Hull Maintenance and a difficult decision

 1. Gas System Problem

We  arrived at Fremantle Sailing Club on the night of Wednesday, 22 April, and the next day Bruce and I had a look at the problem that Peter and I had discovered soon after departing Port Geographe Marina with the boat's gas system, which would start a flame at any of the the stove's gas burners and from either gas cylinder, that would die after a few seconds.  The gas detector and solenoid were working fine and there was no gas leak anywhere along the line, and thus we made the entire passage to Fremantle without the services of the gas stove. Everything pointed to empty gas cylinders but I found found that difficult to accept not only because of the Bunnings person's statement that the active cylinder was full, but also because I am usually very diligent about swapping an empty cylinder as soon as possible.

I recounted to Bruce how soon after my arrival, Port Geographe Marina had instructed me to have the boat's gas system inspected and re-certified.  I found this strange because I had presented to the PGM office a gas certification dated 2015, soon after the boat's entire gas piping had been replaced.  After the certification was done during my absence I received a message from the gas inspector that the job had been done and both of the gas cylinders were empty.  During my next visit to the boat I took the active cylinder to Bunnings for a swap and when I handed over the "empty" cylinder the woman immediately told me that from its weight the cylinder was full.  After I expressed surprise she put the cylinder on a scale to prove her point.  After reinstalling the cylinder I gave it a brief test and confirmed that the gas was reaching the stove.  I then sent a note to the gas inspector informing him of my finding and he sent a terse reply that at least I had one of the cylinders was working, without explaining how he had made the mistake.  

 To start at a known point I immediately took the active gas cylinder to the local Bunnings and swapped it for a full one, even though I knew that I was probably discarding a nearly full one.  The top of the cylinder was color coated to indicate that it was backward compatible to the previous connection standard, and thus it could be connected to either a reverse or a forward thread.  Back at the boat Bruce started to connect the new cylinder.  We discussed the boat's hose and connector which appeared to be brand new, making us wonder if the gas inspector had converted the boat to the latest "forward thread" standard.  

Bruce made the connection very tight and commented that there was still a lot of thread showing.  I then mentioned how the newer cylinders seem to have a safety design where it is no longer possible to "crack" open an unconnected cylinder to see if it is delivering gas and perhaps the connection had to be deep enough to trip open the safety mechanism within in the cylinder.  With that Bruce applied significant force to screw the connection deeper, and with that I opened the gas cylinder valve, and when I moved the selector valve to the newly connected cylinder there was an instant "whoosh" of the gas rushing into the pipe leading to the gas stove.  We gave the reserve cylinder the same treatment and from then on the stove worked fine from either cylinder.

We then figured that the gas technician had made changes to the connectors, fell into his own trap of not screwing them down enough, and concluded that both cylinders were empty. 

Even though the stove is now working I am not satisfied with the amount of torque that we were forced to apply to make a proper connection, almost as though there is a thread mismatch.  For that reason and  because I have no confidence in gas inspector who caused us that trouble and expense, I plan to have the very competent gas technician here in Fremantle who renovated Pachuca's gas system during her refit to visit the boat and inspect the work that was done.

 

2. Hard-standing 

 On Friday morning, 24 April, Bruce, Kim and I ferried the boat into the lifting bay from where it was hauled out, pressure washed, then placed on a hardstand for long overdue (at least 3 years ago)  hull maintenance.  At this point Bruce had to work alone so I went back to my home in Darlington then returned on Saturday bringing back, among other things, a spare Raymarine C120 chart plotter that I had years ago purchased out of Queensland. It had proven to work perfectly well as a chart plotter but could not see the radar input.  Greg Hansen the Raymarine expert tried swapping in parts from a defunct C120 that I held for parts but to no avail.  I did not return that incomplete chart plotter because I had paid only $250 for it.

 Greg is currently out of reach and reported to be in New Zealand, but I hope to get him on the boat to see if we can get the faulty chart plotter working again with parts from either my "no radar" unit or the other one that I keep for spares.  If that doesn't work then I'll mount the "no radar" unit which won't be a big practical loss because I rarely use the boat's radar.

 Bruce and I were eventually to extend the hard standing  an extra few days to Tuesday, 12 May.  

After Bruce did the hard work of sanding the hull with some minor filling he reported with pleasure that there was no evidence of osmosis or any other serious problem with the hull and keel.  We decided to have the anti fouling sprayed rather than rolled.  Yes, rolling would yield a thicker coat of anti fouling, but the result would be rougher than that from spraying and besides, we were under time pressure and I wanted to avoid spending a full day doing the dirty work of rolling the antifouling.  On that basis Bruce commissioned Shane Williams of Williams Marine Services to spray one coat of primer and two coats of anti fouling (with extra coats on the high wear sections).  He did a splendid job and was well worth the money.

 

                                                Shane after spraying the coat of primer

 

 

Bruce applying filler

 

 Sanding the filling

 

                                                Hull and lead keel anti fouled
 

 

Bruce did a lot of the initial sanding of the propeller and shaft with an electric tool and I was commissioned to finished the job by hand, which proved to be particularly time consuming in the small nooks and crannies of the rope cutter.  Bruce was pleased with the result and it was good to know that I had saved him hours of his valuable time.  Applying Propspeed is a step-by-step process that must be done by an experienced and skilled person.

 

                                                 Propspeed treatment and new anodes  

3. Chain and Anchor

 During this period Bruce and I took the time to resolve the issue of the ground tackle lost at Mandurah.

Bruce took me to Taylor Marine where I purchased 40 meters of 10mm short link chain, a swivel and shackle for about $415, which was much cheaper than I had expected.  Bruce explained that using his business card had saved me over $400 on the purchase.  Then we went by his Koala lockup and he produced a sturdy Delta anchor which he gave to me gratis.  We then made our way to Hartway Galvanizers at Naval Base where we we left the anchor after a surprisingly low quotation of $120.

 

So my navigation error at Mandurah had cost me about $600, which was a much better outcome than had we piled up on that reef that we must have narrowly missed while approaching the wrong anchorage point..

  

I had earlier given Bruce the OK to use a portion of the $515 worth of Propspeed for a "small job", and when I learned that the small job was on Jon Sander's S&S 39 I firmly refused to take any money for what I wanted to be a gift to that legendary sailor. At the end of the hard-standing I gave the remainder of the Propspeed to Bruce for his own boat over his protests that I should keep it use for my next haul out in two years, but I insisted that he accept it as a bonus.

 

On the morning of Tuesday 12 May Bruce, Kim and I met at 7am and soon Pachuca was put back into the water after 19 days on the hardstand.  On the way back to the pen the three of us decided to take the boat out for a short run in Cockburn Sound then motored into Pachuca's pen D81 where we found it to be in good order with its new weights & chains and her original pen ropes in position and within easy reach.

 

 

                                            On her way to splashdown

 
 

 

                                                Splashdown 12 May 2026
 

 

We had been helped immensely by the amazingly clear weather with light winds during our entire time on the hardstand.   

 

 4. A Difficult Decision

 Several weeks after my arrival at Port Geographe Marina in March 2025 I received a message from the office that someone had inquired whether Pachuca was for sale.  I replied to the gentleman by email that yes, I was interested in selling the boat, but not until the end of the coming sailing season during which I wanted to enjoy what Geograhe Bay had to offer.  The man accepted this then we went through a period where he would ask for more information on the boat until he had the pathways to learning just about everything that there was to learn about the it. (He told me later that he had read the this entire blog of more than 1800 entries.)

 Things went quiet for about 10 months until I notified him that I was planning to sail the boat back to Fremantle at the end of my year's pen lease at PGM in mid-April 2026, and was he still interested in the boat.  He indicated that he was still interested and on Sunday 29 March I met the man and his wife for the first time over coffee at the PGM Periscope Cafe, followed by a thorough tour of the boat lasting about two hours.  

The meeting and boat inspection had gone very well, and after a few days I made what I thought was a generous offer which he soon accepted.  

I had spent $2000 in hull maintenance material for a planned hard standing at PGM in late 2025 that did not happen due to a car accident that put my Toyota Prado out of commission for weeks, so I offered the choice of either a quick sale where he would take responsibility of the hull maintenance at PGM using my materials or wait until after I had had the hull maintenance done at FSC.  He chose the latter which eventually proved to be crucial.

Not long after that I telephoned Kim, my pen neighbor at FSC,  informing him on the planned date of my return to FSC and 'By the way, it looks like the boat is practically sold."

Kim asked why I was still selling the boat and I replied with the usual "I am 82 years old ... balance and strength are not what they used to be ... less enthusiasm for sailing  ... desire to focus my time and limited energy on other things ... etc".

His response was along the lines of  " So What?  I enjoy pottering on my boat, sometimes just relaxing with the TV and DVD player, and take it out only a few times of year whenever it suits me, and Greg on the other side of your pen (another circumnavigator) does the same."

This gave me a totally different perspective on the possibility of keeping the boat: no need to meet any expectations of sailing and simply enjoy spending time on my boat because, well, I enjoy spending time on my boat.  From a practical point of view, I would have the next few years free of haul-out and  hull maintenance and the pen is so easy and safe to exit and enter that on a calm sunny day I'd be able go out into Gage Roads alone if I had to and not even raise a sail if I didn't feel like it and simply exercise the engine.  

 For weeks I quietly dealt with the conflict between honoring my commitment to the prospective buyer whom I knew would take good care of and make good use of the boat as well as meeting the expectation of those who cared about me, and keeping the boat for who knows how many years longer.

 On 5 May during the hard standing of the boat I sent a difficult but honest message to the prospective buyer notifying him of my decision to withdraw the boat from the market, and to his credit he sent me a gracious response a few days later.

 

 

 

Pachuca Back in Fremantle

 My sailing companion Peter Austin and I had planned a 3-day passage from Bunbury to Fremantle:  set sail sail for Bunbury on the morning of Monday, 20 April where we would spend the night at anchor, then set sail for Mandurah on the morning of Tuesday 21 April where we would spend the night on a mooring at "Doddie's Beach" just outside of the entrance to the Peel-Harvey estuary , then arrive at Fremantle on Wed 22 April.  The forecast was for mild weather and there was the promise of generally favourable though light winds with the assistance of a following current.

 Unfortunately weather forecast on the day before departure indicated a strong weather system on the following day, followed by favourable winds on Tuesday the 21st.  Peter and I made the decision to postpone our departure for one day, which proved to be very wise because on the night of Monday the 20th the city of Bunbury was hit by what was described as a tornado which caused damage throughout the area.  We also made the decision to use the expected favourable winds of Tuesday to bypass Bunbury and make the passage from Bunbury to Mandurah in one day.  

 Brenda and I had spent two pleasant nights at a guesthouse in Busselton and on the morning of our departure from Port Geographe Marina Brenda drove directly to her home once she knew that Bruce Diggins would collect our nearly new pen lines after our departure and convey them to Fremantle for my future use.  Fortunately at the last moment I realised that the boat's diesel fuel gauge was recording 1/4 of the 142-litre tank and Bruce kindly took me to fill up my 20-litre container.

 Peter and I motored out of the marina into Geographe Bay on the morning of Tuesday 21 April and were to motor that entire day and most of the second day through winds that were too light for sailing, although we managed get some help at times from the mainsail as we motored.  From memory we were making about 4 knots at around 1500 rpm from the Volvo 40hp engine.

 Hours into the passage we passed Bunbury and as planned decided to bypass it.

 A few hours later the Raymarine C120 chart plotter stopped functioning.  It would not respond to buttons and kept recycling through presentations of the home page.  From then on I spent much of my time using the old but excellent Trimble GPS to plot our positions on the paper chart, which involved a lot of use of the old fashioned navigation tools parallel ruler and brass dividers.

We approached Mandurah in the dark, something that I have always taken great pains to avoid. 

(During my 5-year circumnavigation I made only one night entry, up a channel of perhaps 10 nautical miles width  between the Brazilian coast and  a long island (think Garden Island) because strong low pressure winds were moving in from the east, which would have probably cost me at least two more unpleasant days out at sea. In the dead of night a marina security man motored out to see what was going on and helped me pick up a mooring. 

Earlier, my brother Arnold and I had reached Honolulu at night.  Honolulu is protected by a long reef with many navigable gaps, so in the night we saw a line of alternating green and red lights marking the passages.  We wisely sailed well outside of the reef until dawn.  Soon after arriving in Honolulu I was told of an Australian boat that piled up on the reef with total loss of his boat while coming in at night.  Later I realised that the Aussie must have been working to the Australian system where entrances are marked with red to the left and green to the right, which would have placed him on the reef because the American system is the reverse, "Red Right Returning".)

 

  It was late at night, around Midnight, and we were both tired.  I made the colossal mistake of trying to sail around a light that proved to be actually on land.  During our approach Peter kept saying that things didn't look right but I pressed on, fixated on dropping anchor.  Eventually I admitted that I was confused too and we dropped anchor perhaps 50 meters off the beach to assess the situation.  We eventually figured out where we were and even though we were safely anchored in reasonable calm water we decided to proceed to the moorings at "Doddie's Beach", Partly because Peter figured that the reef to our west may not give us enough protection from a rising swell, and partly because ... well ... after screwing something up I tend to try to make things right ASAP.

We weighed anchor and worked our way round the light marking the entrance to Doddie's Beach but we could not see any mooring floats with our hefty spotlight.  My recollection from years past was that the area had been been covered with moorings, but something must have changed.  We were tired, running low on fuel, and going back out to sea was not practical, so I agreed to drop anchor, accepting the risk that I expressed to Peter that our anchor might snag on a defunct mooring ground chain, rendering it unrecoverable.  

And so it was. 

 We spent the noisiest night at anchor that I had ever experienced - serious clanging, banging, with an occasional jolt of the boat.  Repeated visits to the deck revealed nothing, and I could see from our GPS position that the boat was not moving.

 In the morning the windlass stopped winding in chain due to overload, which confirmed that the anchor was snagged on a ground chain and explained the ruckus throughout the previous night.  

There was nothing nothing to be done but pay out the reaming chain and leave the 38m of 10mm short link chain and the nearly new 22kg Sarca "Excel" No. 5 anchor on the ocean floor. We still had no sailing wind, were running low on fuel, and had to get on with it.  I didn't even bother to log the coordinates because I figured that pay a professional to salvage the tackle would cost more than it was worth. 

 During this effort Peter mentioned that in the light of day he had seen moorings much closer to the beach than we had expected. 

 We motored to about the latitude of Coventry reef, west of Warnrbro Sound and well south of Garden Island, with Peter at the helm.  A wisp of northerly wind had appeared, we already had some sail up, and Peter decided to tack back toward the mainland.  At this point I was concerned at the prospect of spending the coming night at sea with a questionable amount of fuel left for motoring, no anchor, and reports of 40 knot winds in the coming night.

Steadily the wind strengthened and backed, and soon we were sailing toward the tip of Cape Peron and the southern end of Garden island.  The wind kept backing and soon we were sailing  directly toward  the entrance of Challenger Pass.  Peter was in his element, brilliantly helming to squeeze every ounce of drive from the wind.  I could see that he was having he time of his life and don't think that it would have been possible to drag him away from that wheel even if I had been foolish enough to try it.

 We entered challenger pass still under sail in the fading afternoon but we were forced to start the engine as we neared the shipping channel.  At that point I was quietly confident that we had enough fuel to make it into the FSC marina, but I had to keep in mind that if the engine stopped at the wrong moment we could wind up in a serious situation with no anchor at our disposal.  During this passage I received a telephone call from Kim, my boating neighbour in the next pen, who was watching us with binoculars from his home in the Coogee area.  We agreed to give him 20 minutes notice of our arrival at the pen, and I asked him to shine a light to guide us into the pen because they are difficult to identify in the dark.

We ran up the shipping channel in the dark, and Peter needed to know when to turn off the shipping channel and the course that me must set for the FSC entrance.  I got to work, triple checked my numbers, and told gave him the latitude of the turn and the subsequent magnetic heading for FSC.  It was a rhumb line well north of the shallows associated with the Parmelia Bank area.  After Peter made the turn I told him that I had given him only a ballpark heading and that from the chart we should be looking for a tight grouping of red navigation lights marking the entrance leading to both the fishing harbour and FSC.   It turned out that the rhumb line was for practical purposes bang on, and soon we were motoring up the FSC fairway and guided by Kim's spotlight we were soon safely tied up at Pachuca's home, FSC pen D81.

 I had left pen D81 one year earlier wondering when I would be able to get back to collect its pen lines, and I soon learned that without any prompting Kim and Greg, my pen neighbour on the other side of my boat, had taken the trouble to remove my pen lines which Kim then stored in his garage until my return, and here I was now guided into my pen by Kim with all of the pen lines in position and ready for my tie-up. 

Port Geographe was a marina, Fremantle Sailing Club was my home.

 Postmortem

 This was probably the worst executed passage in my experience. Most of the mistakes and adverse events are obvious but nevertheless I will document the main ones.

1. Circumstances forced us into a situation where we were sailing to a schedule. 

 This is a fundamental no-no of sailing because as one mariner told me, "It forces you to do things that you don't want to do".  We had been wise to delay our departure by one day due to the expected bad weather but should have resisted the temptation of making up for lost time by making the passage from Busselton to Mandurah in one day, which was to cost us dearly.  Thereafter I allowed myself to become victim to phenomena that I see over and over again in airline crash investigations: "Get-there-itis" (from sailing to a schedule), and "Confirmation Bias" as exhibited by my continuation toward that wrong light at Mandurah while ignoring indications that the situation all wrong.  Fatigue had contributed to these poor decisions.  

2. Insufficient diesel fuel supply.

 During a full year at PGM the thought of topping up the boat's diesel fuel tank never occurred to me until the very morning of our departure day, when we took on another 20 litres of fuel.  This was an inexcusable lack of preparation caused by complacency and lack of focus on the planned passage, but that meagre 20 litres of diesel proved to be crucial.

 3. Failure of the Chart Plotter

It is understandable that this was totally unexpected but nevertheless I was left with sufficient navigation tools for a successful passage, but in the end the night entry combined with fatigue and confirmation bias led to my navigation failure at Mandurah.

 4. No trip line at the head of my anchor.   

I knew about anchor trip lines.  

We had set off from Fremantle in 2008 with a trip line that I had prepared and was ready for use.  On the south coast of  NSW we approached the shore to meet friends from Canberra.  The plan was to drop anchor for the night but I told Brenda and Arnold that the area had all of the signs of a defunct mooring field.  I then found the trip line, clipped it to the tripping ring at the crown of the anchor, lowered the anchor into the water and sure enough, we found next morning when we tried to weigh anchor that it was snagged.  No problem: I manoeuvred the boat upwind of the anchor, used the trip line to tease the flukes of the anchor from under the ground chain, and soon we were on our way. 

 But why would I need a tripping line for day sails along the friendly Western Australian coast where there would be only day sailing and I would never be dumb enough to drop anchor on a mooring field?

Well, we know how that worked out.

 

5. No gas for cooking

 Before departure it seemed that I had plenty of gas in my primary and backup LPG gas cylinders.  Soon I discovered that regardless of which cylinder I brought on line, the stove burners would light up then die in a few seconds.  It was a mystery that could not be explained by the gas supply, the gas detection system, nor the gas plumbing.  This resulted in a passage with neither hot food nor in particular hot coffee.  Like good sailors we accepted the depravation and got on with it, but I can't help wondering if regular doses of caffeine might have lifted my game, so to speak.

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My next blog will cover the hardstanding and hull maintenance of the boat,  measures to deal with the cooking gas, chart plotter, and anchor ground tackle problems, and the surprising resolution of the LPG gas supply problem..