Can’t remember if we said, but the very last job we were trying to do before getting away from Tahiti was fixing the water-maker. In fact, it was a fairly essential job to allow us to get away, as there is precious little fresh water available in the Tuamotus.

The problem was a small crack in a thermoplastic block in the heart of the unit, and the leak from this was slowly getting worse; we really did not want to head off into the boonies with the potential of a water-maker failure looming. We had been waiting on a spare part to arrive from the manufacturers, EcoSistem in Spain. That part arrived on Tuesday, so G dinghied into Taina to collect it, and we headed into Marina Papeete, to do the job with a stable platform and access to tool shops.

The manual suggests that dismantling the unit is relatively easy, so we had allocated two to three hours to do the job. Our first road-block came when we could not get the black end caps off the pump section. G tried, the boat next door tried, the local water-maker company tried – no joy. They should just unscrew so if heavy-duty wrenches won’t work, something’s not right. End of day one, and G was very despondent.

Day two dawned, and new ideas came to mind. The basic issue was that the black plastic caps screwed inside the stainless steel cylinders were stuck, and would not unscrew. But why? We checked out the expansion coefficient of steel versus thermoplastic (think jam jar lids). Plastic expands and contracts a lot more than steel per degree of temperature change. We realised that in our ambient temperature of 32 degrees C here, the plastic had expanded into the steel to lock it fast. G begged a bucket of ice at the fish market, and through the appliance of science we submerged the pump for a while. The plastic caps obligingly shrunk more than the steel tubes and hey presto! the end caps came spinning off. Thereafter the job was relatively quick - the failed component was replaced as well as a few internal seals, all were reassembled and we were quickly back in action. Starting to do your own water-maker surgery is a bit of a red line when it comes to boat maintenance, and it’s good to have crossed that one.

So that was the last job on the list. We are now planning our escape for the Tuamotus on Monday or Tuesday, when the winds are set to swing in our favour. We have applied for our inter island sailing clearance, done most of the provisioning and are just starting to do the final boat prep.