Back in New Zealand we spent some time considering our future options once we reach Australia. Continuing our circumnavigation would take us either up the Red Sea (not a good option these days) or round South Africa. As much as we like the system, we felt the power of the hybrid system was not sufficient for either of those legs given the conditions we may face and possibly have to motor through. A third option that was always on the table would be to sell the boat in Australia. From our research and contact with others it turns out that a second hand hybrid 420 is a lot harder to sell than a diesel version. It is sad but we came to the conclusion we would have to convert the propulsion to diesel once we reached Australia in 2012.<\/p>\n

Having another issue changes our position on this. Our appetite for being out in a remote area of the Pacific if another issuer should occur has dropped somewhat. Having already made the decision to switch our thinking has now shifted to having the conversion done this year rather than next.<\/p>\n

Lagoon are remaining remarkably supportive to us. They’re onside with providing us help and parts to get over the current issue and are with us in setting up a conversion either here in Fiji or in Australia later this year. We have friends due here in September and really don’t want to cut our time here in Fiji and miss them. At present it is unclear if Fiji has the facilities to do the work. That will take some research.<\/p>\n

So how does this all affect us here and now. With this new issue we’ve abandoned our plans to head off to the remote islands of the Lau Group for now. In a way we’re glad this has happened now when we’re not so far from communications. I’ve sent off what observations and thoughts I can to the techs.<\/p>\n

Depending on weather, either today or tomorrow we’ll head back to Taveuni and get back connected. There we can research haul out costs\/facilities in Fiji. We can also get talking to the tech to determine what can be done in the short term. We can still motor but at reduced speed over distance and still gave full power from the batteries for maneuvering. That’s fine for getting on\/off the hook. We even have a back up for the port charger albeit one which also has a problem. The redundancy of the system shows (if not the resiliency) but we do have to adapt our plans to cater for the changed risks\/failure scenarios. Hopefully after a few conversations we’ll have the parts identified to be sent to Fiji, probably Savusavu where we can rendezvous with them in a few weeks time.<\/p>\n

Being back in Taveuni will not be so bad as it gives us a chance to have a nice meal somewhere on our soon to arrive 25th anniversary. So it’s not all bad.<\/p>\n

This is all a bit of a pain but things will still work out. With Lagoon working with us and remaining very supportive we are in a good spot. We’re keeping our fingers crossed we can get the big work done here in Fiji later this year. We will know soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly after breakfast it was time to take Judy and Colin ashore. To make things easier Helen said her goodbyes aboard so just the three of us headed ashore where I did mine.<\/p>\n

A little later Helen and I went back ashore to provision and pick up fuel for the dinghy. Soon after returning to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiji","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","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=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4772,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions\/4772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}