In the morning Helen and Ben took the water taxi into Nuku’alofa while I went ashore here to Big Mama’s for some internet and weather discussions. There weren’t too many people in Big Mama’s that morning so I was able to sort some paperwork out and get up to date with our tracks. One thing I didn’t manage to do was link some photo albums I’ve recently uploaded to their respective blogs. In the absence of this, the albums can of course be seen on our general photos page http:\/\/www.aboarddignity.com\/photos.htm.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon I had planned to scrape the starboard hull. I decided to do some early parts replacement on the genset first. If we end up motoring the last day or two I want to minimise the possibility of any issues there. I therefore replaced the impeller as well as both fuel filters. Prior to replacing the fuel filters I ran the fuel pumps for about 20-30 minutes on each tank giving the fuel a bit of a polish on the old filters. While that was happening I replaced the impeller. This time two blades had broken off and I found three wedged in the ins and outs to the chamber holding the impeller. Once I’d changed out the fuel filters I again ran the fuel pump to purge out any air.<\/p>\n

When I started the genset to check it was ok it made a terrible noise and failed to start properly. It’s normal practice, when putting new fuel filters on, to fill them with fuel before putting them in place. I’ve always managed to get away with this as the priming action has got rid of the air. I checked the primary filter an no fuel had made it in there so with Ben’s help I filled it, screwed it back on, ran the fuel pump for a couple of minutes and retested. All was ok with the engine. Except for one thing. Sea water was squirting at high pressure from around the raw water pump housing the impeller I’d just changed.<\/p>\n

Nothing for it but to take the pump apart and inspect it all. Some of the water tight surfaces looked a bit grimy so I figured it needed a bit of a clean up before reassembly. As this was the first time for me to do something like this I called Stuart over from Imagine to offer any advice. I’m glad I did as he was able to advise me how to really clean up the salts that had built up on the shaft. I also found a pump rebuild kit I had as spares so a lot of the parts I replaced for new leaving cleaning up the old ones for a later date.<\/p>\n

With everything reassembled I fired up the genset and all was ok. Phew. Good news we did this as now I feel we have a more reliable genset.<\/p>\n

With all the extra time spent on the genset we’d run out of time to clean the starboard hull. Helen had bought a six pack of beer in the morning (I’d suggested 12) principally to have some for our arrival in New Zealand. These were soon quaffed to celebrate our improved generator before we cleaned up and headed ashore for our final night out. Quite a few folks showed up which was nice. We had plenty of beers and had one last meal. Ben and Ian ended up going back with our last bottle of nasty Tongan rum in exchange for more cava which was doing the rounds with the youngsters. He’ll be as agile as a sloth today I’m sure which will be fun because he’s supposed to help out with the hull cleaning.<\/p>\n

The weather picture looks slightly improved on yesterday. The winds look as though they’ll begin turning to the east a little earlier. No news on the stalled high at the other end. We’ll just have to take our chances with that when we are on the move. Today we’ll focus on getting the boat ready for passage so we can leave as soon as we want in the morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the morning Helen and Ben took the water taxi into Nuku’alofa while I went ashore here to Big Mama’s for some internet and weather discussions. There weren’t too many people in Big Mama’s that morning so I was able to sort some paperwork out and get up to date with our tracks. One thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imagine","category-tonga","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4303,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714\/revisions\/4303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}