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!

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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