We decided to spend another day off Lesiaceva Point and to use the time to do our first oil change on one of the engines. The starboard engine is up to 46 hours of use, close enough to the 50 hours required for the first oil change.
It is of course two oil changes as both the motor and the sail drive both need to have their oil changed. Extracting the old oil took most of the time. Because this was the first time I took no short cuts focussing first on the engine and then on the sail drive. Next time I’ll save some time by draining them both simultaneously. The foot pump assembly I made back in New Zealand worked really well for draining the oil from the sail drive. All in all it took nearly three hours to complete the work during which time I must have lost a huge amount of sweat working down in the engine compartment in the local heat.
Given the effort it takes to change the oil on one engine I’ve decided to wait a week or two before working on the port engine. It only has about 44 hours on it so it will be easy to stretch this out. The next oil changes are at 250 hours which will be some time away.
In the afternoon we transferred the 20 gallons of extra fuel we carried in jerry cans into the main tanks so we could store the jerry cans forward.
We all had some R&R until about 3pm when we up anchored and moved the boat back to Savusavu where we were given the same mooring ball as before.
In the evening we went ashore to eat at the Back Deck.
We’ve come into Savusavu to get our clearance to the next port. That also means we have to now decide what our next port will be. Chances are we’ll stay just the day and move back out to Lesiaceva Point prior to heading east in a day or two.
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