The day that I’ve worked to reach is here. I’m sitting on Wings for the last time. The fan is providing a bit of cool, but it’s sticky and hot otherwise. I’ve said my farewells to the crew here at the Carenage and my two friends, Giovanni (Joe) from Rome, and Joshua from Valdez.

Joe’s been here because of engine woes. In his classic words, “Sailboat problems are engine problems!”, and he’s correct. A sailing rig problem is simply rare: it’s those damned engines! His engine wouldn’t start this year. He learned later that a stud holding his head gasket had failed, that allowed the head gasket to fail, and that allowed coolant into his #1 cylinder, seizing the piston to the cylinder walls. He had to remove his engine and finally was able to coax the piston to move, and then two injectors failed. The engine is an Italian Vetus, using a Mitsubishi block. Could he find two Mitsubishi injectors on Raiatea? The Carenage owner’s son, Nicholas, extracted two from a junk engine that was sitting around and said, “Try these.” He did, and they worked! Crazy! In the ensuing celebration last night, Joe bought dinner for Josh and me. In our discussions on single-handing, Joshua, the Alaskan, admitted that he didn’t use a tether to move around on his boat. Joe and I coaxed him into at least trying it, and I donated one of our double-headed tethers to make the movement a bit easier for him. I think that he’ll start using it, or at least we hope that it does. There are many ways of watching one’s death, but watching one’s sailboat sail away is ways that I do NOT wish to go.

I checked out of the Hotel Hinano, I drove Josh and Joe into town to buy starter batteries so that they wouldn’t have to carry them by hand all that way, and got some cash changed for smaller denominations. When I arrive in Papeete this afternoon, I’ve got to quickly hire a taxi from the airport to the Marina de Papeete to fetch my lift pump. On return, I get to wait until Friday morning to complete my check in for the flight to LA. I have some time in LA, then fly non-stop to Anchorage. My sweetie will fetch me at the airport. She’ll barely get me home before she’s off to Seward to helm the (hopefully) winning racer in the all-women, Rumdoodle race this weekend.

Yesterday, I assumed by my To-Do List that I’d be off the boat early and be able to tour the island or something, but I had to track down a power problem. The electrical system here at the Carenage is decent, but the cords and such that they use are cobbled together and are not marine grade. That means that they get shorted when it rains, and that causes huge power problems. To track why I had no power I had to make a circuit change then walk back to the shop to check the breaker. I must have made 20 round trips! I had purchased and installed a French marine plug and spliced it onto an old power cord. The US uses 110 VAC, and here it’s 220 VAC, so our wire is much larger than they need or use. At any rate, the over-sized wire caused a water leak in the plug that shorted out the plug and almost melted it! I had to disassemble the plug, dry and clean it, and then re-install it. That helped, but the final problem was a damaged splice in my power cord. The splice in the neutral wire had an intermittent failure, and they’re SO difficult to track! I was in despair to find the problem and get OFF THE BOAT! I found the fault by running a continuity test on the cord, wire by wire. The continuity failed on the neutral, luckily, and I was able to remove the old splice and re-crimp a new one, taped the pieces for waterproofness, and I was in business. I didn’t leave until 1500. On the way back to the room I bought two Oranginas and a large Hinano, consumed them all, and took a long nap.

So, here I am at the end of this leg. Leg 9 is in the books. Sailblogs is still offline, and as far as I know, I’ll post this in LA when I arrive there. I don’t depart until 1425 today, so I have some time remaining and spending it on the boat, checking things and charging my electronics.

Both Joe and Joshua dropped by just now. Joe says that he hopes to get to Alaska soon, and Joshua says to say hello to Alaska. Alaska, our home…hello!