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Date: 05 Aug 2009 13:30:06
Title: Engine Trouble, Pack Mules and Leaving for Vanuatu - Musket Cove, Malolo Lailai Island, Fiji
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17:46.293S  177:11.565E
 
We left tourist heaven at Denarau Island on August 1st and motored (wind from the wrong direction) about fifteen miles to Musket Cove on Malolo Lailai Island to meet up with the ICA rally fleet for the sail to Vanuatu.  Deja vu for us since we were here with the World ARC rally just thirteen months ago.  Musket Cove is a form of tourist heaven, but minus the glitz of Denarau Island.  Aside from the marina, there is a mooring field and an anchorage area for boaters.  On the island itself are three or four laid-back resorts - all thatch roof bungalow style.  There's one so-so restaurant and no shops aside from one small grocery store.  Most importantly, there is a tiny bar on a tiny island where boaters and vacationers alike can bring their own meat to barbeque on wood fire grills.  All low key and very boater friendly.  This year the marina added wifi making this one of the most desirable places for a boater to hang out in Fiji.  You don't get the full Fiji experience here, but at least it's more real than the manicured and paved Denarau Island.
 
During our motor here Don noticed the engine temperature was running abnormally low.  He also noticed a strange smell and when he lifted the engine room door and climbed down into the noisy and boiling hot hole, he found a collection of water on the floor under the engine.  Water collecting anywhere on a boat is never a good sign so we shut down the engine and drifted while Don investigated.  He determined that sea water was flowing directly into the engine, but wasn't sure why.  Since we were half-way to Musket Cove anyway, we decided to proceed with caution.  The rest of our motoring trip was slow, but our timing was good since we arrived just before high tide, which is about the only time we can get into the marina due to the shallow entrance over the reef.  There are 21 boats in the Fiji to Vanuatu rally so the marina (and the mooring field and the anchorage area) was jammed.  They had two spots left in the marina and we were assigned the smaller one.  This was another Mediterranean style dock - anchor out, back in and tie stern to the dock.  The space was so tight that two marina guys had to get on the boats to either side of us and push them away as we backed in.  A very tight squeeze, but no harm done.  It's a bit like a trailer park though since we can look out our ports directly into our neighbor's ports.  All good until it's time to take a shower.
 
So here we are on yet another dock with Don stuck in the engine hole.  He disassembled the engine cooling system to ensure the heat exchanger was ok.  It seemed fine so that was a relief.  He then attempted to clean the exhaust elbow again, this time with lots of patient help from John (Storyteller).  After five hours or so, a heap of black gunky powder had been forcefully cleaned out of the elbow and Don reinstalled it.  He also repaired a hose that had been leaking.  I think there was also a problem with the sea water pump that Don was able to fix, but it's all a blur to me now and Don is sleeping so I can't ask him to clarify  (we are leaving tomorrow for Vanuatu and as usual, I am trying to catch the blog up before we go).  Anyway, Don got the cooling system all put back together and ran the engine to test it.  It seemed fine and we are pretty sure we'll be ok on the way to Vanuatu (even though it looks like a lot of motoring might be necessary based on the weather forecast).  The good news (or bad news if you are Tracy or Billy) is that our niece and nephew will be meeting us in Vanuatu on the 12th and bringing us a new exhaust elbow and hose.
 
Which brings me to Pack Mules.  It's true that any boater visitor ends of carrying odd bits and pieces of boat parts in their luggage, but the variety of items Billy and Tracy will be hauling half-way around the world to Vanuatu may go above and beyond the normal boater visitor call of duty.  In with their shorts and underwear will be:
2 giant cylinders of Glide dental floss (ok, that's for me and not the boat, but who can live without their favorite brand of dental floss?)
8 water filters
3 capacitors for the washing machine so that hopefully some day soon it will again spin like it did in its youth.
1 toilet base - Our toilet has been used for so long and so often that its base is starting to crack in about 20 different places.  Don's temporary tape repair job is holding, but I don't want to be aboard if and when it blows.
1 exhaust elbow
1 exhaust hose and other related bits and pieces
1 gas grill manifold - this is actually for Lady Kay, but pack mule duty is an equal opportunity mission - all boats requiring repair parts are treated equally.
 
So beware and take note - all you potential boater visitors.  You must be willing to perform pack mule duty if you want to enjoy a taste of the boating life.
 
The rest of our time in Musket Cove has been spent preparing for the four day sail to Oyster Island in Vanuatu.  Don finished all the other routine maintenance, and washed the deck (only because we are on a dock with water, otherwise the deck mainly goes unwashed), I prepared all the frozen casseroles we can look forward to eating along the way and completed all the laundry using the one working washing machine in the marina laundry room (I'm not complaining - it's always a huge plus to do laundry in a machine that is bigger than our own pea-sized version).
 
We did have some time to take a few walks around the island and of course attend most of the rally events including a 'W' theme party for which we all had to dress up as something starting with a w.  We went for warmonger and wrapped old US flags around us with a picture of Dick Cheney pinned to our chests.  A couple of really diehard American republicans (more diehard than Don) really took offense, but we couldn't think of anything else 'w' that could be done with such minimal effort.  One woman dressed up as a water closet.  She dressed in white and wore a toilet seat - the top covering her front and the seat covering her butt.  We thought it was funny - a little toilet humor never hurts.
 
Quite a few of the boats we met in Opua, New Zealand, sailed directly to Fiji and are now here.  They will be joining us on the sail to Vanuatu.  So it's been a bit of a homecoming here in Musket Cove and aside from the engine trouble, very pleasant.
 
Picture 1 - The tight squeeze between us and the 50 foot catamaran next to us.
 
Picture 2 - Don up the mast changing the light bulb on our anchor light and doing a routine check of the rigging.
 
Picture 3 - The Island Bar.
 
Picture 4 - A view of some of the resort bungalows with the marina, mooring field and anchorage area in the background.
 
Picture 5 - The Musket Cove airstrip.  Talk about laid back!  The hard packed sand airstrip separates one resort from another, but the pathway between the two runs right across the runway.  You would barely know there was an airstrip there if it weren't for the windsock and the 'low flying aircraft' warning sign.
 
That's about it for Fiji for us.  We leave tomorrow at 10am and with little or no wind (per the forecast), we calculate a Monday morning (Sunday afternoon for you) arrival in Vanuatu.  That's about four days to travel 600 miles.  There may be some excitement during the trip as there are two lines of squalls that will be passing over the rhumb line from here to there over the next several days.  No high winds are predicted with the exception of 25-30 knots in the squalls.  We don't mind those as long as there is not a lot of lightening.  Lightening is something we are not fond of.  We expect to get wet and to motor a lot.  Other than that, it should be fairly benign as far as ocean passages go.  There will be twenty boats traveling with us, so we certainly will not be alone.
 
Oyster Island in Vanuatu is a place we visited last year.  It is near the coast of the big island of Espiritu Santo in the northern part of Vanuatu.  Our plan is to stay there until a few days after Billy and Tracy arrive, then we will head further north to visit some of our favorite places from last year - including the scene of the Island Fruiting, the water music women of Lakona Bay on Gaua Island and Chief Kerely in his McDonalds uniform in Waterfall Bay on Vanua Lava Island.  After that we will head south to the capital town of Port Vila where Tracy and Billy will leave us.
 
More tomorrow from the high seas (or low seas as the case may be with no wind).
Anne

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