Wind!

We are anchored at the northern tip of Taveuni. The good part is we’re inside a low reef that pretty much surrounds us, providing protection from the ocean swell. The bad side is we’re fully exposed to the wind. It’s been blowing in the mid 20’s since last night and we’re getting tired of the constant slamming back and forth. Hopefully it will ease later tonight/early morning-at least that’s the forecast.

In the mean time we’re stuck on board. It’s too cloudy to leave-you can’t see the reefs and could slam into one-and too windy to go ashore in the dinghy as it’s at least 300 yards through significant wind chop which would completely soak us through within a minute or two of leaving Charisma.

The answer? Boat chores and books.

Ann read an entire book written by another cruiser about her experiences cruising Fiji and she baked a loaf of (delicious) bread.

I had two things on the maintenance list. It turned out both were more essential than I had thought. Adding water to the batteries was one and they were much lower than I expected, so glad that was not put off by even one more day. Fixing the flux gate compass was the other and the problem there was in the “unexpected” category.

Using alligator clips as temporary fuse holders after the real ones melted down.

The symptom that something was wrong was that the radar was not aligning with the gps. I though it had gone out of alignment due to a shift in the magnetic field (we moved a metal French Press coffee maker out of the cabinet the compass is in). I hoped it would be a simple recalibration (i.e. Push a button on the unit). Alas, it’s never that simple. In looking at the thing, I noticed the status light wasn’t on. Uh oh! No power-bigger problem. After a bit of troubleshooting, I determined it must be a blown fuse. Yup, that’s what it was. A bit of water got into the inline fuse holder and ZAP, all done. In fact, two fuses. One on the positive line and the one on the negative line. OK, I have fuses. I opened the fuse holders. Oops, those are fried too! I don’t have extra fuse holders. Now what?

I thought about just hard-wiring the lines, but if there’s a fault, you fry thousands of dollars of equipment and guarantee they are dead. OK, that option is off the table. Looking around for something to work, I spied four alligator clips in my electronics box. Hmmm, I wonder? Yep, some wire stripping, alligator clipping and black electrician taping later, I now have workable “fuse holders” and we’re good to go. It’s not pretty, but it should work until we’re back in the first world and I can source the right size fuse holders.

Maybe it WAS a good thing we had to stay on board today?