Miles traveled day 1: 8.8
Miles traveled total: 8.8
Miles to Majuro: 1,778
OK, well so we didn’t get very far yesterday. But we knew the boat was taking on a fair bit of water every time we moved and needed to figure out why and where. We pumped the bilge dry, left the watermaker turned off and motored out of Neiafu about 90 minutes to a nice protected anchorage near the pass. When Rob looked in the bilge it was full to the top. We’ve got a big deep bilge, and there was a frightening amount of water in it for having motored less than two hours.
Our rudder packing has been dripping for quite a while now, but Rob decided he didn’t want to fix it on anchor without spares and a boatyard nearby. We also have an opening in the back of the boat that used to be the exhaust for a propane heater, which is now just plugged. And of course, there’s our dripless shaft seal – a mechanical device that wraps around the shaft and plugs the hole where the shaft exits the boat. So we emptied out the back of the boat, upanchored and motored around a bit to see what was leaking. The rudder was fine and the plugged exhaust hole appeared dry, so Rob pulled up the boards so he could see the shaft spin. It looked like the garden sprinkler had been turned on full blast! A few hours, some pounding and two new set screws later and we motored around again and the bilge stayed bone dry.
So we spent one last night in a beautiful and protected anchorage in Vava’u. The weather forecast going north looks good so far, with the exception of the tropical low that’s formed north of the Solomons. That’s where cyclones are born down here, and it’s a pretty big low. But it has no rotation, so hopefully it’ll just die in the next day or two. We’re keeping an eye on it and can pull into Apia in Western Samoa if it starts to misbehave. It’s a bit too early for a full blown cyclone to develop, but there are never any guarantees, especially since it’s an El Nino year.
Today on Yohelah we’re finally ready to go and heading northwest in another hour or two…..
Teresa
