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Wednesday April 30, 2008

No more little trips; we have to get serious about leaving. John has worked 3 days on the Genoa furler that stopped working 3 days out from New Zealand. There are tools and guts of the furler motor spread all over the cockpit. Finding parts for a furler installed in Europe is not easy or impossible. John has walked to several places in Papeete to try and find brushes that are as near the same as required. He is hopping that by replacing the brushes in the motor we can use the bigger Genoa head sail on passage to Hawaii. Without it we are limited to the larger Spinnaker or the smaller staysail, which will make the passage, but it would be ever so nice to have an in between or double head sail, cutter rig, option. John has found the almost perfect brushes, just a little grinding sanding and shaping is required to acceptably install them in the motor. He wires the motor into its place on the center beam and we press the switch from the fly bridge; it works! We all do a victory dance; life is good.

 

The day is hot and humid; it is fall here, equivalent to our October in the northern hemisphere. I think October is the hottest month in Hawaii which is roughly the same distance north of the equator as Tahiti is south. The new air conditioning in Bella Donna's salon works great. Every time we go outside to work we sweat profusely. Returning back to the salon for a break is like heaven. We are using the creature comforts to the max before we fuel up on Friday. Ounce we have our passage fuel aboard life will change radically; we have to conserve fuel for the trip so off with the air conditioning, the ice maker as well as most lights at night, only one per cabin. We will wear as little clothing as possible and use as little water as possible. Later in the passage we may have the resources to enjoy some comforts again.

 

Tomorrow is a holiday; all stores are closed, even the large market, Courfore, where we do our provisioning, so we do some provisioning today and we will finish on Friday morning before we leave. Our goal is to leave by late Friday. The Oceans weather report looks favorable for the first days of the passage.

 

I am going to try and attach pictures to this post that cover yesterday and today as we still have some access to high speed internet. As soon as we depart there will be few if any pictures as the cost to send over satellite internet is prohibitive. I included some pictures of some of the upgrades that were made to Bella Donna in New Zealand, the dinghy docking platform, stern winches, swim ladder, new shelves and the blessed salon American air conditioning system.

God Bless Bella Donna