On-going maintenance

It's now the morning of a very wet 16th. Jan. here in Bundaberg. Unfortunately it means that our re-caulking has come to a temporary end but we are hoping that there is an improvement in the next couple of days to allow us to do another 1 or 2 deck seams before we leave for NZ in a week's time.

The re-caulking is a bit of a business. The process is first using our Fein Multimaster power tool with a custom made U shaped attachment specially designed for cutting out the old caulking material. This saves hours of work compared with the old method of scratching the old caulking out by hand. Then it is necessary to hand sand the seam (about 5mm wide by 5mm deep) to clean up the sides and bottom. Then both sides of the seam on the deck need to be masked to protect the deck from excess caulking overflowing the seam. Then the seam must be sealed with a special primer - $50/ 250ml. bottle!! Then (usually the next day) the new caulking (a black rubberised compound and very potentially messy!!) is placed in the seam via a cartridge held in a gun which squeezes the stuff out of the nozzle. As the black stuff sqeezes into the seam it is then necessary to knife off the top surface so that a nice smooth surface flush with the deck is the end result. Hence the need for masking as otherwise there would be an unholy black mess all over the decks. Once the new caulking has sufficiently gone off after 6 or 7 hours the masking is then removed to reveal a smooth pristine and waterproof deck seam!! We are getting more and more proficient as the hours of practice continue.

We are looking forward to our upcoming travel. We leave Bundaberg next Monday at 1015 by Queensland Rail's tilt train which as its name implies tilts on corners to counter the effects of cornering. It's about 4 hours to Brisbane, then we catch a suburban train to the airport (about half an hour). NZ should learn a lesson from the Australian passenger trains which are well patronised because they offer such a convenient and comfortable service. We'll tell you all about it after the experience.

Then we fly by Virgin (code sharing with Air NZ) to Auckland arriving just after midnight on the 24th. Our Whangarei friends, Hamish and Sara will be in Auckland at the time and have very kindly offered to pick us up from the airport and drive us straight to Whangarei in the early hours. Then after a bit of tiong and froing between Whangarei and Auckland, we hope to fly to Christchurch to see Charlotte before flying from there back to Brisbane and some more train travel! Should be back in Bundy sometime around mid February and more deck caulking!!

Cheers from us and here's hoping all is well

Jim and Gina (Jean)