Hotel California

On the hard at Lawrie's Boatyard

On 18 Jan we lifted Harlequin at Lawrie’s Boatyard in Minyama for her annual anti-foul. Well, David (‘The Bosun’) & Mark did; Jim & Sue were bumped off their flight and delayed in Hong Kong for 24 hrs as a result.

Mark, a local Ozzy living on the Gold Coast, had volunteered to help out whilst acting as reserve for the Tasman crossing crew, and became such a valuable assistant he was promoted to ‘First Bosun’s Mate’, giving the windlass a long overdue strip-down & overhaul, amongst other jobs.

The Bosun & Mini-me

Other Tasman crew soon arrived to help out: Yann (another Frenchie!), Matt G (Ozzy from Adelaide), Matt C (a world-travelling Yank), Tiny (our tame Viking) and Rod (another Ozzy reserve from Gold Coast) all rocked up & pitched in, sanding & painting the hull, then cutting & polishing the top-sides. Harlequin was soon looking her best again!

Keel & rudder work

Meanwhile a long list of other pre-Tasman jobs was slowly ticked off, including servicing all the zincs & through-hulls, fixing the wind instruments, fitting a Dynaplate and a pipe-berth in the saloon, extending the trysail track, and a gearbox clutch rebuild by David.

Bloody gearbox...

This didn’t go quite as smoothly, and it eventually became apparent we were going to have to get the professionals in.

A call to Dolphin Marine in nearby Buderim had Roger, a gearbox specialist, over the next day (Thursday) to remove the clutch assembly again for bench-testing. Result: we would need some different sized shims (due to the earlier replacement of the thrust bearings by David) which would have to be sent up from Sydney. Slowly.

Hull's looking good...

The ‘overnight’ courier service wasn’t, resulting in the job dragging on through the long Australia Day weekend. Of course – should have seen that one coming. Meanwhile, Harlequin was returned to the water, only to sit power-less at Lawrie’s service dock in the rain.

Yes, ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald had arrived, and the Sunshine Coast suddenly wasn’t that sunny any more. Flooding prevailed: roads were closed, bridges out, power lines down, villages cut off, cats & dogs living together. All the while, not knowing when we might have a serviceable gearbox again to get us to Scarborough for our CIQ departure clearance.

Riveting work

Tuesday finally arrived and so did Roger, with our rebuilt clutch assembly. In it went, back went the engine to re-couple, a quick test – and, she worked! With a very sweet ‘new’ sound to the gearbox too.

Right – game on! All hands to provisioning (for a nuclear winter, it seemed!) and we’d depart the next morning on the high tide necessary to clear both the shallow canal at Lawrie’s and the Mooloolaba bar.

Waterfront froth

Frothy breakers

And there was the second problem. The storm surge and massive swells from ex-TC Oswald had closed the Mooloolaba harbour-mouth for the past week. No-one knew where the bar might have been moved to, or how deep it might be. It is usually dredged almost continuously to keep it open, but the dredger itself had been smashed in the storms.

Approaching the harbour-mouth

Mooloolaba Harbour

Advice from the Coastguard was, of course, don’t try it. But we had a schedule to recover, so after several hours watching the mouth from the eastern groyne, and seeing the pilot-boat, a trawler and a large commercial multi-hull all managing to time their entry or exit through (or between) the breakers, we decided to give it a go.

If we didn't like the look of it, there was a sheltered spot just west of the harbour-mouth where we could throw a quick 180 and return for another night.

Long story short, we were lucky: spotting a lull between breakers, we cleared the bar in a sharp ‘S’ to the west, and – finally – we were on our way to Scarborough.

We now refer to Lawrie’s Boatyard as ‘Hotel California’ - you can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!

Or so it seemed for a while there…!

Sue seeing us off

Ducked that one - just!

And we're clear...