Postion: 21 degrees, 12 minutes south; 159 degrees, 07 minutes west

Contrary to current beliefs, we are comfortably situated in Rarotonga.

There was a rumor going around that the harbor was closed due to dredging. They are in fact dredging, but the harbor is not closed. This is a beautiful island and in some respects we’re glad people are avoiding it this year because of the rumor. More for us. There are only a couple boats in here, so it is very uncrowded. We’re thinking we’ll stay a week. There’s lot to do here including renting a scooter, hiking across the island (and taking a bus back-the buses here have two designations; Clockwise and Anticlockwise. That’s it!) and snorkeling. Not to mention the great Saturday market. We browsed it today and will hit it more seriously next week. There are some nice carvings and black pearls to by had.

On the way here-as if there wasn’t enough adventure from getting out of Aitutaki-a bolt holding the alternator bracket broke. Yikes. More stuff I never planned to have to fix. Anyway, we were having lunch in the cockpit when I smelled burnt rubber. I’ve learned to investigate stuff like that right away and pulled the engine cover off. Right away I saw the fan belt was loose. I looked for why it was loose and found the alternator bracket hanging in the breeze. We shut down the engine right away and investigated further. Found the head of a bolt in the bilge. OK, looked at the engine, OH-there’s the rest of the bolt still in the engine itself. So, I drilled a pilot hole in the bolt and then put a bolt extractor in the drill and crossed fingers. It didn’t look like it was going to come out, but after some work,I finally got the stub of the broken bolt to come out. Now all we had to do was replace the bolt. Oops, special size, we don’t have any. So, bailing wire, some silicone glue and a undersized screw and we were able to affect a jury-rigged solution that got us into Rarotonga.

Oh, I forgot to mention that after our adventure getting out of Aitutaki, we had a spectacular sail down here to Raro. We finally got out of Aitutaki around 1530 and the rest of the day and all night had a glorious sail. But, come early afternoon the wind had dropped and unless we wanted to spend another night at sea, we needed to start the engine. So with four hours to go we started the engine and that’s when the broken part showed up.

The upshot of all this was that we had to come into Raro in the dark. Fortunately it’s very straightforward. You just pick up the range lights and come straight in. We did that, but looking at it today in the light, I’m impressed with how narrow it actually was. The other fortunate thing was Orcinius got in here in the afternoon and were waiting for us to show up, so we had a welcoming party who allowed us to just side tie to them instead of med-moor in the dark. (And Orcinius had already cleared it with the Port Captain so that we COULD come in – with limited space you need special approval.)So we did and that’s how we stayed the night. Today, we all had to clear the harbor for a couple hours to allow them to finish doing some dredging. After about an hour they signaled all was clear to come back in and we successfully med-moored to the harbor wall. Charisma did good.

I finished the day taking apart the bailing wire solution to the alternator bracket and putting in a new bolt of the correct size I was able to find at the local hardware store. It’s 5/16″ SS, about 4″ long. I will have to find the exact part which is a special hardened steel, but this will work until we’re able to find a place with the right parts. In mean time, we’re good to go.