Tuesday, we had our meeting with Hinamoe and Dominique concerning replacing our rigging and replacing the mast step. Hinamoe is his understudy it seems, and she's bright and conscientious, and when Dominique is away from the yard, she's the go-to person. We wanted her in the loop.

Conni gets along better with both people, so she did the talking. She laid out what we need to do and Dominique said that for his yard, ours was an easy task. We were much relieved. Here's the plan. We will depart on schedule next week. We'll be in touch and arrange for our rigger of choice, Fred, to ensure that our rigging type is available in Papeete. At some point, Dominique will arrange to have the crane truck come to the yard and pull the mast. Before we depart next week, I'll prepare the mast for the pull by disconnecting and labeling all electrical and instrument wires: our anchor light, radar, steaming/deck light, and VHF radio. With that done, all they'll have to do is remove the mast boot (the plastic cone-shaped piece that spans the gap between the boat and the mast) and disconnect the rigging.

When the mast is out, they'll begin the removal of the mast step and begin fabrication. When they notify us, we'll fly down to FP and watch over the process. With luck, it'll take a week for the rigging to be fabricated. We hope that they will have completed fabricating the new mast step and we'll be ready to replace the mast with the new rigging already in place.

Will it go that smoothly? Probably not. In addition, we just don't want to think about the cost, but what can we do?

We both feel that the path forward is clear and we know that it'll be up to us to organize and push the various players to keep on track, but it's not a complex process, just expensive.

We also dropped by Madame Faux, our sailmaker, and she had all of our stuff ready: new binnacle cover, new windlass cover (a wind removed our old one), repair on our "Lasy Bag" main cover, and repair on a few winch covers.

I worked on preparing for storage our Mercury outboard. It's a several hour process. Fortunately, I found a wheelbarrow to haul things to a work area. We've worked hard and we're ahead of schedule.

Conni has been working like a fiend on her list of chores. She's got the deck in shape, the stainless steel cleaned, the windows cleaned, and much more. I do larger projects, such as the engine and such, while she does ten-times my work on myriad small chores.

Today, I removed the raw water impeller on the engine. It's a process and I'll buy an impeller puller someday. I also felt it time to replace the secondary fuel filter on the engine, something that I've never done. After several minutes of struggle, I decided that I needed a "belt wrench" since the problem was access for the large wrench that I use for the oil filter. I asked Conni for some advice, and she replied that I might try a hose clamp. Hose clamp? Yes! Using her idea, I slipped a hose clamp onto the filter, tightened it, and used a cold chisel and hammer to loosen the filter. Worked like a charm! I doubt that I would have thought of it and have never heard of the idea before, but Conni came up with it in seconds. Smart cookie! Still, I'll buy and bring a belt wrench next year.

I spent the last few hours replacing the Racor filter and working on the electrical system. We still have no power to the boat and we need it.