Port Vila
NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Thu 14 Oct 2004 01:35
PORT VILA
an extended
stay!
Port Vila
14th October 2004
A few days after I wrote the last webdiary we found
ourselves setting out in bright sunshine and with a good forecast for
Noumea. One mile later the engine note changed and water ceased to come
out of the exhaust. Short tacking back to the anchorage we were met by one
of the local launches and rather ignominiously put on the mooring we had left so
happily an hour before.
It turned out that the join of the external raw
water pump to the engine had worn so badly it was not working at all. I
had actually discovered this before our return and thus realised to go on was
possible but not very sensible. This pump was serviced in New Zealand last
winter and had been put back by the engineer without being lined up
correctly. We had joined a very long list of yachts that have not found
the New Zealand workmanship to be all that it is cracked up to be.
A few days went by and the pump shaft and
engine 'dog' were made good with weld and the whole has been
reinstalled. Testing has shown all is well, at least at the moment.
Actually we found a really conscientious engineer who was very thorough
and taught me to listen to the various bits of the engine with a
stethoscope. Prevention is a lot easier and cheaper than a
breakdown is his philosophy. He also introduced me to a laser gun
that when the trigger is pulled gives the exact temperature of wherever the
laser red dot is on. Rather like a
sophisticated lecturer's laser pointer. This instrument shows no
hot spot under the casing of the pump where the join is so we hope for the
best.
While all this was going on we missed a weather
window and grey wet humid weather arrived here as the South
Pacific Convergence Zone, SPCZ, has decided to come south early and sit
over the Solomon's, Vanuatu and Fiji. Noumea where we had intended to be
is just south of it and in the sunshine.
The wind is stubbornly in the SE at 25 gusting 27 knots and our course is
SSE! Thus we stay put and are catching up on our film going as there is a
very good DVD hire place here.
Well as the sage says 'if you can't take a joke
then you shouldn't have joined'. The joke, otherwise known as this
season's weather, is wearing a bit thin. Scotland is a place of drought
compared to our destinations this year. So I finish this by saying that we
are planning on leaving here directly for New Zealnd tomorrow or
perhaps Saturday when the wind is due to be 20 to 25 knots and more in the
ESE. Nordlys and her crew are looking forward to our arrival in
Opua New Zealand which as I write is some 1100 miles away. Many
of you reading this will be being lashed by autumnal gales and we wish you all
safe passages, even if they are behind the wheel of a speeding car going over
wet and windswept tarmac.
Happy times
David and
Annette