Palikulo Bay, Santo
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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. |