Bora Bora continued...
Juffa
Bill and Caroline
Thu 22 Aug 2013 00:40
The wind generator has been dismantled, again, and bits moved around to help it fulfil its generating function, but all in vain. At the moment it still has its own eccentric cycle of whizzing and stopping with very little power production. We are now, however, in possession of a petrol generator (bought for a very reasonable price and a bottle of rum) which will hopefully fill in any power gaps should they occur. Now a lead has been made that fits the european generator socket we are very hopeful that it will become a useful (if noisy) part of our power support systems.
On another good note, the sat phone/email nightmare that has caused untold hours of despair where signals drop out, emails disappear and weather forecasts never materialise seems to have been solved by the use of a different email compression service. So far all is going well but knowing our particular strength has not been electronics, we are not counting our chickens too soon.
Cooking gas bottles have been filled from the Tahiti Gas bottle that we borrowed from a kindly cruiser. This involves many hours of gassy boat, bottles suspended from the boom, epoxy spills while bottles are 'adapted' to keep the gas in them and many trips to the ship chandlers to try and find alternative and more effective adapters. The good news is that we now have enough gas on board to continue our quest west.
The outboard engine propellor that had become a small problem when going faster than a snail has been replaced in amazingly quick time with the unbelievable within 2 days of ordering and our journey distance can now be extended beyond 200m in a couple of hours. A very helpful improvement as we leave the Society Islands where boat trips take resort tourists to visit and feed sharks and sting rays. These black tip sharks and sting rays now congregate around dinghies expecting to be fed - 30 sharks circling and mingling with dozens of rays and you are grateful for a propeller that works.
The supermarket has once again beckoned as stocks are built up for the next stage of the journey. As we are still in French Polynesia there is still the plethora of pates, soft cheeses, baguettes and Bon Maman jams to choose from alongside the essentials of bread flour, beans, tinned veg and of course corned beef. Happily once out of FP our bonded or customs sealed wine store will be liberated - so the delightful thought of Clos is something to look forward to once we reach landfall in Tonga (NB. Clos is the 'best value' Panamanian boxed wine, and frankly an acquired taste, which many have worked hard to acquire).