We,ll it’s 9PM and Ann just took off on her Paddleboard to terrorize, I mean visit, our neighbors.

Charisma and paddleboards in daylight

She slipped away into the moonlight about five minutes ago and I quickly lost sight of her, but just picked up a silhouette over by Bright Angel, about 150 meters behind us. I can even hear some faint talking.

I’m “manning” home base and listening for a big splash in which case I’ll get in the dinghy and do a pick up.

I’ve been one-upped! Oh well, I’ll do it next time when we’re out at some secluded anchorage.

You go, Ann

(by the way, after surprising several other boats, she has made it safely back without falling in the water. Nice!)

That’s how Ann described me today, when the new parts were installed and the engine still would not start. Going further she volunteered that it might be best if she went and did something else to stay out of the line of fire.

Injection pump cleaned up and ready to install. Cross fingers!

Manifold and new gasket (thanks to friends on "Bright Angel")

Yup, the parts arrived yesterday afternoon around 1400. I decided it would be OK to spend a little time installing at least some of them, and then finish today when I was refreshed. The plan sorta worked. I DID install the fuel injector pump, the four injectors, the intake manifold, air filter, dipstick, throttle cable and some other stuff. In fact I was in “The Zone” in that I remember looking at the clock around 1600 and then next thing I knew it was getting dark! Time to quit for the day.

So…today, the plan was to finish the installation and fire up the engine. Yeah, right. I was awake half the night still worrying about the timing issue. I actually have almost figured it out, but have not yet really found a good explanation of how to guarantee the timing is set correctly when you reinstall the pump onto a timing gear that is still in the engine and you send it out for overhaul. How is it timed when it comes back? I DID write a note that I removed it at #1 TDC, but the tech’s Hindu is a bit better than his English, and my Hindu is non-existent. Let’s just say I was 75% confident that the thing would work. That leaves 25% confident that Charisma would blow up when everything was installed and I turned the key. In fact I was so worried, Ann convinced me we should call her brother Paul in the US, who is a mechanic. He was extremely helpful in helping me sort out my concerns and kind as well, considering we called him at 0100, forgetting that he lives in Denver, not the West Coast!

So, fast forward past my nightmares to today. I finished installing the last fuel hoses, checked everything I installed, made sure there were no “mystery parts” still sitting in the parts bucket and prepared for the big moment.

“ANN, it’s time”. She has been working on cleaning the stainless and the hull and was out in the dinghy scrubbing the waterline. Back in the cockpit, I instructed on how we were going to do the start. Ready? go. rurrr, rurrr, rurrr, and nothing.

Honestly, I wasn’t really expecting it would start the first try. But we tried a couple more times with some adjustments to throttle and fuel pump and nothing! Rats! I was afraid the timing might be so far off there was no combustion. There was nothing else for it but to break for lunch. And think about this perplexing problem. And have a beer.

Over lunch, I decided if it was timing, we would at least be getting some ill-timed engine explosions. What else could it be? Has to be fuel. After lunch, I started tracking the fuel feed and found….we weren’t getting any to the engine. Hmmmm. No Bueno.

So two hous of troubleshooting later, I decided we were down to the fuel lift pump. I took it off the engine and started to disassemble it when I realized that if it was in fact broken, I couldn’t possibly find the parts here and we would be at least another week waiting for a shipment from NZ.

What to do.

Fortunately, we had Saint Bob of Bright Angel who was anchored nearby. He has a very similar engine (in fact we have already borrowed a manifold gasket from him). Living up to his boat name, Bob had a spare of exactly the right fuel lift pump! Hallelujah! I dinghied over and negotiated that I would get another shipped here or give him my right arm in exchange and he kindly parted with this golden of all parts in the midst of our darkest day.

Once back on Charisma I installed the new lift pump, bled the fuel filter and injector pump and had Ann once again get ready to crank the engine. “OK, crank ‘er up!”. Once again, Ann cranked the engine. Nothing. OK, we can do this-I cracked off the injector nuts to bleed the injectors and had Ann crank the engine again. After a moment, diesel fuel spewed everywhere across the engine (as it’s supposed to when you bleed the lines). STOOOOPPP! She stopped, while I tightened the injectors. OK, try it one more time. This time Charisma’s diesel came to life-yippppeeeee! A rattling, noisy, clanking thing never sounded so good.

We let her run for a while to warm up and all systems seem go. She’s purring like a kitten. No smoke, no drama. For now, we have engine.

OK, so I may not be a full-on diesel mechanic (yet), but I smell like one.

"Villa Ladoux" where we spent the night with John and Lisa

Our own private pool

"I told you not to drink my beer!"

View from the Villa

Tonight we spent the evening at Lisa and John’s “villa”. Again these guys found a sweet deal on a hillside villa complete with a private “dipping pool”. Spending our last evening together with these guys would have been memorable anywhere, but at their villa it was heavenly! They found this jewel nestled high in the hills overlooking the harbor entrance. Too bad the sky was overcast so there was no sunset.
No worries. We had a wonderful meal prepared by Bob and John after a nice dip in the pool. Followed by a fun evening of cards (did I tell you I- Ann- won?). Very relaxing! And much needed!
We also finally got into town and paid all of the fees for entering Fiji — the Customs overtime fees ($76), the Biohazard fee ($182) and $229 to the Ministry of Health. The current rate is $.54 Fijian to $1 US.
We also went to the Immigration Offices and released Lisa from our crew list. We no longer are “wanted” in Fiji for not paying our entry fees!

Position: Savusavu, Fiji

We promised ourselves a shot of tequilla after we cleared customs. Yippeee!

Squall blowing past our new backyard in Savusavu

"Ahhhhh, Fiji"

The seas are calm, the winds are gone. We are safely tied to a mooring ball in Savusavu. We have all had showers and smell much better. The boat is not totally put back together but getting there. We have made it to Fiji! Thirteen days of the toughest sailing we have seen to date. But we are here! We listened to the evening net on Blue Rodeo and heard our friends who are only about a third the way here checking in. How great to not be out there anymore! Our supportive thoughts go their way. Huge thanks again to Lisa who made the trip with us. Still don’t get why she decided to do this but it sure made it fun for all of us. She is a very talented sailor and beautiful person. We love you, Lisa. Thanks for the trip. Glad we could make your big birthday memorable! Our last morning was incredibly eventful but I am just too tired to explain it all. More to come!!

From Bob: We also paid a price on this passage. We broke the head (I have a kit with the proper part and that’s tomorrow’s project), both bilge pumps failed and this morning we found water up to the floorboards (yikes!) and used the dinghy pump and a bucket to get it down and the engine is smoking badly and blowing diesel out the exhaust and almost didn’t get us into the mooring. Oh, and the alternator bracket broke. We were smelling burning rubber (the vee-belt) and didn’t quite know that problem, but the engine smoke had our attention as we were trying to get in past the reef. Wow. I’ve never had so much stuff break in one trip. I’ll tell more detail about what’s is already fixed and what we’re planning to fix.

For now-sleep. Well, we’re actually retelling each other about the trip and drinking wine first. But we’re only going to last a little while longer now.

Position: 17 degrees, 22 minutes south; 179 degrees, 40 minutes east
By Lisa-
We hove-to tonight around 5:30pm to listen to the Drifters Net on SSB, enjoy our Charismas, and have some fine dining courtesy of Ann – pesto tortellini with a salad of tomatoes and avocados. We are trying to get rid of the last of the fresh food before checking into Fiji customs – hopefully tomorrow, and Ann did a fine job throwing it all together. But since tomorrow is Saturday, we are not sure if customs will be available, or if we will have to wait until Monday. We are keeping our fingers crossed for a Saturday check in! It would be nice to get the first few loads of wet, stinky clothes into a washing machine, the first step in getting the boat all cleaned up and put back together after a long crossing.

Ann and I did some “goofing off” today. We dug out the Go-Pro camera and took some video of the non-stop wind and waves that kept coming at us yet again today. Then we created a training video on how to properly dispose of your blue bucket while underway in heavy seas on a starboard tack. We will post it on Youtube once we find some internet. Down the road, look for Part II on disposing your bucket on a port tack in all weather conditions. I think that after 10 days of practice, we have finally mastered the technique of ‘pick-and-roll’ using the salon table in a squatting position during the roll. Quite impressive! Not a drop spilled yet (knock on teak!).

Once this nasty squall that is currently attacking us passes on by, we will be under way again for one more night. Ahhhh, we are all looking forward to long stretches of uninterrupted sleep and a calm anchorage. But for now – all is well in the blue waters of Fiji.

Position: 18 degrees, 48 minutes south; 179 degrees, 06 minutes east

The spinnaker rescue

Ahh, it wasn't that bad...

You better believe I wore my tether up there!

That’s what Lisa said when after setting the jib successfully for the first time in two days and seeing it give us some good speed in winds in the high 20s, yet another weather system descended on us and slammed us with winds up to 40 knots. We had to roll the jib back in. Then it started raining. I’m waiting for the lightning followed by the waterspout at this point.

This has been the worst two weeks of weather I’ve ever had to sail in. Not fun. Both Ann and I agree though that having Lisa on board has been fun and she’s a real asset as crew. For example-today in one of the particularly vicious gusts (and while I was attempting to sleep on my “off” shift) Lisa noticed a wave that had come over the bow (just one you ask? Ha, one of the hundreds) broke the spinnaker bag from its clips on the lifelines on the bow and it was floating around on the foredeck untethered getting ready to make the big escape over the side. Without any thought to her personal safety or dignity, she crawled along the leeward deck-which was mostly underwater at this point-reached said bag (which is almost as large as she is) and did an imitation of an aquatic bear hug on the thing, patiently waiting for me to put on foul weather gear and come up to help. As I made my way to the foredeck I could see her laying on top of the bag taking breaths of air between the solid water coming down the deck. Well, we’ll have to get some pictures up soon to show at least the aftermath of where we were. Both of us were soaked despite wearing our foulies and she spent some time later pouring water out of her boots.

When Ann asked her how she felt about her adventure Lisa’s comment-“oh, we learned that in survival school at the Air Force” Well, thank you Lisa for saving our spinnaker!

Position: 20 degrees, 27 minutes south; 178 degrees, 21 minutes east

A very bumpy, or more like rock and roll, ride today. We’re just not catching a break this trip on the weather. After lightning, squalls and whathaveyou, now for today, tomorrow and most of Friday we have winds in the high 20’s/low 30’s and ocean swells up to 18 feet. Unfortunately for us, we have to run about parallel to both in order to get into Savusavu. It’s not much fun. We’re leaving open the option a this point to duck behind one of the islands that is about 80 miles away right now and just “hide” behind it until the wind and waves go away-which should be about Saturday. A tough call at this point. We’d like to get in and could possibly do it late Friday afternoon, but it’s a rough ride to to it done. We’ll see how tonight goes. The wave height is supposed to peak around midnight or so and then start to go down. Will be much nicer when the moon comes out as well, as pitch dark is not very friendly when there are waves all around and the wind is shrieking in the rigging.

That’s it for now-too rough to type 😉

Postion: 22 degrees, 09 minutes south; 177 degrees 33 minutes east

Finally getting a little nice sailing

This kind of weather is why we keep coming back

Half way there and we're still friends!

From Ann: Last night turned out to be a glorious night for a sail. The moon still looked full as it played peek-a-boo through the clouds. We haven’t seen the moon since it was full. It’s nice to get the benefit of the moonlight and to enjoy the twinkling stars. I never get tired of moonlight sailing. The only downside of last night’s watch was the exhaustion left over from the prior night’s great adventures. Lisa and I were bound and determined to give Capt’n Bob a well-deserved six hours of uninterrupted sleep and as the watch started it looked like it would be a piece of cake. That was at 9 pm. At 10 pm Lisa and Ann are having a conversation to help stay awake. This is how it went. Lisa: “So Ann, how many quilts do you think you have made?” (good start Lisa, we all know Ann can talk about quilts for hours) Ann: “Probably about 200” ….. (and off she goes. Until Ann realizes she is putting even herself to sleep and so she stops.) Lisa: “I am so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open”. Ann: “Me too!” (Note that we have a little less than five hours to go on this watch.) Ann: “How about we take turns napping. Go ahead and close your eyes. I will wake you in 30 minutes.” Success. Lisa snoozes. Ann stargazes for the next half hour. Then we swapped. When Lisa woke me after 30 minutes it was from a deep sleep! But it felt great. And turns out that 30 minutes was all I needed. Well almost. Enter Angry Birds to entertain Ann. Suffice it to say that I was able to finish our watch AND many levels of Angry Birds without waking Lisa. Well-deserved sleep. And today has been beautiful and sunny. The water is the deep blue that our friends on Eagle’s Wings promised. But the wind is blowing 25-30 knots from behind us which makes Charisma surf down the 2.5 meter waves. Picture a five year old boy pretending to be an airplane with his arms extended. He zooms across the ground with his arms dipping up and down to catch the good air currents. That’s what it feels like on Charisma today. And in a boat built like Charisma that means rolling from rail to rail in the water. When Charisma rolls like this the crew gets their daily calisthenics. The best ab workout around! Workouts are everywhere on a boat. Capt’n Bob gets a great one with every sail change as he hoists the sails. We, the crew, work our arm muscles with every crank of the winch and pull of a sheet. And then there is the balancing needed to move about a cabin in these rolly conditions. You can imagine the skill it takes to perform bucket brigade duties without spills. We are definitely getting into shape. In fact we think we have each lost at least a stone (that’s for our fans at Riddlesden!).

We have just dropped the main and put up the storm trysail with the jib. The wind is gusting well into the 30’s and it’s just more comfortable with the smaller sails and we’re still doing up to 9 knots. It seems to have settled the rolling a bit. Good for Charisma time.

By Lisa and Ann

Lesson 1: When the grib says there is a low there – believe it is really a low, and not just a No Low. And just because the grib file doesn’t have the bright red colors near the low, don’t assume it won’t pack a punch!

Lesson 2: Don’t get too cocky reading your grib files thinking you can just skirt the southern edge of the low and dance on by. The gribs aren’t that meticulously accurate out here in the middle of the ocean – and things can change in a matter of hours. Give the Low plenty of space when passing by.

Lesson 3: Get Captain Bob out of bed sooner than later. We cut it just a little too close last night – waiting to wake up Bob as the wind and waves grew. We were trying to give him as much sleep as possible, but could have had some nasty ramifications had we waited much longer. Since Ann and I don’t know the boat, nor have the strength to handle the boat like Bob can – we need to be a bit more conservative next time and rustle him out of bed sooner rather than later. We got very lucky last night!

Lesson 4: Heaving to can be a good thing! And actually much more relaxing than fighting the storm. Ann and I actually enjoyed a cold beer together at 2:30 in the morning once we hove to and got settled in.

Lesson 5: Never drink a beer at 2:30 in the morning when you are working the bucket brigade. Makes for a short night of sleep, and another trip through the salon and up the companion way just to get rid of it at 6am!