What Do We Do All Day ? ? ?

We’ve been at anchor in Taravao, Tahiti for a month now, essentially waiting on parts for our malfunctioning port engine, which refuses to go into gear reliably. The first week was spent confirming the diagnosis with the boatyard. The second week was spent working across languages and cultures to order the necessary parts. Last week, the parts arrived in Papeete, the capital, and were being processed through customs. This week, they arrived Wednesday at the local marina, but now we wait for a slip in the marina. Patience is a virtue, but as Samuel Johnson once said, “Patience is a virtue easily fatigued by exercise.”

So what do we do all day? You’ve read about our trips – to waterfalls, to town, to island gardens; you’ve read of our time spent with new friends, and time spent watching the World Cup. But this boat also demands our time, and we work regularly to maintain the various systems onboard. In a recent post, I spoke of mulligans, and the careful reader could see that each wanna-be mulligan had its aftermath.  Some of our chores are as a result of mistakes; most are routine wear and tear and maintenance.  If you think we're so bored that we'd rather write about our chores than do them, you'd be right!

Below, to round out the picture of our time in Taravao, is our annotated list of our boat chores over the last few weeks.

• Fix Port Engine – awaiting parts and slip in marina
• Order Screens for Hatches – this required much research on the internet to find the right screens and to find the right dealer. The screens were requested from the dealer in late April; confirmed in late May, and (finally) ordered in mid-June. They should arrive mid-July.
• Strengthen Anchor Hawser – our anchor + chain are heavy, especially if we need to put out 300 feet of 3/8” chain. The chain comes up to the boat through a hole – the hawser – and this hawser is reinforced with a stainless steel plate. It’s not strong enough, and tends to flex, so we’re upgrading once we get into the marina. Designing this takes time, as we consult with many cruisers and gain the benefit of their experience.
• Clean Toilets – we clean our toilets every few days, but this chore is the deep clean where we dissemble the piping and valves completely and scrape and clean the mineral (and other!) deposits. Toilets on a boat – or heads, as they’re referred to – are below the water line and thus require special valves. They also rely on salt water, and the mineral deposits combine with the body wastes to form deposits on the valves and pipes. Someone’s gotta do it.
• Rewire Xantrex – Our batteries are so-called “deep-cycle” which means that, unlike a car battery, they are designed to discharge to the 50% level, and then recharge to about 90%, repeatedly (like, 1000’s of times). A car battery discharges to about 95% and then is instantly recharged to 100% by contrast. To know when the 50% level is reached, you need to track all amps into and out of the battery. Our batteries were mis-wired, and we never had much information on amps going into the batteries. It took me a long time to diagnose, and since I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse (i.e. explosion), I took my time in developing a solution. We re-wired some of the grounding cables last week, and now all is well.
• Cockpit Speakers – Not surprisingly, one of our cockpit speakers is blown; I have an extra, and I’m waiting on a sunny day to replace this, as it requires some cutting and epoxying.
• Fiberglass Repairs – In the course of docking and anchoring, a few chips have developed on some edges of the hull-deck joint. I need a few days of guaranteed rain-free weather to tackle this small job.
• Para-Anchor Rode Thimbles – If we get into a serious storm, a major danger is going too fasat down a wave and plowing into the wave in front. An earlier post on the Sidney-Hobart Race highlighted this danger. Thus, I have a large drogue and/or parachute that can be deployed from either the stern or the bow (depending on whether we want to slow our boat – stern deployment, or turn and ride bobbing in the waves pointed into the wind (bow deployment). The drogue needs to lie 400+ feet from the biat, and, obviously, needs to be secured to the boat with a chafe-free mechanism. Chafe is the biggest enemy of lines and sails – the flogging and rolling of a boat at sea, even in calm conditions, can wear through a line in a matter of hours. Thus, we need to splice galvanized thimbles to the ends of our deployment ropes to accept shackles; a metal-to-rope attachment won’t last.
• Align Reef Line Blocks – we can reduce the amount of sail we have up by manipulating ropes that come back to the helm station. This process – reefing – is critical to safe passages, as squalls can come up quickly. By having our reefing lines running back to the helm station, we avoid the need to move to the base of the mast in heavy weather (when you are likely to need to reduce sail). The lines pass through several pulleys – or blocks as they are known on boats). At present, the blocks are not quite aligned, and the lines can (and do) chafe. We need to adjust these to eliminate the chafe.
• Replace First Reef Line – We discovered the problem of misaligned reef line blocks when we chafed nearly all the way through the first reefing line (used when the winds exceed 18 knots or so). We needed to purchase a new line (completed) and now need to sew it to the old line, pull it through the boom, and re-attach it. The old reef line will become a spare line, once trimmed.
• Chafing Sleeves for Lines – Any line that passes overboard – whether to dock, anchor, or to drogue – can chafe on the edge of the boat. We have purchased very sturdy plastic tubing to pass the line through and minimize chafe.
• Fuel Filters – Diesel engines are extremely reliable, and require only clean fuel and clean air to run for days at a time. Fuel in many parts of the world is suspect at best; I could build a small sand castle from the grit I’ve filtered using the hand filter that screens fuel before it enters our tanks. But wait, there’s more. We (and most every other boat) also rely on two additional filters to assure clean fuel: a primary filter that screens out even finer particles and any liquid contaminants (like condensed water), and a secondary filter, that is even more discriminating. These filters need changing, and with two engines, I changed four fuel filters this week.
• Oil Filters – Diesel engines need oil to lubricate the pistons and other moving parts. Every 150-200 hours of use I change the oil and the oil filters. Check.
• Upgrade NavNet3D Software: Our sophisticated navigation system, which has electronic charts of the entire world, accessible in 2D and 3D viewing, with “fly-around” capability, is driven by software that needs updating from time to time. Last week, I downloaded the new software, loaded it, and then had to figure out why my charts had disappeared. A simple setting needed changing, and, voila – all is good.
• Map Electronics Wiring – As part of the diagnostics for the Xantrex problem (see above), I needed to map each and every positive and ground wire to and from my batteries – including the boats’ electrical system (i.e, lights, freezer, etc), and the five sources of energy: 2 engines, 1 generator, a set of solar panels, and a wind generator. Each of these sources of energy passes through some kind of a battery controller, to make sure we’re not piling too much energy into the battery (result = explosion). So included in the now-complete diagram are three controllers (generator, solar, and wind) as well as several grounding shunts, where current can be measured to track battery usage. Complicated, but rewarding, as it allowed me to diagnose and fix the aforementioned Xantrex problem.
• Clean Dinghy Floorboards – Our dinghy is an inflatable boat with aluminum floorboards. Thus, there is always a bit of water in the space below the floorboards. At a constant 85 degree temperature, this breeds algae and, well, scum. We took advantage of our need to dissemble the dinghy to repair the leak (see earlier post) to clean the floorboards.
• Change the Generator Oil/Filters– Our generator is used to provide 110V electricity to the boat while at anchor, allowing us to have a washing machine and a two-zone air-conditioner on board. These are, admittedly, luxuries to many boaters, but they keep us clean and sane. The generator can also be used to charge our batteries, which are not a luxury. It runs on diesel, and like our engines, requires periodic maintenance.
• Change Transmission Oil – Our engines transmit their power to the propellers through a saildrive, which is essentially a transmission that converts rotation of the engine to rotation of the props, without a separate shaft. The oil needs changing, which requires pumping out the old oil and filling with new. Simple, but tedious.
• AC Condensation: Our air-conditioning system pumps cold refrigerant to four cooling boxes, where room-temperature air is drawn in by fans across radiator-like fins within which circulates the cold refrigerant. The air cools as it crosses the fins, and is re-circulated into the boat, thus cooling (and, importantly for the anti-mold/fungus contingent, de-humidifying) the boat’s air. The process tends to precipitate moistures out of the air, and these boxes are designed to drain the water into the several shower sump pumps, from which it is (automatically) pumped overboard. However, these boxes contain two drain plugs, and our esteemed builders failed to plug up the second hole, choosing onlyto put a hose from one hole to the sump. Thus, another source of water into our bilges (about which much has been written). We identified this culprit, and have now plugged these holes, eliminating yet another source of bilge water.
• Clean Shower Bilge Pumps – Like our heads, our shower plumbing lies below the water line, so that when we take a shower, the water drains into a (mostly) waterproof box that contains a pump whose operation is managed by a float switch. When the water in the box rises to a certain level, the float switch activates the pump, and water is pumped overboard. These pumps and switches need periodic cleaning, as hair and soapy film can gum up the works. Someone’s gotta do it.
• Safety-Tie Shackles – We use shackles to link the ends of rope to various bits of hardware, like hooks and clips. The shackles are U-shaped bits of steel, with a pin that screws across the open part of the “U.” These screwed-in pins seem, at first glance, to be immovable once tightened, but experience proves that these pins, however tightly secured, will work loose. Thus, every shackle on our boat is safety-tied, using a bit of plastic tie common in electrical installations. For our anchoring shackles, we use stainless steel wire, and wrap it repeatedly through the pin and around the shackle. No fun having your anchor’s shackle pin work loose in a storm. This project focused on the “little” shackles that are everywhere, once you start to look.
• Cockpit Hatch Cover – We have a small sliding Plexiglass panel that slides back and forth over the stairs that lead up to the helm station. If I had a nickel for everytime I’ve bumped this with my head as I went up the stairs, I’d be a rich man. Eventually, my bumps have worked loose the screws that secure the sliding cover’s track, and thus, we re-epoxy the screws and now enjoy a secure track.
• Snuba Hose Fitting – We have a boat-based compressor that generates compressed air for use in diving. The generator powers a compressor, and the compressor forces air down a pair of 60’ hoses. It’s not scuba tanks, it’s a mix of snorkel and scuba, thus the name “snuba.” It allows us to dive up to about 40’, and has been useful to fix things under the boat, check anchors. We hope to use it more often as we get to more remote reefs. One of the air hoses came in contact with the (very) hot engine, and melted through, so we needed to visit many scuba and plumbing shops for a new fitting. Mission accomplished.
• Hooks In Port Bow – We have many spare ropes and lines; we now have hooks in our forward port bow compartment to hang them from. Much easier access, and less mold.
• Hang Photos – We now have picture frames in our bedroom with pictures of our children and parents. As many people as we meet, and as many new places we visit, we miss our family deeply.
• Windlass Gypsy – In an earlier post, I mentioned the use of a windlass to raise our anchor, and the use of my hand to keep the chain from jumping. I finally decided this use of the hand was not only unsafe (!) but unnecessary. In fact, when I changed out the 100’ of chain that came with the boat for the 300’ feet I now have deployed in the chain locker, I had assumed I had bought the same size chain. Alas, the original chain was 10mm chain; the new chain is 3/8” – close, but not close enough for the finely-engineered mechanism on the windlass that captures and holds the chain as it passes over the wheel and into the anchor locker. We had first to identify the problem (wrong size gypsy), then find a dealer, and then order the new gypsy. It should arrive this week. No more chain jumping, I hope.
• Australian Visas – We applied for and received our visas for Australia, where we expect to take the boat out of the water and undertake land travel of New Zealand, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia. 
• Travel Planning -- We plan to use frequent flyer miles to travel to Southeast Asia; working thru the logistics is coinsuming some time and Skype minutes. 
• De-Mold -- We're in a hot, humid environment, and mold appears quickly.  We use a bleach mixture to wipe down surfaces regularly, and it seems to keep it at bay for a few weeks before the telltale spots re-appear.  

That's it --   a long list of what we've done with our days over the last 10 days or so ...  now if we can get our engine fixed (looks like next week, we're out of here!  We're in a part of the world where we can witness a total eclipse of the sun on July 11, and, with luck, we'll watch it as we dinghy into a bar ti watch the World Cup finals featuring the Netherlands!