It's a Long Shot II

We are stern tied to the wharf alongside fellow Canucks on Sarah Jean II, enjoying the hot sticky heat that we have missed since leaving the tropics. The laid back and super friendly Cook Island hospitality is strong and evident at every turn. We wandered the main town, drinking 750ml Steinlagers/kids eating ice cream, as we cruised the streets and then realized we were out of town after five minutes. Long Shot II is in a tiny little harbour exposed to the North but with no winds in the forecast from that direction we should be good. We had a long list of choirs to accomplish today before we start being tourists. We began with laundry. Shouldn't be a big deal and normally it isn't but thanks to a new leak, the boy's entire closest of clean clothes was soaked with salt water. We were told that the local laundry was expensive and definitely not worth it so we had a laundry brigade ashore with all five of us involved. Once the boat was looking like a garage sale with clothes strung every which way (no pesty Marina rules here!) Doug's only concern was that we would have a knock down if the wind came up with all the cloth we were flying.

Fuel truck arrived and the fuel Nazi vetoed the fuel hose they wanted to use. "No Problem," they said and went to wash the hose and come back. They are very good natured people and always happy to please. We loaded our Duty Free fuel ($1.80NZ/litre) and carried onto the next task. With half the crew cleaning out the inside of the boat, the other half took on the task of finding this new leak. Any boat owner is familiar with leaks - you can't get away from it. If your boat doesn't leak, it's never been offshore. The problem is tracking the leak. For example we never had this darn leak before but we never had 40 degrees of heel with 20 cm of standing water on our side decks for hours on end. Doug tracked the leak back to our fairlead (hole in the side of the boat where we pass the ropes to tie to the dock) and it looks like we just may have it licked. Amazing that water can go up under the bronze fitting, down between two layers of fibreglass, cruise down along these layers of fibreglass until the water finds an opening into the interior of the boat. There was a fair amount of Farmer Ingenuity at work today as I watched Fatboy attack a water fill fitting to seal it. He's definitely not afraid of ripping things apart and getting it all done. It all looked really good when he was finished and we'll have to go after the remaining fairleads just to be sure, but sounds like we have time.

Big low pressure (that's an understatement actually) down south which will cause 5.5m seas a couple days after we want to leave. Fatboy says, "NO!" It's easy to get him to go through that when we don't know they are coming but when you do? Nope - Steinlagers on the beach win everytime.