Since this morning MaRe is back the water.

At 0700 I had MaRe ready for launching. But the guys from Marquesis Maintenance Service had a bit of a delay. At 0830 they started moving MaRe. Pretty skillful they moved her out of the entrance area of the shipyard where they placed us for an originally considered 24-h-only term, which needed to be extended to 48 h because work was not completed.

This gave me also the needed time to complete the cleaning of the tender, for which I even needed to take out the aluminum floor plates. Now the tender is ready for it’s last months with MaRe. In Tahiti I consider to buy a Highfield RIP with an aluminum bottom. I also will get a canvas cover to protect the rubber parts from the permanent sunlight.

I am thankful to Vincent to take MaRe out for the original 1 day because the only available space to place her, was in the entrance area where she blocked all boat transport in and out of the shipyard.

The urgent matter was the replacement of the shaft seals of the PRT saildrive.

It seems that the last time the shaft seals were not properly installed. Additionally, a screw, securing the spinner of the propeller was missing. Completely forgotten or only forgotten to secure the screw with adhesive bond? There will be no answer to this.

Fortunately I had a suitable screw in my screw collection.
However, it was a bit work to get the screw in because there were salt precipitation in the whole of the thread. WD 40 Fast Release solved the problem by dissolving sake salt and other stuff and flushing it out. After about 30 – 40 min I could get the screw into its thread. Now, the screws are secured with bond on both saildrives.

Fabian, one of the technicians of Marquesis Maintenance Service did a good job on finding and closing the oil leak in the PRT engine, the change of the shaft seals of the saildrive, but also applying a new layer of antifouling, patching a few gelcoat blemishes, and changing already earlier the shaft seal of the sea water pumps.

Additionally the sea water pump has new sealings. I dismantled and mounted the pumps and Fabian, as mentioned before, replaced the shaft sealings because for this work a press is necessary.

I’ll miss Fabian and our 7-words-English-and-7-words-French conversations. He lives in Taaoa, a small village SW of Atuona, about an hour for Fabian by bicycle.

The technical issues are solved, the boat is very clean and we are at anchor (almost at the same spot as bevor) waiting that time passes to lift the hook towards midnight for a night sail to the Hanavave Bay.

The distance is only 46 NM which means about 9 h.

The wind is forecasted coming from NNW with 10 KN at the beginning, and once we are out of lee side effect of Hiva-Oa it will increase to 15 KN. This N wind is strange, because we should have the SE trade wind blowing in the Marquesas from pretty much from ENE to ESE.

Looking at the larger wind forecast area, there is a strong low pressure system moving slowly E at about 30 deg S. This low sucks the air from a very large area and this includes the area even N of the Marquesas.

For sailing it means we can easily sail to Fatu-Hiva with only the Genoa.