Little buggers hit when you least expect it.

Yesterday late afternoon, Ann and I are winding down a bit from boat work getting ready for the crossing to New Zealand and Ann starts her last project of the day, boiling some eggs (great passage late night snack).  “Bob, the stove won’t light”.  Sometimes it just needs a nudge, so I went over to sweet talk it into action.  Nothing.  Nada.  Hmmm, she was just using it about an hour ago to boil dried chick peas to make hummus (another great passage food) and it was working fine.  Maybe the propane ran out.  So, I went to the cockpit, opened the propane locker and changed tanks.  Back down to the galley, switch on the tank switch, then hit the stove.  No flame.  Then it struck me.  No noise either.  When you flip the switch in the galley that controls the remote propane valve out in the locker you usually hear a little; “thunk”.  That’s the solenoid opening the remote propane valve.  I hit the switch a few more times and didn’t hear the thunk.  Rats!  If the solenoid gave up the ghost that’s not good because I don’t have a spare (although I’ve now added that to the ever growing list).

So…since it was evening by now and we’d been working all day I didn’t feel like chasing gremlins, especially since the wiring for this little beast is almost totally inaccessible in the veeerrrry back of the boat.  Under the cockpit.  Past the steering quadrant.  Not fun.  It will have to wait for tomorrow when I’m not so tired.

Morning.  Take our water pot over to Orcinius where they kindly boil water for our French Press so we can have some coffee.  Nothing gets done on Charisma before our morning coffee.

OK, coffee done.  Now what?  I opened the propane locker and stared at the solenoid. The wires that control it go through a little hole in the side of the locker and disappear under the cockpit.  As I’m contemplating this fact (and procrastinating from the job I know I’m going to have to do which is to completely empty the lazarette – which I just packed yesterday – and disassemble the cockpit drain manifold so I can try and squeeze back far enough past the steering quadrant to see something) when Orcinius John came over and said; “why doncha just open this port?”  There’s a 6 inch brass plate in the very back of the cockpit that covers the rudder post and allows access in case you need to use the emergency tiller.  Since I always just think of it as “the emergency tiller hole”, I didn’t think of it as an access plate.  (Sometimes it helps to have a second set of eyes – Thanks John).  So, off comes the plate and sure enough, we have, well, access.  Flashlights, mirrors and a lot of grease on our arms as we could just barely squeeze one arm in the hole and were able to see that one of the wires from the solenoid was just plane broken.  It corroded at a crimped fitting and just fell off!

OK, fast forward a bit – there’s no way I can actually get to the whole length of the wire to fix it so I just cut it and ran a new one through an area I can reach.  Once it’s connected I turn on the switch, light the burner and it works!  Now all I have to do is put all that crap back in the laz and reconnect the drain manifold.  Including the hoisting the 70 pound outboard that I just packed down there yesterday.  In, out and now back in.  It’s a three aspirin day already.

The only good thing about this is that I very much doubt that I could have done this repair under way.  If we had left and the stove went out, we would probably have to return to port.  So maybe these gremlins were actually doing us a favor this time.  Hmmm.

I know that many of you think we just sail around on “vacation” but I have to tell you there is a fair amount of work involved. And more than just cleaning fishing lures.

We have been in Denarau for four days now and we are exhausted! This is what we have accomplished so far: refueled (always a stressful maneuver but especially dicey when there is so much traffic around), completely washed down Charisma, washed the dinghy, washed and stored the paddleboards, moved food stuff around so that passage meals are easier to prepare, polished the stainless steel, and most importantly….repaired the wind vane.

You might remember that our wind vane broke about 12 hours out of Fulunga. Bob managed to make a temporary repair that has lasted us through the season but neither of us wanted to depend on it to get us to New Zealand. We were able to get a new part shipped to Denarau and Bob spent the ENTIRE day replacing the broken part. I will not even pretend to explain the details of the repair. But I will share that while he was onboard Charisma rebuilding the broken part I was outside polishing the metal which like all stainless steel needs to be cleaned from time to time. We had to unbolt it from Charisma to make the repair so I took advantage of the chance to really clean it up. It took all day. At about 5 PM, John from Orcinius came over and held the reassembled monitor in place while Bob reattached it. Woohoo and Happy Diwali!

Pulling the steering gear off Charisma so we could work on the dock.

On the dock. Now if a little part drops, it won't go "kersplash".

Fortunately I had a bearing puller or I couldn't have gotten the ring gear off (in one piece).

A few of the parts and pieces including over 80 of the little roller bearings pictured.

Getting the pivot vane back on is tricky. One wrong move and 40 little bearings fall out. Helps to have a second set of hands (thanks to Orcinius John for the help)

Four bolts and it's re-attached to Charisma (yay!) And it only took all day!

Did I mention that today is Diwali in Fiji? It is a Hindu celebration of light and boy have we seen lights. Fireworks have been exploding for about four nights and tonight they were spectacular! Light over dark, good over bad, God bless us all!

But you know us, we found some time for fun too! Last night we spent a fun-filled evening on Orcinius with the daughters of our Fulungan host family. It was wonderful reconnecting with Fulunga. We had pizza and songs and laughter and lots of stories of Fulunga. Jui, Tau and Joe’s (our host family) eldest daughter is married to a guy, David, who works on one of the daily pleasure cruise ships here in Denarau. And Raijeli, Tau and Joe’s other daughter is temporarily living with them. Add to that Jui and David’s 3-year old son and David’s two younger brothers and a party is had! (Did I mention that Filipe, the 13-year old stowed away on the supply ship from Fulunga to Suva to see his new baby brother? ). What a wonderful family- and we are part of it!

Here are Tau and Joe's daughters and family. (What a fun night!)

Oh! And we stowed the cannon down below hoping that we don’t meet any pirates in June way to New Zealand!

Yup, that’s what we do at the end of the season.

More specifically, we’re almost ready to do the “jump” back down south to New Zealand, but not quite ready to do the heavy work of provisioning and preparing Charisma.

So…we’re sitting at anchor right now. Ann’s on the beach taking a walk with Lisa and I’m cleaning lures. The hooks have gotten rusty so I’ve got a file out and I’m filing the rust off the hooks and sharpening the points.

Quite an exciting life we lead sometimes!

Wow, are we going to be cruising in comfort this year.  Ann has been slaving for days on this new cover.  Really, if I had known the amount of work this took, I wouldn’t have mentioned it.  But…After days of hard work, WE are going to have an awesome rain cover.

Looking very stylish from the outside...

Very cozy inside the cover. It will be great for those days when it rains all day but it's hot and humid in the cabin.

The local “canvas guy” came by and was a bit intimidated by the effort.  He is, after all, the one you’re supposed to pay to get these things made.

Ann and a SailRite sewing machine.  A formidable combination!