In this episode, with Brown’s girls safely home, it’s time for a full-on project sprint before we leave Tahiti. It’s a dizzying stretch of errands and repairs. Our new rain shades and refurbished helm enclosure are installed, we complete four doctor appointments, collect a year’s worth of medication, and receive great news from immigration. We also have our final rigging check, and Brown coats the freshly cleaned and tensioned rigging with an anti-corrosion treatment.
Along the way, we attempt to track down a burning-wire smell at the windlass and investigate an error alarm on our Raymarine chartplotter. Finally, we install a long-awaited thru-hull fitting and discover a great, easy, and inexpensive solution to a malfunctioning fuel tank sender.
#sailing, #boatprojects, #boatmaintenance, #catamaransailing, #leopard44, #leopard44catamaran, #tahiti, #frenchpolynesia, #southpacific, #liveaboardsailing, #liveaboardlife, #sailinglife, #cruisinglife, #offshoresailing, #sailingadventure, #marineelectronics, #raymarine, #windlassrepair, #rigginginspection, #boatrepair, #fuelproblems, #thruhullinstallation
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We are Eileen and Brown Councill. Welcome to our channel and a glimpse into our life adventure! 2020 was a year of uncertainty and change (for all of us, right?), but we overcame the challenges and decided it was time to chase our dream, to sail around the world! Did I mention that we had very NO sailing experience? Before leaving Qingdao, China, our home of 4 years, we sold almost all of our earthly possessions and started our international search to find the right sailboat that we would call "home." After 5 months of unanticipated twists and turns, we found what we were looking for, a used Leopard 44' Catamaran located in St. Lucia.
So, here begins our journey, filled with unmatched excitement and honestly, a bit of trepidation as well. We have much to learn as we travel the world on our floating home and we intend to document that journey and share it with you. We are so glad you have decided to join us, and we hope that you will find our story so compelling that it will inspire you to chase your dreams too!
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Well we just had a fantastic week with Brown's Daughters Hannah Marston. We spent a day here
in Tahiti at this anchorage and then we went over to Morea for five days to enjoy all that
we love about Morea. It was so much fun. We did hiking, we swam, the turtles raised and sharks,
we had great food and we even got over to the Haapiti site which is incredibly beautiful.
Then we came back here to Tahiti to have them catch their flights. It was way too short with
them but it was absolutely amazing and I think they really fell in love with French Polynesia
but hey what's not to love about French Polynesia right? So now after a week of putting aside all of
our boat projects and the girls brought a big 50-pound suitcase, Hannah brought two 50-pounders
for us. After a week of not doing anything and having those parts kind of piling up we are back
on the get to projects mode and we've got a lot to do. We've got some issues to figure out. Our
starboard engine still is not revving above 1800. We've gotten some strange messages on our network
which we need to investigate and on our way back from Morea we tried to pick up the chain and
brown smelt smoke coming from right behind our ignition key. We have that plus a whole bunch of
other things that we need to do and part of the windlass project is to change out our remote. It's
in pretty bad shape. It still works but you know it's a matter of time when that's going to stop.
So lots of things to do, lots of errands to run. We've got to get to it. Here goes. It's a big day
for us after a week of not having any rain shades or helm enclosure. You can see our temporary
setup here and we had tons of rain yesterday. We are getting our rain shades back and our helm
enclosure back today. We are so excited. Brown is going to go pick up our friends there that have
done it for us and they're going to install it this morning. So looking forward to having
this back up and just not having to worry about rain coming and getting everything in here soaking
wet. Well it's a beautiful morning here in Tahiti and we are off to the city. We have four doctor's
appointments. We are trying to knock things out and our friends got great news. They found out that
the French government has given them a 45-day extension on having their boat in French Polynesia
so we are going to head to the airport in between doctor's appointments to talk to the immigration
officials and see if we can get a 45-day extension on our visa. If we can then we will ask for an
extension on our boat which would give us a lot more breathing room than we currently have.
As it stands we've got about a month and a half left here. Boy it would be nice to have till May
1. Just a little bit more flexibility would be really nice. One doctor down. Now we're headed
to our dermatologist. So that was general practitioner. We got all of the prescriptions
we need and now we're going to the derm to get our annual checkup. Wow a dermatologist is done.
We're gonna really miss Dr. Bernadotte. He's the best. We are so grateful that we got out within an
hour. It's amazing because we've got another appointment to get to but right now we are
going to head to the pharmacy because we have prescriptions that we need to fill that would be
one year worth of drugs and normally they don't carry that much in the stores so they're gonna
have to order them and we want to make sure we get in there and get that done. They're super cheap
Elsa. Wow we've knocked number three off the list and now we have one more appointment
and then out to the airport and then back to the dentist and then back to the pharmacy.
This is the waiting room here at the radiology center. Well it's cardiology, radiology, a lot
of things and we're just waiting to get called for our appointment. Three appointments down.
It is amazing that we were knocking this all out in one day. Never ever ever thought this would
work. Now we're off to the airport to see if we can extend our CDS. Let's find the bus for 45
days. Yeah we got to find the right bus. We successfully found the right bus. 200 francs
to ride the bus which is about a little under two dollars so one way two bucks not too bad.
This is Ba'a City Hall.
We made it. Everyone is so nice on the bus. They helped us make sure we got the right stop.
Gotta find the policeman to tell us where immigration is. Oh it must be here. Oh we just
got the best news ever. We have been granted 90 extra days here in the country. It probably,
we didn't have to even be there but we did go in. We did talk to immigration. They did scan
our passports so they are aware of us and he said if we have any problems checking out
with the 90-day extension that we should call the airport. So this is like the best news ever.
South Huahine here we come. Back here waiting for the bus.
Here it is. The dentist's office of all dentist's office on the street in Papillote. We are very
happy to be in air conditioning. It's our final appointment of the day other than to pick up
our meds at the pharmacy that have been ordered. We've gotten it all done. It's absolutely amazing.
Last appointment with the doctor is done. No cavities, no problems. We have an hour to kill
before our pharmaceutical drop-off here but we're gonna stop in and see maybe we'll get lucky when
there's an early delivery. It's three o'clock and the delivery already came in. They said four
o'clock at the earliest so we're done. Well we're not back to the boat yet. No very true but we can
head back to the boat which is amazing. Wow what a day. So good to have that over.
Today is our final rig check with Jean-Christophe to make sure the tension is right after a full
rig change and he's also going to come and take a look at our stainless. Unfortunately the stainless
is rusting all the way up to the top at the turnbuckles on the swages. It's really
very very poor quality and I'm super disappointed. It's just substandard material and unfortunately
there's nothing we can do. They're not going to change it out. We're just gonna have to live with
it which means we're gonna have to go up and clean it probably every three to six months. Again
really like Jean-Christophe. He's done a great job but I am concerned with maybe how he stores
his steel or the factory gave him a bum load and we got part of it so that's the story here but
our clears look amazing. Our forestay has been really loose and to get that forestay tightened
up a bit they're having to tighten up the martingale and then the cap shrouds so they've
going back and forth. First they got to take all the tension out of the cap shrouds then change the
martingale then go back and put the tension in to the cap shrouds and measure so back and forth
back and forth. Brown is up the mast today. He is coating all of our stainless with a anti-corrosive
liquid to keep it from rusting getting the t-stains so he is coating everything so that
we don't have to go up and clean it every three months. This is our best solution as of now trying
to prevent the t-staining and high maintenance. Go! Last week when we were in Morea and tried to move
our windlass we smelled a little burning and couldn't figure out where it was coming from
so our windlass actually doesn't operate unless we have the ignition on and right now we are
checking or I should say Brown is checking the wires that connect the windlass to
the ignition at the helm to see if there is any corrosion or any burning that or evidence of
burning that we see. We're not really sure what we're looking at here and part of that is because
we don't know anything about electrics but the second part of that is we didn't put any of these
wires in. Our electrician did and when you get someone else to do the work you don't understand
it yourself but if we didn't get someone to do the work we never would have gotten out
and started sailing because this is all we would be working on. This is the wire so it looks like
the wire and it connects through here so this wire right there could possibly be the one
that's back there. So we have a series of issues on our display related to the autopilot
so we have taken the ceiling down so we have access to the autopilot up here we're going to
check the backbone it seems like it might be a backbone issue maybe one of the cables came
loose. Most of the work that we do on a boat is trying to diagnose things. Well it's been quite
an ordeal with this through-hole fitting. Back in Tahineo we found that the fitting had broken
so we used 4200 to temporarily fix it and we ordered a part that our friends Janet and Mike
brought with them. Well the part was way too big we got help from the company and even with all the
dimensions gave us the wrong part. So we went into Papeete and miraculously found a part that would
fit but it's not the best quality. We found this part in the chandlery here it's not great
but it would work temporarily. So when the girls came we had a part sent with them well of course
we had no idea if it was going to fit. We finally have the right part that fits from the states
thankfully and now we need to use this caulk to get it to stay. The bad news is that today it is
really windy and the waves are pretty big so they are lapping up over the hole that Brown
is trying to keep dry and clean before he puts the new through-hole in with the 4200 on it so
we're not sure it's going to work but we've got to do it. This is really hard with water slapping
up against it and too deep to stand just got to do the best we can and when we haul out we'll do it
hold it hold it okay i got it you're good yeah it's done all right that project is done thankfully
hopefully for good and now we've got one last project we're going to work on today and then
that's it. The project that we're going to complete now is the simple solution to the
fuel tank sender being broken and we hope it works. We ran into our electrician Rudy in Papeete
and he told us about this product called Mopica. It's a sensor that goes under a tank either a fuel
tank or a gas tank and it reads a level of gas or fuel that's in the tank so we bought one and we
are going to install it under our port side tank so hopefully this will now bluetooth the level of
fuel that's in the fuel tank to Brown's iPad and we don't have to replace the sender. The key is to
put this in the middle underneath the tank then you tell the app the size of it and it tells you
how much fuel is in your tank so it works with gas and with fuel. We're using super glue because you
want as close a contact with the surface of the tank as possible so if you use something like 4200
you just don't get a close enough connection and that means the sensor won't pick up the
fuel in the tank. Wow if this actually works it's going to be amazing. Sensor is on and it's reading.
