Tahanea, Tuamotu Atolls, French Polynesia – The best laid plans of mice and men – Part 2

In part 1 of the ‘misadventures’ of Spirit of Argo we left the crew with no water and no water maker. Not a pleasant situation to be in. The humans had a restless night, squeezed the last of the water out of the tank to make coffee in the morning, and started to look at their options.

Option 1: If they had enough water to sustain themselves for a few days, they could try to fix the water maker. The situation was not too dire, as the humans had squirreled away a bit of ’emergency’ water in case of a situation like this. But the amount they had was not going to last the three of us long and there were no guarantees the water maker could be fixed.

Option 2: The safer option would be to sail to an atoll that did have water. We were sure the touristy atoll of Fakarava would have water and that was only an overnight sail away.

Just as they were weighing their options the Italian super yacht ‘Ohana’ pulled up and anchored beside them. ‘Hat in hand’ the humans raced over to see if they had any drinking water to spare. The crew were lovely. Problem solved! Maybe my humans luck had finally turned around.

THE WATER MAKER REPAIR

They may have water now, but it will not last long. My humans needed to get the water maker working again. Not an easy task when they needed an engineer and a welder. Neither of which my humans are…but they try. Thankfully they purchase the smallest simplest model possible on the market. When I say ‘simplest’ I am not joking. If you get a chance look up a PUR Survivor 35, I am sure you will agree. With their whole other spare, my humans should be able to figure out and swap out anything broken. But then again…you know my humans!

Time was important here so ‘all hands on ship’. One human tore the pump unit apart to find the fault while the other looked at how to repair the broken mounts. Those they did not have a spare for. The first thing they found in the pump unit was a sticky valve plate. It might of caused the pressure to build up inside, snapped the membrane housing off, and later the mounting brackets. That was swapped out. But no way to check until the pump could be mounted back onto the motor. So the next problem was how to weld the mounting bracket back together. That was not going to happen. Time for ‘Mr Epoxy resin’. Hopefully the humans could build up enough layers of fibre glass and epoxy to save the mounts.

So that is where the humans are at. Weather is still good to sail to Fakarava if it all goes to s*&t. Why do I sail with these two?
Rain clouds moved in through the day. The humans quickly put up the rain collector, which they appropriately nick named the ‘rain stopper’ as it always drives the rain clouds away. This time was no different. I can not rush them, epoxy needs a bit of time to cure and gain it’s strength, but I will let you know as soon as TEST 1 is completed.

Hope your days are easier than mine.
Here we are again, fixing the boat in another beautiful location….and Tahanea is stunning. I will tell you how things go.

END.