In this episodes of Sailing Nandji, it is time to do some investigation work. After our little reef incident earlier in the year, we have discovered a few under lying issues that have been coming too light. One of those being the cutlass bearing wore rapidly and needs replacing.
Since we have a Sigma drive, the alignment is all okay and therefore I think Nandji has a bent shaft. To find this out I must pull apart the entire drive system of Nandji to find out. This involves removing the rudder, releasing the sigma drive, removing the shaft and then taking off the prop so the shaft can be put in a lathe to see how bad it is…
With no sailing experience, we bought a yacht, got it blue water cruising ready and set off from Australia sailing to the Pacific! We have since cruised through New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon islands, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and then onto the boat yard in Malaysia to prepare for the years to come.
With a new engine, we continued onto Thailand, then back down into Indonesia and specifically West Sumatra to live the island life and chase the surf. With our Sailing plans changing, we returned to Thailand to wait for the weather and begin our journey to the northern route of the Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka before heading south across the Indian Ocean once cyclone season has finished and the trade winds begin!
We were on our shake down sail when the mooring we were on failed and our home ended up on the reef. We saved the old girl and got her back to the boat yard for repairs to continue on our adventure! Ready to sail across the Indian Ocean, we were only days away from leaving when the pandemic begun closing countries around us… We are stuck for now, but enjoying the slower pace! We departed the east coast of Australia in July 2017 and have since sailed over 10000nm offshore.
We have explored some amazing countries and met some beautiful people along the way. We have experienced so many different and diverse cultures, dived pristine reefs, surfed solo in the middle of nowhere, spent weeks at sea, dealt with storms, big waves, strong winds and had the time of our lives doing it! The adventure is just beginning as we sail West with the trades around the World!
Watch Sailing Nandi’s previous episode