Port Vila, Efate Island

We came in yesterday to Port Vila which has a very landlocked harbor with deep water mostly and lots of boats so you pretty much have to use a ready-made mooring. They are 1000 vatu a day which is a little more than $10US. We got vatu on Tanna at 94 vatu/$1US. The overnight passage here was uneventful except that our starter was still acting up so I put it on my priority list to check out when we got here. Sure enough the main battery cable going to the starter solenoid was loose but when I tried to tighten it up, the bronze stud broke! Swell!

That meant either a replacement starter or we had to get ours rebuilt. The previous owner of MD left lots of spares on board when we bought her, including a starter with solenoid. I had taken it out years ago and painted it then sealed it up in plastic and put it in a locker for future use. Today was the future. Starters don't have to be difficult if you have access to the bolts holding them in and nothing else is in the way. I had issues with that but got the old one out in a couple of hours of sweat and cussing. This was not turning out to be one of our best moments in cruising (more down below on that).

I dug out the spare starter and it looked so nice with its spiffy paint job and no rust. However, it was a different starter than the one off the engine. Turns out it will fit but the solenoid is in a different spot and will make checking the engine oil a real pain but doable. I tried at first to see if I could swap solenoids but they are too different. When I went to put the parts back together I snapped a connection stud on the old starter making it completely useless. So I went ahead and put on the new one. They are much easier to take off than put back so with a lot more sweat and cussing I got it on. I was feeling much better at this point and even optimistic. I continued on to put on the engine wiring including the battery cable and guess what? The solenoid housing holding the battery post stud crumbled. The solenoid now needs to be replaced on this starter too. I am really feeling pretty low at this point.

It is Friday night here which means I can't even start researching how to get one or both of these starters rebuilt or even get a solenoid. Fiji would have been a much better place to start, New Zealand even better, Vanuatu - forget about it. The population is so small and the economy so poor here there will not be much selection and I am not sure what passes for an electric rebuild/repair service here. I will check local first but I think NZ will be where I end up, which means long distance phone calls and shipping and shipping cost and shipping delays. Of course we can't even run the engine until then so we have to be careful about our batteries and hope that our solar panels can keep up. I do have a little Honda generator which can top them off if need be but it is noisy and takes a lot of gas to run for long.

Now I will backtrack and let you know what else has happened. Yesterday we went in to town to start the paperwork shuffle here. We need to get a Visa extension so we can stay for more than 30 days but we were 15 minutes late and they closed. We went looking for a place to eat dinner and ended up at the Waterfront Bar & Grille which is right on the harbor (duh) by the dinghy dock. While being led to a table I walked under the thatched roof and around a pole and nailed a post/rafter sticking out under the thatch that I did not see. I was practically knocked to my knees. It put a big gash on my head and blood was running down my face and off my nose. The staff gave me ice in paper towels, telling me that they would stop the bleeding - wrong. I got it to stop with copious quantities of paper towels and we went ahead and ate there (pretty good food but not cheap). My head was starting to throb and even two beers did not begin to help.

Cuts out here can be dangerous. Every year someone dies or else loses an arm or leg or finger from little scratches getting infected. The saltwater here is really loaded with bad nasties and of course the environment elsewhere is too. Simon on S/V Galaxie is going through that right now with a little cut on his leg that got infected so he is on major antibiotics. I went back to the boat and washed my head really well with shampoo and clean watermaker water then put Betadine on it. Ditto again this morning and more Betadine tonight.

Wait, the adventure continues. First thing this morning we took the dinghy over to Customs which is about a mile away farther in to the harbor. Our motor died just as we were getting to the dock and would not restart so we rowed the little way in. Earlier when we got started by our boat we noticed a sheen on the water by the motor which I thought was just excess gas from the motor getting flooded - wrong again. The gas line I put on in Fiji was slightly too big and I used hose clamps to seal it off. The hose clamp cut through the line and I was sucking air and spewing gas. We could not fix it at the Customs dock but bummed a tow from a Kiwi who came in to check out. I did get the right size hose in Fiji later but never changed it as I thought the fix would last until I did - wrong.

So, the cosmic forces that be have decided we were too low on Karma and we are being punished. We hope that will change soon. I was just thinking the other day that we have had a very trouble free boat compared to most, and may be that is still true. But this starter issue will be a real pain and we may have to stay here in Port Vila until we get parts. Luckily it did not happen in Tanna - no phones, no internet, no nothing. So we still a little good Karma somewhere but better not screw it up.

Port Vila has less than 30,000 people so is a small town. We have not really checked it out but it has a lot of interesting looking shops and some good grocery stores. It also has a high crime rate and some weird politics. It is a good mooring area though and nice and flat which is a good break after the major rolling we did in Tanna and coming here. So wish us luck with the starter and all will be well.

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