Tuesday, 20 March 2018

We're back in Perth after our brief road trip around the SW corner of Australia.


Coming down from Carnarvon to Perth, the endless desert plains stretched off to the horizon. We've driven this stretch back and forth a few times now and it's always the same: very hot, very windy, very dry, very dusty and after a number of trips, very long and very boring.


Once nearer Perth, the landscape changes. We stayed overnight at Yanchep National Park, one of our favourite stops, which has a large koala and kangaroo population in a forested enclave near to the shore. We woke up to this tiny joey, all by itself, feeding at the back of the van.


After leaving Perth, we passed through the Perth Hills, just east of the city. It's a farming area, quite pretty, with a few historic towns, like York WA. The whole town has been designated a historic site due to the presence of many fine buildings. The stunning Town Hall was just one example.


The Town of York provided a free stopover for RVs next to the Avon River and it was a very enjoyable spot to stay by the water in the shade of the trees and watch the flock of Little Corellas (a kind of cockatoo) on the bank opposite.


We next headed inland towards Coolgardie before turning south towards Esperance. Generally, the first half of the trip was through dry farmland with not much to capture our fancy. Then, we arrived in Esperance, to a "wow" moment. This has to be the prettiest coastline in all of Australia (although we haven't seen it all yet). The weather was fine and the crowds non-existent. You can take your pick of nineteen!, pristine, white sand beaches, each one different, some in town and the rest just a short drive from town. One had a lagoon, one was good for surfing, one was good for families, you get the idea. The lack of development was refreshing. The turquoise water was stunning.


The town and its beaches are protected offshore by a group of 105 islands known as the  Archipelago of the Recherche (Bay of Isles).


The only negative was the cost of campsites in the Esperance area as freedom camping was forbidden. We went a little way out of town to stay at a farmstay property which was very reasonable and we really enjoyed camping out among the cattle with the sound of the frogs in the pond behind our van that night.

Next up was Albany. It seemed a thriving town in a pretty setting with a great natural harbour. We made a detour to visit the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse. Situated at the most south-westerly point of Australia it's the tallest lighthouse on the mainland. Cape Leeuwin is also the point where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean.


We pushed on to Busselton, another beach town. On the way, we were pleasantly surprised to find that we were driving through cool, sun-dappled forests of large gum trees, with some old growth specimens still intact. We came out of the forest into the vineyards of the wine region around Margaret River before arriving at Busselton. We were intrigued by their jetty (pier) project. Only second in length to the one at Southend, UK, it has a natural aquarium, apparently only one of six in the world. It seemed like a great idea to raise funds for the jetty's construction and upkeep. Sure beats the usual tacky video and amusement arcades found on most other piers we've visited. Other derelict piers looking for funding should take note.


Our tickets entitled us to take the little train the length of the pier to the aquarium at the end, but, we chose to walk the 1.8 km length instead.


Once there, we were taken on a tour down the circular staircase with viewing windows at each level. It's only about eight metres down to the bottom, but, you could see colourful coral encrusted on the pier's legs and many fish. Of course, it wasn't quite as good as scuba diving, but, was easily accessible and interesting. A huge school of anchovies, flashing their silver bodies as they darted this way and that in the sunlight filtering through the water, was mesmerizing to watch.


On the way back to Perth we were excited to view a new (to us) bird species. The red-tailed black cockatoo is spectacular in flight with red patches under its wings. You can just see a small bit of the distinctive red patches in this picture.


We headed back to Perth in a bit of a rush, cutting our planned two week trip down to about eight days. Why? Well, second day out, I had uttered the words that G has come to hate "I have an idea". This idea was that maybe we should try and sell our van before we leave rather than waste money storing it and only have to sell it when we come back. So we did. Quickly, we put the ad on gumtree, then, cleaned the van from top to bottom, inside and out, to get rid of the Australian red dust that gets everywhere. The perfect young couple then came and bought it. We really hope they enjoy it. So, our beautiful van is now gone. It was a lot of work to fit it out and we were so proud of it, but, we'd only gotten to use it for maybe eight weeks in the past year. Gjoa now has priority for our future time, energy and money and unfortunately, the van had to go.





 photo arrow.pngCONTINUE READING

Saturday, 3 March 2018

This is 'Dougie', the boatyard dog here at Pickle Point Boatyard in Carnarvon, Western Australia where we've been busy working on Gjoa for the last couple of weeks. Dougie is a real sweetheart, still a puppy at just eleven months, but, he's huge and thankfully, although he very much looks the business of a guard dog, he's very placid and friendly. We've been enjoying his company very much.



Another boatyard diversion is getting to watch the neighbours, the ones in the water, come and go.

When we haven't been enjoying the diversions, we've been working really hard on Gjoa. We're very pleased with all we've accomplished. It was worth this unplanned trip to actually start getting jobs in motion rather than just thinking about having to do them. First up was replacing the cutless bearing. This entailed removing the prop and shaft. It all came out a lot easier than we expected.


Then, out came the cutless bearing. Although it was necessary to cut it into pieces to get it out, you can still see its rather shredded internal appearance!


The new cutless bearing, which we'd ordered from the U.S. and brought with us, needed to have 2mm shaved off for it to fit into the stern tube. The shaft itself also had some minor scoring. We were able to have these machined locally and it all went back together smoothly. At the same time, we replaced the bearings and anode on our Spurs line cutter. Then, we started thinking about the prop. We had some trouble identifying it, we think it's a German Variprop DF107, although the measurements didn't seem to match up with the current model. It's a feathering prop with internal gearing. They don't usually require much maintenance, but, this one is now seventeen years old and maybe needs an experienced eye to check it over. So, while we have the opportunity, we're going to hand carry it back with us to the UK and either have it serviced there, or, send it on to Germany to the original factory and have it looked at there.

Next up, hydraulics. We knew nothing about hydraulics before acquiring this boat. It controls our steering which is obviously a mission critical piece of kit. We have two hydraulic pumps, a manual one behind the steering wheel and an electric autopilot drive pump. On the way down from Malaysia we started getting 'drivestop errors' on our autopilot. It just got worse and worse until the autopilot was practically unusable, not a good thing. The manual steering seemed to be having a few problems as well. After some study and analysis, we deduced that it probably wasn't the electronic piece of the autopilot that was failing, but, rather the physical movement of the hydraulic ram and rudder combination that was causing the problem.  After inspecting the ram, we could see leakage of fluid, which means the internal seals are probably gone. So, it had to come out for a rebuild.


Removing the hydraulic autopilot drive pump was a daunting task, but, there was no point rebuilding the ram without the pump being done also. It was buried under the diesel day tank and access was blocked by various water pumps and systems in front of it. Believe me, there is a pump somewhere in this photo. It took a full day to disassemble everything, but, it eventually came out.


As a stretch goal, we'd brought a new Racor fuel filter system with us and we actually got that installed as well. We installed a single 30 micron filter unit for fuel coming out of the main tank into the day tank and a dual, hot switchable, 10 micron filter unit for fuel coming out of the day tank going to either the on-engine or generator fuel filters. Racor has a good reputation and their filters are much easier and less expensive to source worldwide than the previous Separ units. We don't know whether it was just 'sales talk', but, the Racor rep told us that Separ units, when faced with a clogging filter, just switch themselves to an automatic bypass mode. You think you're filtering your fuel, but you're actually not. This process must be what caused the multiple fuel filtration problems we had on the way down as there is no other explanation.


We are leaving Carnarvon tomorrow for the two day drive to Perth where we will have the ram and autopilot pump rebuilt. Next trip back we will pick up and reinstall the rebuilt pieces and hope it all works! In the meantime, we're planning a mini road trip around Perth for some well-deserved R & R after our exertions of this past couple of weeks.

 photo arrow.pngCONTINUE READING