Heading to Ua Pou - maybe tomorrow?? Then onto Tuamotus??
31 May 2012 | Taiohae Bay Still
We hope to be fueled up and on our way to new sites and adventures tomorrow. Our friends from S/V The Rose, John and Pat, returned from Colorado today with our new Shark Shields and fuel filters for the generator. That was very generous of them to pack and drag all of that with them. We hope we can return them a bit of a favor by helping them refuel with our 40 gallon fuel bladders tomorrow so they don't have to med-moor to the cement fuel dock (which is really a loading dock intended for very large vessels.) It can be quite a challenge tying up there with the waves and surge that come through here. So we hope we can get them, and us, all fueled up in the morning and then all be on our way - crossing my fingers, but not getting my hopes up! Especially after yesterday's episode!
We helped Charisma (Bob and Ann) get fuel yesterday using our bladders and fuel pump loaded up in our dink. What was suppose to be maybe a 2 hour task, ended up taking all afternoon (over 4 hours!). Our nifty cool little fuel pump didn't want to pump! So after debugging a broken spring and some sort of stuck valve thingy (thank goodness Bob had a stash of little springs for some other project) - John finally got it up and running. Nothing ever is as easy as it appears!
And all that was after a very busy morning. We pulled up the anchor around 7am and headed out of the bay to make a bit of water and do a some fishing (we ran out of water last night - barely had enough to make coffee in the morning). Once out of the protection of the bay, the wind was kicking up to it's usual 15-17 knots causing a pretty short choppy ride. We fished for awhile, but the generator kept quitting - which we need to run in order to make water. (The generator issue I will save for another blog day). So we decided to head back towards the bay and anchored in a small cove just at the head of the bay where we felt the water was clear, and well our of range of other cruising boats in the anchorage and whatever they might be disposing of. While we were making water we decided to give Orcinius a much overdue bath. We scrubbed our butts off for the next 4 hours using a bit of fresh water with soap, followed by a saltwater rinse. Then John fixed sandwiches for lunch before heading back near our previous anchoring spot, where he spent the remainder of his day attempting his diesel transfer exercise. Oh yeah - and we gave S/V Morning Star another one of our alternators to try as they lost one as well. (Found out today that it is installed and working fine - good for them!) And we still have 3 more alternators in our ships stores!
Last night we had dinner with Bob & Ann, and Bob & Linda from S/V Bright Angel. We dingied to the beach (had an uneventful landing - and relaunch in the dark, which is always appreciated), and hiked up a bit of a hill to the Pearl Lodge and Restaurant. The view was beautiful and the food and company terrific. Bob (from Bright Angel) used to be in the Army National Guard in Washington State, so John and he had a few stories to exchange. It was late when we got back (10:30pm - which is late for a cruiser!), but the freezer was acting up again. So John bled some more gas out of it, and we babysat it for awhile as we tried playing cards to stay awake. It seemed to be freezing up again, so off to bed we went - finally.
Today we hitched a ride with Bob and Ann in their dingy (as ours is still full of fuel bladders and a bit of a diesel mess - to be cleaned tomorrow after the final refueling). We went into town to find the clinic and some elephantitis pills. Elephantitis is still a problem in French Polynesia - and the pills are to be taken after we depart French Polynesia as they are not a preventative, but actually kill the mosquito larvae if present in your system. We found the clinic - a small building which looks like it used to be someones house, with no sign - just walk in through the sliding glass doors and you be there. The pills are free, and how many you take is based on weight. So we got on the scales, and John is happy to report he was easily 178 pounds, and that was after breakfast! I must say he is looking quite dapper these days!
The afternoon has been spent trying to upload new photos to the blog sight, and John has been mucking around with the generator all afternoon. We are too tired of dealing with it to go into details about it tonight - but suffice it to say, John finally got it back up and running after doing some suggested maintenance (so that we can run the dive compressor off of it) - which didn't make a bit of difference in the end after 4 hours of tearing it apart and putting it back together.
So if we depart tomorrow, we will probably be back to uploading mainly blog text only with a single photo via sat-phone. As it will probably be awhile before we find reliable internet again. Hope everyone is doing great! All for now...
P.S. So I am in the middle of uploading a bunch of pictures that I hope to have done before midnight tonight. Sorry so late in coming, but should now be caught up with the different islands we have been visiting over the past few weeks. Hope y'all enjoy!
Lisa