Category: 2016 July Blog

Tahiti Boat Projects – Papeete, Tahiti – 2016…..

Dear Friends and Family, (August 25th, 2016)

Well we are indeed getting ready to go on Saturday, August 27th!

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This Blog will be about all the \”stuff\” we cruisers get to take care of and why \”cruising is the most expensive way to travel 15th class on Earth\”. The old definition is, \”Cruising is all about doing boat projects in exotic locations\”. We have yet again, proven it to be true!

So here\’s the list:

In Guatemala:

We painted the decks, the bimini, the solar arch and dinghy davits, the lockers, the bilges and completely serviced the engines and generator. (That\’s the short story that took 4 months).

We did preventative maintenance and upgrades on all our major systems including the engines, the water makers, the boom vang (more later) and the hydraulic steering when we were in Florida at the end of 2014.

Here\’s what failed:

The engines, the generator (figured that out in Panama) – the water makers, the hydraulic steering the boom vang. Ummm! So much for preventive maintenance……

When we were in Panama, we had both our engines \”rebuilt\” with new rings and bearings. When we were in Guatemala, we had the injectors, all external pumps, the heads and valves checked and all maintenance.

200 Miles out of Panama, the engine rebuild failed. (We\’ve told the story in previous blogs). When we were in the Galapagos we were ripped off royally but the mechanic there who essentially wasted our time while I paid for his family of four to visit Disney World (NO, I\’m not kidding)! He probably still had cash left over after that trip as well.

1000 miles out of the Marquesas, our steering began to fail.

As we arrived in Raroia in the Tuamotus, our new boom vang leaked.

We\’ve had upgrades done to both our water makers and due to the change of ownership at Spectra in the S.F. Bay area to Katydyn, it\’s been problematic at best. Spectra I fear will have customer service difficulties galore going forward.

So join us for the photo tour of how we spent our \”Holiday in Tahiti\”….:-)

The major affair of course was the engines. When we arrived, we were given an estimate to re-build them yet again. The previous rebuild in Panama failed as apparently the mechanic did not prepare the cylinders properly. As such, it created crankcase over pressurization and crankshaft oil leakage. That\’s the brief version. It turns out it was only slightly more expensive to buy new ones here in Tahiti, shipped from Australia, than rebuild the old ones. We bit the bullet and suffered the month long wait for the new engines to arrive.

Here\’s the first of our major projects:

Engines: We purchased two new Yanmar 4J5H Engines which were essentially plug and play from our original 4J3H engines which were 14 years old, well pampered and only had 4000 hours on them.
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Well, we didn\’t even go into the water maker issues as photos there would be of little interest. Suffice it to say after lots of struggle over many months, they now work fine. We\’ve had some other small and normal maintenance issues as well. We replaced our mainsail cover (it was rotted out after 6 years). This has been the year of the boat bite. Miss Piggy however is now ready to rock and roll off to the Land of Oz with many stops along the way. We hope to get our last blog out here in Tahiti about the fun stuff we did and meeting lots of new friends along the way. More to come soon!

Scott and Nikki – Papeete, Tahiti

August 26, 2016
Tahiti….for awhile…..

August 1st UPDATE….

We\’re catching up on the main blog and photo galleries while we\’re awaiting the installation of our NEW ENGINES and my finger to heal up a bit more from my battle with a wine bottle! It won, I lost….more in the blog!…:-)))

In the meanwhile, enjoy the new Photo Galley of our time on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos Islands this past April.

Click Here to go directly to the new PHOTO GALLERY: Santa Cruz Island – The Galapagos Islands

We hope to depart Tahiti in about 10-12 days at the most. Engines arrived from Australia yesterday.

Scott and Nikki

09 July 2016

Dear Friends and Family,
This is just a short note to let you know that we will be in Tahiti until early August.

Our Engines are being REPLACED and we are awaiting the new ones to arrive from Australia.
As well, I seriously injured my left index finger and had to have hand surgery to re-attach a severed tendon. I\’m now a week post-op, so far, so good. I was opening a bottle with a wine key, the bottle broke and became a very effective knife.
In French Polynesia, a very French sounding affair to have injured myself while trying to enjoy a glass of French wine!

Other than the above, we believe we\’ve found the steering problem and most likely have it fixed. (Read a still question mark behind this statement!).
We\’re awaiting parts being delivered by friends Pete and Sue Wolcott of s/v \”Kiapa Nui\” and after I\’m healed up, we hope to get the projects done. We\’ve many, which other than the big engine replacements, include replacing seals in our boom vang, water maker and generator maintenance and this list goes on.

Yes, there are worse places to be holed up, but we are anxious to move on. While here, we are trying to take in the Heiva festival, an annual all Tahitian dance, music and sports event. This will include some really large (as in participants) canoe racing.

I\’ll start updating the main blog shortly and include photos as we\’ve reasonably good internet here.
While here I hope to get the Facebook features fixed which will allow the remote posting which many of you have missed over the last three months! The hand is precluding me from getting to many of the boat projects and will for another 2-3 weeks at least.

Feel free to drop us a note!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

July 9, 2016