Richards Bay South Africa Archives

LATEST ADDITIONS TO BRICK HOUSE

Brick House is in the Boatyard now… There is a lot of hardcore work going on…There is surprisingly a lot of great companies and products here for many of the upgrades we have needed to do to the boat. Custom upgrades will be the name of the game for at least the first half of this haul out…until we start getting ready for our next Ocean. But that’s jumping ahead…Here us what we have upgraded this year so far…2019…

July 2019 – Maggi Chain USA This was a long time coming. Our chain was over 25 years old, and after regalvanizing it twice it Was truly a scary pile of rusty chain. We were losing confidence in it, but I all we could find in SE Asia was unproven chain made in China. So we decided to wait until South Africa. We just could not trust it despite many local cruisers singing praises about how it lasts at least 3 years in not always so windy SE Asia!

In China, chain can be good, but it can be really really bad too due to a lack of quality control and unless you have YOUR run tested, you just don’t know for sure what you have. We needed American or European made chain if we didn’t want to be replacing chain in a way too short 3-4 years, and we needed to be very sure of what we were going to get! To me, new chain looks all the same…it’s what it does and the physics involved that are important, and We need to go with reputation for quality…hence Maggi.

Before reaching S Africa we ordered a barrel of Maggi chain in the USA, who imports the chain from Italy where it is made, and had it delivered to South Africa. Yes…we went a round about way to get the best quality chain we could possibly find, but this is cheap insurance, since what our boat hangs on with, is worth being very careful about. Consistent quality control was what we are after, and are pleased to finally have new chain. We will sleep much better now during a big blow, because we are very sure we have the very best anchor chain!

This Company is Florida was a pleasure to work with…but the delivery by ship was a little slow, which I suppose is to be expected….but it was worth the wait to get the Cadillac of Anchor chain!

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July 2019 – Navionics Platinum + We have always used Navionics charts…since we left 12 years ago. We have found them to be very reliable and accurate. They add new cool features so frequently that there have been very few years where I wasn’t pretty stoked about a new feature they added. This year is no exception. The Platinum Plus Charts are actually not new and they are tried and true…we just haven’t been able to afford them and they have not been available in the oceans we have recently sailed. There is a good sale on them right now, and as we prepare to go off to South America at the end of this year, and we needed charts anyways, we got the Platinum + Navionics Charts for South America, instead of the usual basic versions. They include satellite imagery/photography available right on our Raymarine chartplotter, among many other things. The thought of having the satellite charts right on our Raymarine chartplotter is amazing to me, and I can’t wait to get a good look at it all! Technology is finally evolving very quickly in the yachting industry, and Navionics as usual is on the forefront.

We also got a C-MAP chart chip for the same area, all on just one chip, simply because we like to be overcautious and have the best charts we can get, not just the best 1 Chart. It’s always good to have redundancy and 2 “votes” of what the underwater topography really is. If Navionics and C-Maps both agree, that’s a good sign. If they differ…we take the most conservative vote until we get local knowledge. We feel well prepared having the 2 heavy hitters nautical charts on our chartplotter!

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June 2019 – Richards Bay, South Africa is turning out to be a real treasure of a place to work on one’s boat. We managed to find a South African company called AMT Composites.

Not only did the technical professional staff there discuss our project over the phone for more than an hour to be sure we got what we needed, but they were able to quickly deliver all of the high quality materials, free of charge, right to our boat within days of paying!

To be honest, we did initially buy some not so great resin here locally..so buyer beware…go right to AMT Composites to get it right on the first try!

After our first resin purchase blunder, we started checking with the local contractors here. They ALL pointed us to AMT if we wanted quality materials. AMT Composites imports the best products from all over the world, including Gurit resin, hardener, filler and other materials which are as good if not better than West System, and more affordable! They had every thing we needed including Peelply to paintbrushes. Patrick is happily rolling in fiberglass, fixing decking, hull, keel, and other. Happier than a pig in sh**! Our boat will soon be stronger than ever!

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An earlier recommendation that I made is still working very well here in S Africa. They are the ONLY packages that arrive without hassle: