Preparing to cross to French Polynesia

This post is pretty delayed in me posting it as I got pretty busy, so… yeah. Most of it was written a couple of weeks ago but time to catch up!

After returning to Bandaras Bay and having Emma leave, it was time to get serious about leaving. My plan was to leave at the end of March, allowing me to take part in the Bandaras Bay regatta that I entered last year. To this end, I started on a list of things I needed to do

Make the windvane work

Well technically it may already work – however I am really not a big fan and basically never use it (I whinged about this at length in this post) I am getting a piece made that fits on top of the shaft, and so I can lock the rudder centre which should make using the thing a lot easier, as well as allowing me to easily steer using the backup rudder if my main one falls off (obviously I hope this doesn’t happen). Just need to practice using it now

Figure out twin headsail rig

This was put in my mind by a couple on a boat called Spruce, who use twin headsails on their dual-track furler. I have a dual-track furler and I like the sound of how easy they make it sound, so I am going to try to get a second pole.

Fix/Replace front hatch

It’s been leaking forever and the hinge just snapped off. Will try to fix, or failing that, get a new one

Redo SSB ground, antenna connections and attach the DSC antenna

Pretty self-explanatory – just want to make sure my SSB is as good as it can get as I’ll be using it on radio nets (and updating this blog from the ocean!)

Retune rig

Last time I retuned it was right after I left the boatyard, so it needs to be redone. Also I think my mast is leaning forward a tad which is a definite no-no

Replace anchor light

Anchor light burnt out at the start of the year. Grr. I’ve been using my foredeck light but it means pelicans land on the front of the boat to watch the fish and a) they are MASSIVE so it sounds like someone boarding the boat, waking me up and b) they shit everywhere. Not great. Liz is bringing me a replacement

Replace inverter

My inverter decided to randomly die. Luckily it had a month on warranty still and Samlex were great about it so my friend Mal is bringing it down

Route manual bilge pump exit to outside

So this isn’t great but I disconnected the manual bilge pump exit a couple of years ago and never bothered rerouting it. Oops. Time to do that for sure

SSB EFI

So my SSB keeps knocking my autopilot offline whenever I use it at high frequencies. This isn’t as much an issue as it could be as I’ll be using my windvane instead mostly but still – probably needs to be fixed. I’m getting a box made for the autopilot control unit – hopefully that will fix it

Provision

Self-explanatory

It’s all a lot of work but at least the wildlife is pretty outstanding around the anchorage!