In the lee of a motu in the SE corner of Fakarava atoll we hid from the days of high winds with many other like minded sailors. We enjoyed the company of our friends on Tino Pai, Calypso, and Morning Stars yet there were lots more boats to meet so we had the boys zoom around to the other boats in the area and invite everyone to happy hour on the beach. It was fun to meet and hang out with everyone. We finally got chat with Ana and Jim on Balloon, a steel boat with a red hull that lived on Bainbridge before. I’m sure we’ve crossed paths with the boat before, she looks familiar and I always notice red hulls. We made it a habit to go hang out at the cruisers beach there to unwind from chores and work. One day we even had a girls Bananagrams tournament.
I made myself a chores checklist to work through, lots of little tasks that I had taken a break from while Julie was on board. The stove now lights with its own ignitor again! Frustratingly, even though we tested all the connections multiple times and the only thing that seemed not to work was a little board that everything plugs into, the new one didn’t work either. After donating some blood and sweat to the thing, the old one worked again, grrrr. Boat projects are often like that… you follow a logical course of tracking the problem, nothing works anyway, and then, surprise! It works again and you never get to learn why. This is why sometimes the first thing I try is to hit whatever it is with a hammer or whatever’s nearby while dripping some tears, blood, or sweat on it.
The water maker has been a little less efficient lately and I wanted to look into it and see if maybe it’s time to replace the pump heads. First I checked to see if they were getting the proper amount of voltage, and they weren’t quite. Further inspection showed a weird power connection through a box where the wires were a little close together and the plastic covers had melted together and the box itself had melted. Not cool! Chores division on Rocket Science these days has me in charge of the water maker but Greg is in charge of all wiring so he climbed in and wired it up a different way that’s more “cool”. Now we’re back to water making norms, just have to keep that strainer clean.
Along with knocking off projects, I enjoyed a few snorkel swims. A notable one was with Andy and Shannon from Tino Pai. At the end of a nice long swim in about 4’ of water in the lagoon near the kitesurfing beach we saw a huge ray hiding in the sand and its accompanying remora waiting for it to come out. Then a huge school of silvery sparkling fish about 8” long surrounded us and swam every way in circles around us. These were quite a bit bigger than the little guys that hide around the boat all the time and it was absolutely mesmerizing to be a part of their school. I could have stayed all day but happy hour on the beach called and I was actually getting “cold”.
We were anxious to get back up to Rotoava to pick up the new batteries that Yacht Services was holding onto for us from Tahiti. We headed back up to town 5 days later and picked up the batteries the next morning with the help from Jason, Jim, and Rob who even brought his dinghy over to help ferry them. The three replacement batteries are over 150 pounds each, it’s really nice to have extra hands to move them around. That day we went to the Pearl Farm for a last gathering with Flying Tiger. They are headed to Tahiti and may meet up with us again early next year, so it’s a see you later instead of a goodbye. There was a notable sighting was JK Rowling’s yacht powering by while we were all feeling so lux hanging out, we wondered if it was lonely on such a big yacht.
The next morning we dove into replacing the batteries. Greg remembered to disable the solar charging system and got everything done carefully. Moving the old batteries out and the new in was a great weight training activity for the day! I took advantage of an emptier bilge area and cleaned everything within reach while Greg made the connections. We hoped to be able to install a Victron smart shunt to give us more data on the system but we need a short bit of large cable to install it. That’ll have to wait and he’ll keep interpreting what’s happening through the old Heart Interface in combination with the Victron app which don’t often match up. So far we’ve noticed that the new batteries accept a higher rate of charge for a longer than old ones did, they charge faster. They also hold their voltage better through the dark hours, super.
We’ve been between Fakarava and Toau atolls for so long but now with our batteries replaced now we don’t have anything keeping us here anymore, time to go! Another atoll on our list has 2 other families at it that we’ve hung out with before and a few more we haven’t met yet, I’m so excited to move on. We got fuel at the only place we’ll bring Rocket Science to shore that we know of in French Polynesia, that was so nice and easy. The fuel station attendant even took our old batteries which will work fine for his land based activities. There were hardly any fresh groceries but we’ll be fine for a while, let’s get outta here!
