May 15, 2011
Dear F&F, Hopefully Bobby Darrin, author of \”If I were a carpenter and she were a lady\” won\’t be too plussed about my liberties with his song title. (See paragraph below).
Current conditions: Auckland: 21 knots, SE (a first!), 57 degrees F, 14.2 degrees C. Rain and squally and rough outside the harbor. The backside of the low pressure system is starting to leave us. The incoming High Pressure system is very high and will have very strong winds (30+) knots as it approaches. A 1032 mb high is going to drive the wind from here to Fiji.
It appears our \”weather window\” is back for Wednesday, but we will get re-enforced trade winds about 500 miles north of New Zealand. At least it will be warm up there. Re-enforced means 25+ knots. Prediction is right behind us at 15 knots on Wednesday, a good get away wind. Tomorrow Kate will finish shopping and I will REALLY clean up the boat and get the packed stuff off to LA.
Today we loaded the final fuel, did massive laundry and checked weather. Kate cooked and did more organization. We had a lovely dinner at a Southern US Cuisine restaurant, \”Jambalaya\” owned by two American ex-pats. They wanted Mike to know they found the okra for the gumbo….Mike take note!
I tried to clean up the boat and was side tracked by adventures in plumbing….read on.
Adventures in Marine Plumbing:
Our water pumps both seemed to fail at the same time today. I thought that was odd? They both just kept running and running a sign that the variable sensors for water pressure have failed. So, I turned off all the water valves, and took apart Kate\’s bed to retrieve the spare pump. I put it in line AND…..broken right out of the box.
I noted that the other pump though seemed to work and I was okay with that as we only needed one. Then I opened the hot water valves and the now \”good\” pump started to run again. I quickly realized that Kate had forgotten to make absolutely sure she\’d turned off the hot water recycling valve in the shower and that answered the mystery of the \”broken pumps\”; we were just recycling our hot water around and around. When I went to put the (thought to be bad one, that wasn\’t) back in the system. The plumbing started to leak. ANOTHER \”O-Ring\” failed. Replaced, 2 hours chasing noisy pumps, and we\’re back in action. However, we did learn our spare was bad and we\’ll try and pick another one (or two) up tomorrow morning.
The weather window that is appearing is the first in over a month. The next one is most likely not to appear until at least the first week of June. Colder then than now (It\’s fast approaching winter here) and who knows what quality that window will be. Right now, the weather guru\’s say Wednesday. Let\’s hope for the best….
KIT, Scott with Kate