Monday, July 3, 2017

The Pink Panther

0800 Position 16-49S 150-59W.  Anchored in Avea Bay, Huahine

The cooling water temperature sensor shut down Van Diemen's generator automatically just before we left Bora Bora, and yesterday Rob dug into it to figure out why.  Overheating is usually caused by inadequate flow, so Rob first took apart the water pump.  He found two of the ten flexible rubber pump impeller vanes broken, and the rest cracked, so he removed the vane pieces from the heat exchanger and replaced the impeller.  That was one problem corrected, but water flow was still less than normal and the generator was still overheating.  He cleaned the strainer, but water flow was still less than normal through the intake.  A stiff wire run down through the intake and out of the through hull didn't solve the problem.  What the heck?  I dove over the side to check it out from the outside while Rob probed from the inside.  While I was underwater a 7/8 inch diameter hard transparent sphere came out of the through hull.  It looked like an eyeball.  I don't know if it was an animal or a plant, but it wasn't man made.  It was large enough to get into the 1 inch diameter through hull pipe, but not large enough to pass into the ¾ inch diameter strainer intake.  It was just moving down and out of the way during Rob's previous probings.  Problem solved in a mere three hours.

Just before noon two charter catamarans with French crews powered into the bay.  We could tell they were French because the guys were wearing banana hammocks.  True to form, with the entire Pacific Ocean to anchor in, the first catamaran decided to anchor about seventy five feet dead to windward of us, and his buddy in the second catamaran anchored next to him.

I've had two previous experiences in Avea Bay with French idiots anchoring too close.  The first time I confronted the skipper of the other boat who replied, "Monsieur, I am not concerned."  I moved rather than risk the boats swinging together.  The second time a French catamaran anchored too close directly to windward of us, and their anchor dragged.  I had to tie my own anchor line to a buoy and let it go to avoid being hit by the dragging vessel.  Lori powered Moku pe'a around the anchorage while I swam over and reanchored the catamaran who's crew was ashore at the time.  Here we go again.

During the afternoon the Van Diemen crew decided to go for a drift dive around the southern end of Huahine.  I used the opportunity to get some exercise.  We motored the dinghy south in the lagoon to where the coral was nice.  Mike got in with his fins and mask and I just had goggles on.  It took about a half hour to swim the half mile back to Van Diemen.  Great exercise, and it made that first beer of the afternoon taste fantastic.  As we swam by our buddies on the French catamaran we noticed that their anchor was sitting on a steep slope between the six foot depth over the sand bar and the thirty foot depth of the anchorage.  Their anchor was poorly set and would almost certainly drag if the wind came up.

We got word that there was a pretty good food truck opened daily across the street from the Relais Mahana and went there for dinner.  They had a "3 Cheese Pizza" on the menu, and that's what I ordered.  The proprietor arrived at our table with three cheese pizzas for me.  The place was busy and she was able to sell the two extra pizzas to other customers.  The food was great though, and reasonably priced.

At 130AM this morning the inevitable happened, and Inspector Clouseau's anchor dragged out into deep water when the wind increased.  The wind had also shifted a bit, fortunately, and they didn't hit us as they dragged by but it was close.  It was chaos aboard the French boat as they tried to figure out what was going on and reanchor.  At first it looked like they were going to try to anchor right on top of us again.  Shining our spotlights at them didn't get their attention, but Rob yelling "Go anchor somewhere else!" did.  It took them a couple of hours to get properly anchored and this morning they were 100 yards away.  


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