Palikulo Bay, Santo

Dawnbreaker
Lars Alfredson
Tue 1 Oct 2013 05:27

Pos 15:29.39S 167:14.98E

Palikulo Bay

 

Friday 27/9

 

Yesterday evening when running the Generator to charge the batteries, it suddenly stopped. I suspected overheating and after a bit of search found that the fuse to the electric sea water pump, had blown.

I could not find a new fuse so I rapped the old one in tin foil to get the pump going. I turned out that the electric motor of the pump did not spin around at full speed. This pump is only six months old, Anders helped me install it in Papeete, Tahiti. Something has to be done.

 

At 9.00 we are picked up by a dive boat from Santo Divers. Lars Diego,Alice and Tif are going diving on USS President Coolidge.

 

President Coolidge is a luxury liner, turned in to a troop ship in the second world war. She hit a friendly mine and sank near shore on Santo.

We were divided in two dive teams. Diego and Tif as dive instructors were allowed a bit deeper inside the ship and down to 40 meters. Alice and Lars had to do an easier dive but we still came down to 35 meters. We saw Cannons on deck with ammunition, we went into a cargo hold and saw lots of military equipment. when we were back on the dive boat 50 minutes later all of us said “It’s cool to dive on Coolidge”.

 

Back to reality, Lars, Mark and Alice set off in to town in search of a replacement pump for the generator. After visiting every possible place in town we had to give up. We also went back to customs to get our cruising permit. Off course it was not ready and the boss was not in. I ended up filling out a whole new form!

 

Back to Beach Front Hotel we fell into the pool and ordered a cool beer. Sitting in the water drinking beer Mark and I had a “brainstorm”. Mark asked me if I had any other pumps on the boat that we could use. Lightning struck and I called out “The deck wash pump”. Back onboard I soon rerouted the hose from the deck wash pump to the generator. Problem solved (temporarily), when I start the generator I start the deck wash pump and everything works!

 

We celebrated with a nice “boeuf bourguignon” that Tif had cooked for hours. Washed down with a couple of bottles of red.

 

 

Saturday 28/9

 

In the morning we decided it was time to leave the big city (12000) of Luganville and continue north. During WWII Luganville was a big US base for the battle of the Pacific. Almost 500000 US soldiers were stationed here. When the war ended there was wast amounts of equipment left over. In the end the americans dumped all this stuff in the sea at a place that is now called “Million dollar Point”.

 

Leaving Luganville we passed this point after about an hour. We then decided to go snorkeling and look at some of this stuff. It was not possible to anchor but Mark volontered to look after the boat while the rest of us went snorkeling.

 

We spent some time loking at heaps of dumped stuff. Interesting but not as cool as the Coolidge. We continued for a couple of hours until we reached a bay called Palikulo Bay in time for lunch and an afternoon of swimming and snorkeling. 

 

Lars.