Friday 12^th September.  And, Relax . . . Change of Plan

Carol saw the doc, who was not too perturbed by the symptoms.  She prescribed some pills to tackle the immediate problem as well as an anti-emetic to be taken before we next set off to sea.  After a day or two Carol began to feel normal again.

The stand-in electric bilge pump has been replaced with a new and more robust pump than the original one (I suggest that if anyone tells you an electric pump is the latest technology, is highly suitable as a bilge pump but needs a ‘Pump-Gard’ or other such filter/strainer, in the line between it and the source of the water it is pumping, you ignore the guff and go lower tech, lower price and higher reliability).  Meanwhile, the two manual bilge pumps have been taken out of the boat for a thorough overhaul.  Like many bits of essential yacht equipment these are extremely difficult to access.  They were put there by boat builders rather than boat maintainers.  Anyway, we can now see what the problem with them was– aluminium corrosion, preventing the inlet and outlet flap valves from closing properly – and no amount of in-situ maintenance would have solved that problem.  Off they have gone for bead-blasting, etch-priming and two-pot painting before the rubber diaphragms and valve flaps are replaced.  Then they will be as good as new.  (Dep Ed- Oh that my oesophagus and pyloric sphincter could be sorted as easily!)

With one thing and another we’ve decided to call it a day for this season.  We are not going to batter our way to Fiji only to have to come back something like 6 weeks later.  So, we will take the boat out of the water in Opua, return to the UK in early October and come back in something like late January or early February.  That’s high summer in NZ and we will probably do a bit of local sailing and touring by car before we leave NZ for the Tropics.  We cannot do that sensibly before about May.

That probably means that we miss seeing several very good American chums who are currently in Fiji (anchored precisely where we wanted to be!) and who will not be back in NZ until at least November.  Really sorry, guys, but we very much hope to catch up with y’all in the New Year.  Meanwhile, you have a Happy Holidays – we’re off for Christmas!