John B

Dang....

I have a similar photo in pretty much the same spot from 3 weeks ago or so. Starlink , regardless of what you think of the guy, has been a quiet revolution for cruisers. And given each time I go through the iridium go setup nightmare I end up wishing them bad thoughts, starlink was incredibly easy to get going and iridium can go rot. It's nice to be in touch with family via phone or video, take some timeout on a windy or wet day at anchor to look at the interwebs. Organize parts etc if required. The guys most upset are the world cruisers who rely on it in some cases for income. Part

Most seem to have roam or roam unlimited , switch to ocean mode offshore and back to roam inshore, say Fiji. Now you have personal maritime instead of roam, but I expect you'll still need to go ocean mode for the passage.

New Personal maritime plan announced for cruisers. Many of the boats I know have switched to Fiji on a roaming plan and that'll get us back to NZ, but this new plan should do the business.

Yes I'm aware of that, I'm posting from the Lau on starlink. My point is that spark and one already have some vestigal satellite coms going now, that's what the ads are about. Ive even heard that there has been some success offshore but I wouldn't trust it yet. And asking a spark employee if the satellite coms will work at sea is like asking a computer sales guy if iPad has GPS. They just say yes because they have no comprehension what so ever of being out of sight of land and cell towers. I'm sure that in a year or two that coverage will expand as they nail down deals with starlink and

Same here, I'm talking about satellite at sea. Reliably.

Competitors are coming, we'll be reliably hot spotting off our phones soon.

There's been a few murmurings about possibly having starlink as primary and emergency coms for IVC, something that is not accepted right now. I'd say that idea has flown the coop because of this. A shame really, it's transformed cruising coms. We'd thought we might just forget the fibre when we got home, just take the mini and use it , but now after this debacle we probably won't. So there's the law of unintended consequence for them , they're going to lose customers on sea and land for a greedy little marine grab and snatch.

That's how NZ is going isn't it.... some pretty amazing deals out there and the ones that aren't meeting the market ain't selling. A local young couple bought a tired but fully fitted out older cruiser for 40 k and left for Fiji in June.

I assumed it was just overdramatised, but you make allowances for that these days. All the self promoters out there with their channels etc. Maybe this guy hit a whale..

Interesting read, thanks for that.

What a deal indeed. Pay the money and 5 days later you're in Fiji.

You don't get empirical evidence unless people discuss it . And eventually after people have tried it and talked about it someone starts a study and lo, it becomes science.

Meanwhile , Altex's new product is held up for a year.. years by mpi or whichever department is supposed to be vetting it.

Great news.

I'm checking each day for updates on the great crew.org motor mystery of the year. I dunno... I would have expected some warning on a bearing issue, noise, clatter, smoke etc. Not a catastrophic stop. How about back to the front and a concertina timing chain jam up? Or that big metal impeller, bits of, doing the same.......( if that's possible)

Geez, I feel for you. It's hard to imagine a hydro lock from idling ,and for it to lock enough to prevent turning both ways it's more than one cylinder. And it's not a rope on the prop. So it sounds mechanical to me, but by your own diagnosis you're well onto it and would see anything obvious like a thrown/ jammed up belt. Maybe drop off the belt anyway and check the water pump and the alternator moves. Best of luck

That's a crappy little survey isn't it. But bring the changes on. While everyone I've spoken to have found the IVC a simple process ,and the inspector I spoke to quashed my concerns , I think it's needs deregulation. At least they have loosened up the underwater inspections and give us a longer period than the old within 60 days departure, and I hear that will be freed up more. And I'd rather put a couple of thousand into the boat equipment than repeating sea survival and med courses we've done twice before but are past their 5 year thresholds.

The people I've spoken to have said it was simple. I don't know yet if there's a list of must haves like the old ynz book.

I agree that the elbow mixer is probably the problem..6 or 7 years is what the modern units seem to last . But no mention of an impeller check? Maybe I missed it but that is the number 1 thing to pull and change.

I wouldn't worry about that, the boatyard is empty because everyone goes to Whangarei , where every boatyard is full and buzzing, businesses doing well etc etc.

How come sense applies in Auckland, where we're free to anchor in infected areas and are asked to simply check our anchors and collect/ dispose, or dump the weed where we found it, yet in the BOI they just close down the anchorages. In other words Auckland has an educational ,reasonable, workable response, Bay of Islands a draconian one. If there was just one success in the Bay, if they just cleared and opened one of the closed anchorages after all this money and all this effort, they'd have support. But they can't even do that. Not one of the areas closed what 2? 3 ? years ago has been o

The barnacles arrived in Opua in 2016 according to the yard guys and other local boaties. Certainly an eye opener for transplanted Westhaven people like moi. We discovered them in 2017 when waiting for two weeks in the marina to depart. There were late cyclones / named storms in the tropics that year. The slime this year in the BOI is different, you're right. ( above post). It does just wipe off but it is fast to arrive.

YNZ decided to abandon cruising yachties , walk away from us and hand us to some understaffed , overworked VTNZ for boats in the form of Maritime NZ. I have no sympathy for YNZ at all , they can rot in hell, this is just another indicator of just how disfunctional that organisation is.

MNZ, shutting down offshore cruising for Kiwi registered boats. 3 months FFS. I suppose they'll want the third crewmember name that Insurance forces you to have as well. The system is broken , this was an opportunity to deregulate the process instead of putting more hurdles in front of us. I tell you what is funny, the old YNZ Cat system was criticized as difficult and yet it was downright holistic and simple compared to these guys.