30 September 2010
We had an easy motor down to south of Latouka today. It was a sparkling day. Winds lightened as we came south and as we anchored it was a westerly of 6 knots. It is still exactly the same wind conditions now (evening) and very hot and muggy
We came across another dark blue super yacht this afternoon at Latouka. We immediately thought it was Erica as it was a sloop but it was a vessel call “Kokomo”. It is amazing how many super yachts there are cruising the globe !!!! It came up on our AIS. This is short for “Automatic Identification System”. Our system identifies any vessel with an AIS and gives us the direction and speed that the boat is travelling. It also gives all particulars of the vessel e.g. name, length, width, draft. This is an amazing tool to have because it lets you know all of the particulars at night and large ships are very hard to identify, especially the speed and direction that they are travelling. If you need to contact the vessel for any reason it is easy to call them on VHF Channel 16 when you know the name of the vessel.
I have mentioned the super yacht “Adele” before on the blog and if anyone is interested in the vessel her picture features in the latest Edson catalogue several times. I am sure the catalogue is available on line.
We have had a couple of maintenance issues. The fuel pump for the generator has blown up for the 2nd time in 2 weeks. We had a spare and replaced it once in Tonga and now that pump has blown up and we have replaced it again. Fortunately we were able to replace it in Savu Savu so we are carrying another spare.
In the strong winds yesterday we blew the starboard block on the lazy jacks at the mast. This is another ongoing problem as we replaced the port block in Atuona in the Marquises. We obviously need to go up a size in blocks (to take a higher load) and hopefully we can get 2 larger blocks at the Marina.
Stephen has rigged a makeshift system using a spinnaker halyard and I must say that it is working very well and we were very grateful for it when dropping the large and very heavy mainsail yesterday in adverse conditions.
We are also concerned because the motor isn’t charging the batteries. Fortunately, we have a generator but it is something that needs to be fixed ASAP. We have 2 alternators and it is hard to believe that both have failed. At present we are assuming that one of the alternators was not working when we bought the boat and that the other one has failed. Fortunately there is an auto electrician at the marina that we are visiting tomorrow.
Fortunately these are little problems considering all of the complicated systems on Salacia. The previous owner left a wonderful file drawer with instructions and identification of just about everything on the yacht. He also handed a very well maintained vessel over to us with compliments to Jeff Brown and Eric of JK3 Marine Enterprises.
We had a very comfortable night last night in our little unnamed bay. This morning 3 red fishing pangas arrived. One crew were fishing, another was snorkelling and the 3rd was walking on the reef. It would be interesting to know what each group were hunting for.
We did a load of washing today and in an hour it was dry in the hot sun. The deck was too hot under foot to walk without shoes.
There are a lot of boats in the vicinity that we know. We have been in contact with David and Gai on “Cumulous 1” and the boys on “Cool Change”.
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