckland. Amber found a spectacular bach just up a short walk up the hill from Rocky Bay. We had a quick dip and lie down on the beach before heading off to the Mudbrick Vineyard where we did a bit of tasting and had some more very tasty food. I’m normally more a red wine drinker than white, but I’ve found that I prefer the Kiwi whites to the reds and Mudbrick’s were no exception. Still I’ll be drinking most of my wine from a box during my stay here.

View from the bach on Waiheke island:

Mudbrick Vineyard:

We spent one night on the island and then went back to Auckland for a stay in a sweet condo right downtown. That day’s mission was to find a tattoo parlor for Sarah to get a little memento to take home with her. It took a bit to find the right place and we had to stop by the little convenience store with a patio for smoking hookahs out front. Not exactly a smoky den, but it was still a fine place for my first time smoking a shisha. That night we found another fantastic restaurant for some Vietnamese food. The food didn’t come cheap, but I’m officially changing my opinion on Kiwi cuisine. There are some great eats in Auckland at least.

Amber and I smoking a hookah:

View from the condo with the Sky Tower all lit up for Chistmas:

After 3 days in Auckland, I finally hopped on a bus up to Whangarei to rejoin Bodhran. I rounded the corner to the marina office and couldn’t believe that Bernardo, off Albertina, was sitting on the bench out front. I’d first met Bernardo back in Tonga in 2008. He circumnavigated New Zealand in 2009 and I thought that he was off on his way to points further West last year. It turns out that he had sailed on to Australia, but returned after being disappointed by the country and shocked by the prices. He’d already been all the way around New Zealand, but still decided to backtrack 1000 miles across the Tasman sea rather than spend the season in Australia. I’d heard about the cost of living in Australia and was a bit concerned about heading over there this year myself, but now I think that I’ve officially ruled out heading over to Oz myself. I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do. For the meantime, I’m back on Bodhran working on cleaning her up. There was mold and mildew on all the surfaces except the ones that I painted or varnished last year. I’d sprayed everything with vinegar last March before I left. I guess that that officially doesn’t work. I’ll be hauling Bodhran next week and will probably spend at least a month working on her.

More on Whangarei next blog post. Here’s some more pics from Auckland with Amber, Sarah and Tiddy:

Nov
30
2011

Thanksgiving, a pause for the cause in Hawaii and on to Auckland

It’s nice to be back in New Zealand again. Washington was getting to be a bit inhospitable for my weary bones. I stuck it out through Thanksgiving for the first time in 6 years which was well worth it. My older brother Alex and his new wife Cat put on a hell of a feast followed up on Friday with a Thankspickin celebration with Tate and Betsy making an appearance from Idaho and Ian Leonard coming up from Oregon add to the usual Ballard music making lineup. Follow that up with some great sushi courtesy of my roommate Denny at Shiku and I couldn’t have asked for a much better weekend in town, unless of course that weekend was in late September instead of late November.

One last good pickin session at the Ballard house before I took off:

My original intentions way back in February when I booked my tickets, was to spend a week on the Big Island of Hawaii with Greg and Bonnie before heading back to Kiwiland. Alas it was not meant to be. Bonnie’s down in the Gulf of Mexico straining the sea for turtles while Greg has been commissioned to build a 38 foot version of Willow for a fellow back in Ohio. So my cheap Hawaiian vacation was thwarted. Still all was not lost. I got my ticket changed to give me a 24 hour layover in Honolulu. So I found a hostel online for $25 a night only 2 blocks from the beach. Unfortunately I rolled in a little before midnight and promptly crashed out on my crinkly vinyl covered mattress, but I awoke early the next morning, drank some coffee on the beach in Waikiki as the sun came up, spent 3 hours wandering around the zoo snapping pics of everything with a pulse, hooting and howling with the gibbons, getting lost in the trance inducing, ancient gaze of Galapagos Tortoises, and almost being cuted to death by a troop of Ring Tailed Lemurs. It was really an interesting zoo with all sorts of critters you just don’t normally see in the zoos back in the mainland. I had thought about climbing to the top of Diamond Head, but there were some rain clouds a-brewin and the zoo seemed like a safer bet.

Quiet morning on Waikiki Beach

Galapagos Tortoises:

I liked the way the giraffe’s were all hiding behind the osterich

You have to be this stoic when you’ve got a big, bald, pink posterior:

I didn’t get very good shot’s of the Komodo Dragon, but this Nile Monitor Lizard turned out:

Next it was time to hit the beach and check out some very different wildlife. Last year when I was in Waikiki with Greg and Bonnie we were on the the East end, which was decidedly more up scale and less crowded than the West end where my hostel was. The beach here was vibrant and overflowing with tourists, but not in a bad way. You expect the beach in Waikiki to be overflowing with people and so instead of seeking tranquility by the water, you go to soak in the sun, watch the people learning to surf, watch the tour catamarans coming and going through the surf zones and to watch the pretty young Germans with there more liberal views on public decency. Oh yeah and you go for $3.50 happy hour Mai Ta’i at the Shorebird bar with a fabulous view overlooking it all.

The Shorebird and their $3.50 happy out Mai Ta’i special:

Probably the best beer I’m going to see on tap for a while:

I tried to hangout out at the Shorebird until it was time to catch my ride out to the airport, but alas I was nowhere near man enough to take on those tropical concoctions and I eventually had to stumble out onto the street to try and walk it off. I hadn’t thought about the time zone difference and soon passed a bar playing Monday Night Football at 4 in the afternoon. Well I thought that would be a great way to pass the rest of the day. I’d noticed a 2nd story bar near my hostel that had looked nice, so I decided to ramble the rest of the way down the strip and see if they had the game on. It turns out that they did had the game on, so I settled into another Mai Ta’i, a plate of fries and started watching the game. It took a good 15 minutes for me to put together the fact that the two very good looking male bartenders were wearing incredibly tight shirts that probably required assistance to don and that there wasn’t a single female form to be seen in the moderately busy bar. So OK, I was watching the Saints – Giants in a gay bar. I was cool with that, but then they kept switching from the game to music videos whenever there was a commercial break. I went back and forth with them a number of times, getting them to turn the game back on and the techno videos off before I decided that New Orleans had it pretty well wrapped up and that it was time for me to take my leave.

Surfboards on the beach in Waikiki:

The sun was just below the horizon and I headed back down to the beach to snap a few more pics. I’d only got one good shot off the tripod when Johnny Ray called across the pier to introduce himself. Turns out that Johnny lives on the beach, and is as hairless as a newborn. He probably has Alapecia, but depending on where exactly you’re at in Johnny’s stream of consciousness, it’s because he was just getting over a bout of Lukemia, or because he was beaten the other day or because he was beaten by his father when he was a child. Oh yeah, Johnny was an interesting fella. He wanted me to buy him some malt liquor from the ABC store across the street. Alas, they’d stopped selling malt liquor there, a situation that Johnny ascribed to him breaking a bottle over his head while he was in that particular store. Still I picked him up a 22 of Steinlager and bought a Guiness for myself and we went back out to the beach where I learned all about Johnny’s remarkable father, who was a Mormon polygamist, had 12 wives, invented worm holes could see true reality through his third eye and was generally a fantastic person except for the part where he kicked Johnny out of the house at the tender young age of 12.

I could whiled away quite an interesting evening by that pier in Waikiki with Johnny Ray, but it was time to catch my shuttle to the airport. Upon checking into my flight, I learned that I would be delayed by 3 hours due to a medical emergency on the flight from Auckland to Honolulu. Apparently a 25 year old had a heart attack a little over an hour into the flight. They had to hit him with the paddles, they turned the plane around and when back to Auckland. All in all, 3 hours wasn’t too long a delay for that kind of emergency. We finally got on the plane about 12:30am. Air New Zealand was good enough to give us each a $15 voucher for the Kona Brewing Company while we waited, but that last beer on the beach did me in, so I spent my time at Starbucks chatting with a Kiwi couple from Tauranga and a Canadian family from Vancouver who’d been delayed an entire day without explanation.

Currently I’m sitting in the International Food Court in a basement off Queen’s St in downtown Auckland eating Chinese food and waiting on my friend Amber who’s up from Christchurch visiting. I’m not sure what all is planned, but it sounds like I’ve got a bit more hanging out to do before making the 2 hour venture north and finally getting back to Bodhran.

Here’s a quick photo album from Thanksgiving weekend:

And here’s the pics of my road trip to Spokane and Boise:

Nov
02
2011

Holy Crap It’s Been 7 Months Since I Last Posted

Tug Ocean Ranger up in Jervis Inlet, B.C.:

Amazingly enough I’ve been away from Bodhran and this blog for 7 months now. A lot has happened, but alas I’m just not inspired to write about things that are 6 months old and probably not that interesting unless you’re one of my family members, but the biggies were 2 of my brothers getting married, Tiffany and I split up, I got laser eye surgery, I’ve dropped 35lbs and my father died unexpectedly at 66.

My new glassesless, svelte self:

In June, I got hired on again with Western Towboat and was able to get 109 days of work in 4.5 months. I spent most of that time hauling freight around the Bering Sea on the Ocean Mariner, but also got a few good trips in up to Southeast on the Pacific and the Ocean Ranger. Unfortunately I hurt my back towards the end of my last job. The plan was to head back to New Zealand right away, but I’m waiting for my back to heal up a bit before I firm up any plans on getting back to my travels. So sorry again for the long break in the blog, but look forward to a re-newed effort to get some interesting blog material going in the coming months.

For some more interesting reading in the meantime, check out Greg and Bonnie’s blog. They’re building a 37′ version of Willow in Ohio right now.

Also I did get a photo gallery up with some pics from working this Summer:

Mar
14
2011

Projects, projects, projects

Sailing past Whangarei Heads. The last sail for a while unfortunately:

Well it’s been another month long break since I got a blog post up. It’s been a month of 8-10 hour days giving Bodhran some much needed TLC. I went back up to Kawau Island for a week or so taking advantage of the good shelter and isolation. There’d been quite a bit of wind out of the north and when I the forecast turned south and my supplies started running low, I took off and had a beautiful sail up to Whangarei where I was able to get a jetty berth and start really getting some work done.

I couldn’t ask for a much better spot for boat projects:

Whangarei is a great town for getting work done with everything you need less than a 15 minute walk away. I’ve probably forgotten some of the work I’ve done in the last month, but here’s what I can remember:

Drilled out the port side deck, injected epoxy and painted the deck with non-skid
I found some rot in the foredeck hatch, so I stripped it, cut out the rot, put two layers of fiberglass over it, filled the rot holes, faired, painted and vanished the hatch.
Stripped remaining varnish off the trim that goes around the exterior cabin top and painted green.
Stripped and re-varnished the companionway turtle and grab rails on the after portion of the cabin top
stripped and varnished the saloon table
cut down the nav desk so that it didn’t stick out so far, the cause of many of my hip level bruises on passage. Then stripped and varnished the nav desk.
Added a piano hinge to the bottom of the electrical panel and then varnished the panel
moved the sideband radio and stereo to the cabin top above the nav desk
sanded and varnished all remaining interior trim that I had put in two days before setting sail back in 2006 and never got around to varnishing. This includes the starboard side interior, most of the trim in the head and all the trim and drawers in the forecabin.
Stripped and varnished the companionway and galley trim
finished building in my new Engels chest refrigerator, built a hinged hatch over it and added tile to the counter to cover up my demolition job installing the fridge.
Stripped old varnish, sanded and oiled galley/nav cabin sole
Stripped and varnished bulkhead between the saloon and the head
painted the head base and sole
cleaned and polished bronze ports as well as the lamp and some of the other brass and bronze in the saloon
repained the headliner in the forecabin, head and most of the main cabin
knocked all the rust off the, not used since Oregon 2006, cabin heater and stack and the polished them

Well that’s all I can remember for now. I really should have taken some before pics, but I just kept starting one project after another without really thinking about it. Here’s all the after pics:

This was leaving Whangarei at the beginning of February. It’s the only pic I have that shows the state of some of the exterior varnish before I redid it.

Here’s the rebuilt foredeck hatch and some of that shiny new green stripe:

And here’s the companionway turtle and grab rails for you:

The interior projects are just too many to take pics of each, so here’s a photo tour of Bodhran’s interior these days:

And here’s Bodhran on her pile where she’ll be living until December.

I’m in Auckland right now after spending the last few days wrapping up all these projects and getting Bodhran all buttoned up and ready to winter over down here in the Southern Hemisphere. I’ve put her on a pile mooring where she should be safe and sound. I’m flying back to Bellingham tomorrow and then it’s off to Seattle for my brother Trevor’s wedding. Then I’ll hopefully be going back to work for Western Towboat. Blog posts will be sporadic for the next 6-8 months, but hopefully I’ll be seeing everyone in person real soon

The sailing adventures of Jason Rose and his Down East 32 Cutter Bodhran as they travel together around the world

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Whangarei, NZ Dec 2011

Back to New Zealand…..again

Thanksgiving, a pause for the cause in Hawaii and on to Auckland

Holy Crap It’s Been 7 Months Since I Last Posted

Projects, projects, projects