Post Tahiti

Vega
Hugh and Annie
Tue 8 Aug 2017 18:14

Needless to say the almost three weeks of home alone in Papeete ended up as a last minute rush to get all the allocated maintenance tasks finished. I did finish the metalwork and can honestly say it (mostly) looks as good as the day it was fitted. I started polishing the hull and coachroof but ran out of time and cheated by cleaning and polishing the blue stripes that looked quite faded. This was enough to deceive people into thinking I had done the whole thing and so was a minor success. We are now moving around the Society Islands and it really is tropical paradise. However, this time I have much more interesting and exciting things to write about!

With the help of Ian from Nautilus I removed the slider mounted block for the reefing line in the boom (and hence cured the twist or friction that was making the sail so difficult to hoist when letting out the reef). This means that there is now a genuinely single line system in place for the second reef of the mainsail with one line from the cockpit through a block on the luff and then down through the boom and out to the leach. I cannot understand the point of a sliding block within the boom that has one line to the leech of the mainsail attached to it, the block being pulled towards the front of the boom when reefing by the line from the cockpit to the luff that runs down the boom and back through the block before being tied off on the luff. I can see it would give more purchase to tighten the leech of the mainsail but if the mainsail is lowered to the point we have marked on the halyard as it comes back to the cockpit the reef can now be tightened by hand with maybe just a final tweak on the winch. No doubt we will discover the reason when next reefing in a force 8 gale.

The 'famous' Point Venus was a disappointment. Cook's stay there was only commemorated after an English visitor berated the locals for not having done so. Bligh's visit in the Bounty gets much greater recognition. The site of Cook's 'fort' is being turned into an extended car park, the river has been canalised and the anchorage is now marked by a number of large inflated water toys. All rather disappointing and enough to dispel any thought of anchoring there ourselves.

When raising or lowering the anchor it usually swivels the wrong way round, either for grabbing the seabed or for stowing back in the bow. We had to twist the chain to get the anchor round the right way for stowing. Idly perusing all the exciting things in a Papeete chandlery I came across an anchor swivel. In fact two versions of an anchor swivel, one that just allows the anchor to swivel without twisting the chain and one with an additional joint that also allows the chain to pull to one side without bending the swivel. Perfect I thought as I invested in the more sophisticated of the two. I was advised to keep two or three chain links between the anchor and the new swivel but, on the basis the extra joint was clearly designed to avoid this, attached the swivel directly to the anchor. In Huahine we had trouble getting the anchor to set because it kept fouling lumps of rock. We were offered a mooring by a departing yacht and when raising the anchor it was easy to swivel around the right way with a boat hook for stowage and so we counted the new swivel a success. That is until we looked more closely and saw that the jaw of the swivel on either side of the shaft of the anchor had been bent when the anchor had fouled a rock. It required the largest shackle we had to create the equivalent of a few chain links between the anchor and the new swivel but which seemed to work perfectly - until the shackle jammed in the opening in the bow through which the chain runs into the chain locker. I managed to buy a slightly smaller shackle yesterday so we hope all this new metalwork between the chain and the anchor now does the job.

I was relaying our anchor twisting experience to another yachtie in Huahine when he pointed out that this is a common problem caused by the forward motion of the boat. The shape of the anchor means it acts like a scoop in the water and will always be pulled around with the 'scoop' facing the direction of travel. Now, many of you will of course be wondering how anyone can have owned a boat for six years and not worked out why an anchor swivels. Well, they can is all I can say. The solution is to go into reverse before lowering or lifting the anchor from the water. This morning when setting the anchor the water was clear enough to watch the anchor down to the bottom. Before it hit the bottom we had gone into reverse (as we normally do) and lo and behold the anchor swivelled around to face the right way and it dug straight into the sand!

Another issue that reappeared in Huahine was a loud 'clunk' when we engaged forward gear and a 'knocking' when in reverse. Fearing a reoccurrence of the shaft alignment problem encountered by the the yard in Grenada, a loose stern tube and consequent leak or the prop falling off I emailed a yard on Raiatea to see if they could investigate. At the same time the windlass stopped working in 'down' mode but at least would raise the anchor. The boat was falling apart. Not having an engineering background I don't always see the obvious or have the confidence to know that you don't actually have to be an engineer to fix things. As it happens Rito on SheSan is an engineer and is not fazed by electrical issues. We soon had the solenoid on the windlass apart, the connections cleaned up, everything reassembled and the chain going up and down as normal.

The 'clunk' was equally easy to identify as it turned out. I had been told that if you can hear a noise from the cockpit it is likely to be from somewhere on the outside of the hull and even I had suspected something to do with the folding prop. A combination of Annie and I diving down to look and Ian from Nautilus observing matters with his scuba gear on confirmed that when forward gear is engaged the prop blades fly open so quickly it makes a clunk when they bang into place. The blades open much more slowly in reverse and don't clunk into place. The knocking is the rope cutter blades rubbing against each other which they only do when in reverse. As it happens on the two occasions we have had a line around the prop (both self inflicted) we have been in reverse. We'll get the blade alignment checked out in NZ.

In Panama we met a catamaran from the US called Tanda Malaika with Danny, Belinda and four teenage children on board. They had sold their house, bought the boat and set off on their adventure. Our paths crossed and they were on the pontoon behind Vega in Papeete. Two daughters, Jude and Mycah, helped me with the metalwork. On the journey from Moorea to Huahine they arrived in the dark and, relying on their chartplotter, sailed Tanda Malaika onto the reef and had to be airlifted off by helicopter. Their misfortune was compounded by not having been able to put insurance in place. There is a detailed account on their Facebook site. It was prohibitively expensive to get Tanda Malaika towed off the reef and to Raiatea for repair so the boat was stripped of everything salvageable ahead of being pulled off and sunk. A salutary tale because we all make mistakes and this is a stark reminder of how catastrophic the consequences can be. Danny and Belinda plan to live in Indonesia until they can buy another boat to continue their adventure and we wish them well.


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