Toiling in Tahiti

La Orana! 

I think all you can say about this week is that we have made the most of our time at the marina! It’s been a bit of a slog but satisfying too in a hard work sort of Presbyterian way! Highlights have been seeing turtles and manta rays in the harbour around the boats but otherwise its been work, work, work!

Manta Ray in the marina

Super Yachts moored up

 The week started with hiring a car to take Duncan to the airport and then, to distract us, doing a lot of shopping - two of my least favourite things. It was tough saying goodbye and tough wandering around shops making decisions on what to buy. I won’t bore you with the list, but highlights include  squirreling away loads of water and heavy tinned and dried foods for those longer passages, buying a printer to simplify the next phase of our very complicated visa application (Thank you Brexit) and most importantly finally deciding on a washing machine. The excitement of that washing machine! It is the tiny gift that keeps giving! 2.5kg per wash and 1.25kg per spin. A compact white plastic twin tube that doesn’t drain the battery, is effortless to carry and comes with big blue buttons and little white hoses- I feel like I’m playing “wash day” in nursery school again!! I can honestly say it has made my week. To get a machine plumbed in would have come at a huge cost to both our pockets and to our available boat space so this little toy one seems like the ideal compromise. The 3-month guarantee may not be worth the paper it is written on but ironically is for a month longer than our new boat batteries which cost at least 6 times as much!! 

In all her glory

It turns out it's quite hard to take a selfie with a washing machine!

After the excitement of washing T shirts for a couple of days, events took a slight nosedive with our continuing alternator issues. For two days we tried every conceivable combination of wiring with the new alternator, but it seems that on the port side we cannot get it to charge the starter battery and hence to show any revs on the rev counter. It’s not a showstopper as the starboard battery can charge the port side up but it is very frustrating so if there is anyone out there with any ideas, please share them now. We have yet another engineer on board this morning to see if they can shed any light but I don’t think either of us is holding our breaths. It is a complete mystery. *

More successful were our efforts to get me up the mast and repair the lazy jacks which are the ropes holding up the mainsail bag. Not surprisingly I had been dreading this. On mono-hulls the tiniest ripple on the surface gets amplified by the height of the mast into quite a big swing at the top, leaving me clinging on like a frightened koala. On Papillon it was different- much more stable. Even a passing dinghy going at top speed didn’t have much of an effect. I’m ashamed to say it didn’t stop me shouting and gesticulating wildly at the driver to slow down but the only person to look like an idiot was actually me!!  

up the mast

So like all jobs, the one you are dreading the most doesn’t necessarily turn out to be the longest or the most difficult. Indeed it was those ones optimistically included in my “quick jobs” list that caused the most pain. Sticking a flat backed rowlock onto the curved face of the dinghy proved to be virtually impossible and replacing the spinlock clutch when we had no access to the space below an exercise in thinking out of the box.  

Unsuccessful sticking job on the rowlock

Finally getting the Spinlock in place

Probably the most satisfying job of the week was finally removing the out of date life raft from the cockpit as our brand-new piece of kit had arrived from New Zealand.  If we were at home an old life raft would be offered back to a local training centre but out here no such places exist so the problem of disposal was up to us. The highly pressurised CO2 cylinder that automatically inflates the raft when it hits the water means that the only safe route really is to chuck the thing over the side and let the cylinder do its job. As neither of us had ever watched a life raft inflate in the water this proved to be a great exercise. With the gas whooshing out the raft took less than a minute to inflate. It was comforting to know that the mechanism actually worked and very impressive to see in action. Perhaps not surprisingly an audience quickly gathered. It seems that we are not the only cruisers that have never observed a life raft inflating! The sailors wanted to know exactly what it contained and how it was all arranged, their children wanted to play houses inside. It was all very companionable! The rest of the morning was spent sorting out the contents and keeping everything we could use again. The most telling items given the bobbing motion of these things, were the seasickness tablets and vomit bags but the more useful contents included some of the first aid equipment and medicines, a radar reflector, rubber patches and glue to repair leaks, a fishing line , flares, water bags, torches, light reflectors and even Norwegian dried meal packs (which I hope we never have to use!) All have been kept. In fact by the time, I had removed the bottom to keep as an old tarpaulin and the canvas roof for repairs there wasn’t much left of that old life raft and we didn’t feel too guilty lobbing it into the skip. 

New life raft installed

Old life raft inflated

Chatting to our fellow berth holders over the life-raft we learnt that rats have been a problem at the marina. One of our neighbours had had their toilet hosing chewed through. He showed me some gory examples of rat tooth marks in pieces of mangled hose. It was grim. Rats have been one of our worst nightmares since starting this journey so knowing they were so close was sobering. The afternoon was spent rat proofing our mooring lines. I attach a photo of my efforts and welcome any improvement suggestions. After this week I have to say that my CV at the end of this adventure is going to look very different from that at the beginning! If successful, “Rat Proofer” will be in pride of place in the accomplishments section!

Contents of the life raft

Rat proofing at the marina

* as I post this I just wanted to share that the electrics are no longer a complete mystery and the engineer from yesterday has (finally) sorted us out...even Skipper believes his explanation so all is well on board!