When we started cruising we were advised that most boats “out there” had a sewing machine and it would be easy to pay someone to borrow theirs if you needed to do a repair.

Apparently, everyone else got the same advice and didn’t buy one because we didn’t find that to be true. Plus, if you own an expensive delicate machine, would YOU loan it out to someone who wanted to take it for a dinghy ride? I don’t think so.

And we needed one. We thought sewing machines were expensive until we found out how much it was going to cost to restitch the sunbrella on our jib in Tahiti – OUCH! Some really nice friends helped us sew up our sunbrella once but otherwise we have had to pay professionals.

This cyclone season, we were lucky enough to band together with a bunch of other cruisers on a container coming to Fiji, under the guidance of someone who had negotiated shipping to Fiji and customs clearances before. And so, as part of our order of heavy goods, we ordered a Sailrite LSZ-1 PLUS.

In the few weeks we’ve had the machine, I’ve resewn the suncovering on our genoa, restitched some bits on our main, our aging mainsail cover, dodger, bimini and connector panel.

Already the machine has paid for itself and we have some big projects in mind for the future including (after almost 5 years of cruising) proper cockpit cushions!

Estrellita 5.10b is back in the water.

The boat floats,  The dinghy floats. The engines have sputtered to life.

We are still putting tools and supplies away. We are still working on boat projects, but we are doing so floating at anchor, with the breeze floating through the boat, with afternoon swims, with snorkeling, sunsets and a view. And if the wind cooperates, some kiteboarding.

A week or two of boat work and we start seriously cruising Fiji.

It. Feels. Good.

*As a side note, we’ve changed the commenting procedure to make it easier for anyone to comment on this blog. Give us a test.

Not an actual instructional video, but it would have been nice to have seen someone do it before we tried for the first time. We gravity filled our propane tank throughout French Polynesia and here we are doing it on Taravai Island (in Mangareva Atoll, Gambier Archipelago, French Polynesia).

Direct link to the video here.

Beyond replacing our battery bank and the normal repairs, we've been busy with the normal assortment of boat jobs. We work on projects either a little each day or several full days a week depending on our social schedule, the urgency of the repair, and our travel schedule. We don't write as much about maintenance anymore as we did when we were prepping. As examples of what we're not blogging about, here are a few items we've tackled recently:

Mainsail: We don't know exactly how old our mainsail is. When we bought the boat in 2007 it already had seen some good use. We've put a lot of miles on our boat and the sail has been doing generally well. Good job Neil Pryde. Our Dutchman system, however, causes our sails to flake in exactly the same place, folding in the same creases, on every drop. This makes reefing a delight. However, the mainsail cover, fluttering in the wind, is fluttering against the Dacron in exactly the same spot and has gradually started to chafe at the sail.

We took the main to the beach in Moorea and applied liberal amounts of polyester sail tape to the chafe points but this is going to be a regular maintenance item as we lay down large amounts of miles this year. A new mainsail is likely in our not too distant future and the big dilemma will be whether we go with the Dutchman system again.

Boom hardware: We also recently replaced the sheaves at the end of the boom which were cracked and breaking at the edges. Strangely enough the ones at the masthead look OK.

Dodger: The stitching on our dodger has rotted away. We borrowed a normal sewing machine in Tahiti last year and used PTFE (UV proof) thread (Goretex's Tenara) to resew every area of the dodger that a non industrial machine could handle. Now we are hand stitching the areas that we couldn't do as they fall apart. I spent most of a day recently resewing strataglass windows into the dodger that had rotten stitching.

Foresails: Speaking of rotten stitching, we have redone the entire sunbrella stitching on both of our headsails AND completed small section repairs to the already redone sections in the 7 years we have owned the boat. Crazy, huh?

Varnish: While we don't have brightwork we care to maintain on the outside of the boat we have been putting in the hours touching up sections of the interior. Epifanes Rubbed Effect is what we had used previously and love the matte "hand waxed" look it gives the interior. This is an ongoing project that has recently been interrupted because we are out of varnish.

TThis is not an installation guide (the installation instructions from CruiseRO are clear) but I thought I would add a few photos to identify “where in the heck we fit the parts” for a 20 gallon per hour SeaMaker watermaker (AC) on our 35’ Pretorien.

Our Honda 2000 lives (when not in use) under the helmsman seat in the lazarette, on top of a three jerry cans of diesel which are on top of the main diesel tank. More on that (per request) later.

The main pump and membrane fit in the drop bin just aft of the fridge on the starboard side of the boat (the location requiring Carol’s advanced yoga skills).

The boost pump was mounted to a floorboard cut out in the inboard cubby just forward of the sink (the one with the opening hatch to the walkway at foot level).

That’s it. Those are the 4 main bits. The rest was running tubing and electricity. Our intake thru hull is port of the keel and was installed by a previous owner.

If you crochet or knit, consider doing the splicing for your boat.

Anyone can splice, but if you are a crocheter or a knitter, it is as if you have already completed a rigorous pre-splicing bootcamp, and are primed and prepped to become an above average splicer.

Reasons why hookers are ready to splice:

1. You already know how to read complicated verbal directions with poorly drawn diagrams and translate them into actual products. If you can take something like "dch ch 2dch" and create a popcorn stitch then you are ready to take a rope manufacturers splicing directions and run with them.
2. The tools are simpler versions of ones you already know how to use with precision. If you can wield a crochet hook in one hand while keeping tension with the other, or suspend an entire sweater on the tips of two pointy sticks, fids will be child's play.
3. You know to read the entire set of directions before actually doing anything. You check to make sure you have all of the tools and supplies indicated and that you won't be surprised when you reach step 10 and realize you should have done something differently at step 2.

Tip: Many people are turned off by splicing because they try their first splice with a bit of old yacht braid they have laying about. Old yacht braid ranges from extremely difficult to splice to impossible to splice depending on how far gone the cover is.

Do yourself a favor and buy a piece of brand new line for your first project. My advice is to buy a length of rope of the correct size for a dockline (don't forget to add extra length for the splice) and use that as your first project. Or if you want something super easy, pick a spectra/dyneema splicing project – even easier than yacht braid.

Online splicing directions are everywhere but you can try here or here. We have this basic set of fids which works very well and seems to cover the sizes of lines we use commonly.

Because the idea of losing steering in a pass in a remote atoll gives me the heebie jeebies, we like to give our steering mechanisms regular love.

We have a steering quadrant and it is relatively easy to keep an eye on those cables. It is a little more difficult, but not too painful, to give the chain from the quadrant to the wheel a visual check and some grease.

First we took off the compass, then a cover plate, and voila this is what our massive chain looks like – like a big bike chain. You can also see the levers for our gear shifter and our throttle.

We cleaned things up and regreased and put things back together – peace of mind (for a while) again. Another tick on the ever present to do list.

Our leather wheel cover had slowly evolved from “weathered” to “salty” to “embarrassing”. Yet, we didn’t replace it until it busted open – good cruisers that we are. I had been keeping my eyes peeled for leather wheel covers in the automotive section of various hardware stores until I saw a simple rope wheel cover on a forum. There are quite elaborate rope work options for covering your wheel but I wasn’t really willing to put more than a day of my life into the project and so simple it was.

I bought 60 meters of 4mm nylon line and ended up with some leftover.

First we stripped off the old leather cover which left bits of itself stuck to the stainless wheel and had to be scrubbed off.

Then I tied the nylon line to one of the spokes and began wrapping. When I reached the next spoke I tucked the line down, half way around the spoke, and then back up onto the wheel, and started wrapping in the opposite direction. Each time I finished a pie wedge, I milked the line tight before transiting the spoke.

Two things I wish I had done at this point were: 1) put the line on a hand spool of some sort, such as you use for handline fishing to make the wrapping easier and 2) not bothered to wet the line when I started and rather just wet it later in the process.

Hours later when I had finished the wheel I tied the two ends together with a square knot and wet the entire wheel. Then I started half way around the wheel from the knot and milked the line toward the knot and retied the line taking up the slack. Then I went back to the half way point and milked the line the other way.

I’m leaving the square knot for now until I milk the line another time or two and then will probably whip the two bitter ends together and then put something decorative over the whipping.

Tip: I set things up so that the knot is at the wheel’s top when the rudder is centered. When I put the decorative bit this will help us find that center by feel.

If there is one thing we have come to love through cruising, it is containers. Any type of bag, or box, or fabric cube that makes it easy to find things, to move our stuff around when we inevitably need to reach whatever is stored underneath, and to keep things from dropping into the deep dark reaches of the bottom of some of our lockers and lazarettes.

Even better than just a container is a watertight container. Not just to prevent water, but even inside the boat in dry areas to prevent salty  humid air from ruining everything from food to electronics and to prevent fabrics from taking on a “boat smell”.

Now imagine that you have a container, that is watertight, and it can be used to store things in a previously unusable space in your boat – a cruiser’s dream, right?

While we were in N America we picked up a stash of Snaptainers and brackets (white or black) at Fisheries Supply in Seattle. You can see the entire collection (and pick up your own set) online here. After more than 5 years of living aboard and 3 years of cruising, we had some pretty specific ideas about where we might be able to use these bad boys and we have just installed the first batch: 3 at the navigation table and 1 in the “coffee cubby”.

It is the little things that can drive you crazy in cruising and so it is the little improvements in life, particularly for things you use on a daily or near daily basis, that we find make a big difference in our fun factor. Less suck means more energy for fun.

With the 4 installed containers, our USB sticks, phone cards, boat stamp, long distance wifi router, boat cards, etc are dry and contained in small organized containers at the navigation table. Every morning when we make our coffee we can lift the manual espresso machine out of its cubby (clearance above) and slide the ground espresso snaptainer out of its bracket. Everything fits perfectly, nothing has to be stored in a pile.

Next stop will be installing the same system in the lids of our lazarettes!

In one year of cruising in Mexico and the South Pacific, over 2012, what broke?

Sun damage on thread: The number of times we have repaired sunbrella stitching on our two headsails: 3. The number of times we have repaired the sunbrella stitching on our mainsail cover: 2. The number of times I have repaired stitching on our aging dodger: 2.

The impact of popping and rolling: One lower furler bearing. Probably contributed to the sacrificial suncover stitching going on the headsails as well. We also had some old thin attachment points on our running back stays (to the block and tackle) split through. We replaced them with real (new) shackles.

The impact of salt water: After burying our nose in the waves for two windward passages our windlass was so crusted with salt that it became unusable. While trying to use the unusable windlass I caused the chain to skip the gypsy while freeing it and dumped all of our chain overboard (still connected to the boat of course). Our relatively new chain has some rust as does our anchor.

General wear and tear: We have had minor chafe on several halyards (nothing has chafed through). We need to re-do some of the furniture tabbing which we will do this coming hurricane season.

Unusual breakages: Our spool valve broke on our watermaker. Also, our cockpit microphone stopped working (still trouble shooting).

In general I consider this a fairly normal or even light amount of breakage on a boat that has been used continuously for a year, covering a lot of open ocean miles.

If you want to haul your boat out in French Polynesia you have to choose between hauling out in Raiatea, Tahiti or Apataki. The first two are in the Society Islands and Apataki is in the Tuamotus.

We chose Apataki Carenage for three main reasons:

• Apataki is less humid than the other two which reduces the mildew problems of a shut up boat.
• Because the motu is private land, in a remote area, theft is not an issue. I’m sure boater-on-boater theft is a possibility as usual but otherwise there is no worries on that front. 
• Apataki is the furthest East and thus a generally lower risk for cyclones (although yes the Tuamotus have been hit).

After arriving we realized that we had other benefits that we hadn’t been expecting.

• We felt like we were still cruising/on an adventure.
• Daily swims in Tuamotu water.
• Green coconuts for drinking.
• Fish BBQs with the family and other cruisers.
• The grocery store in the village (across the atoll) takes credit cards.

We had arrived with a few concerns primarily related to the remoteness. People warned us about hauling out there because they said we wouldn’t be able to get supplies. I think as long as you aren’t planning a 3 day in-and-out haul out with no time to spare, supplies are not any more difficult than most other places. In fact, for English speakers I think Apataki is a good place to be because the family will use their cell phone and make calls for you to track down parts that you need. As for receiving supplies, there are 3 flights a week into Apataki that carry freight and every 2 weeks an interisland freighter arrives (MV Cobia III) which can carry heavy or non-airplane-suitable items such as batteries. Whatever is in Tahiti is accessible in a relatively short time frame from Apataki. In addition, the haul out facility has its own small store with commonly used supplies like grinding disks, paint brushes, bottom paint, epoxy, etc.

One bummer is the lack of internet at the haul out facility. We didn’t care about being out of touch but we didn’t realize the extent to which we have relied on the internet in previous haul outs to solve problems that come up in repairs. The carenage has satellite internet which works, slowly, and not always. In the village they have normal internet and you can arrange to take the boat to the family’s home in the village and use the internet there (while shopping) which is what we did.

Tuamotus Compendium Addition and Correction: The compendium gives a second hand report of a dispute about the bill between a boat and the carenage. Our experience was that the bill was the same as quoted in advance and the family was exquisitely careful to apprise us of any additional costs for things we requested after the initial quote (which was almost identical to the prices on their website). Also, the compendium reports a $30/day liveaboard fee which would have been a deal breaker for us. This is not currently correct and perhaps a language issue. On the bill the carenage lists a daily fee for “vie abord” which means living aboard. However this amount includes the fee for the boat to be on the hard for that day (lay day) and so you must subtract their normal lay day fee from this fee to see the actual living aboard premium. Living aboard increased our lay day fee by 1000 CPF or about $12USD per day.

In sum: If we were leaving our boat in French Polynesia again we would definitely return to Apataki Carenage. If we were hauling out for a short trip we would haul out there as well. If we needed work done on our boat by someone else, we would probably try to avoid hauling out in French Polynesia at all.