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After spending a few extra weeks in the lagoon at Tikehau in the Tuamotus waiting out a weather trough that had the winds kicking up higher than what we wanted to go out in. Finally the weather broke and we headed north. We beat to weather trying to get as much easting as we could. We had an advantage leaving from Tikehau rather than Bora Bora though as we were already quite a bit further east than most boats are when heading north.
About 3 days out, the Volvo engine pooped out on us again. (See the Tuamotus page about when the engine first had a problem.) Let's see, the raw water pump leaked seawater into the crankcase early on. Drain the oil/water, put in new oil and the engine ran. Next, pump pump all the oil out of the engine while running. Fixed leak, put in new oil and the engine ran. I guess it was just tired of being abused. This time we bent a rod. We were able to remove the pushrods and disconnect the fuel line. This turned the 3 cylinder into a 2 cylinder for a few more days but finally the Volvo said "I give." and stopped running. Now we had to make a decision. Keep cranking the engine and keep trying to start it or conserve what juice we had left in our batteries. We did have a small gasoline genset but only a couple gallons of gas. We ended up running the batteries dead in just a couple more days when we ran out of gasoline. From there on it was all hand steering for 17 days. No power for lights, satnav, radar, autopilot, radio, water pump, nothing. It wasn't a pleasant trip.
We did catch lots of fish in and around the islands and on our passage back to the mainland.
These are some of the fish we saw while snorkeling in Hawaii.
Hawaii had a great library system. Not sure how much the taxpayers had to pay for this service, but you could check a book out at any library and return it to any library. We took advantage of this throughout our stay.
Click on the links below for photos at our various stops.