On our second day out we discovered the watermaker electric motor is not working. We suspect the brushes as with a previous inspection of the motor we noted that the brushes were nearly gone. Lesson to ourselves 'make sure the tanks are full before leaving'. We had enough water for this trip and we will be able to get water in Palmerston, but we will not do that again.
We had great sailing for the first three days when the winds picked up, it was blowing between 26 to 32 knots. Our second misfortune for the trip, the wind vane gears disconnected, I guess the winds were too strong for the wind vane. We had trouble before with the gears, but a person from Monitor in San Francisco had a look at it when we where there last year. With the winds so strong and both of us not too energetic, we decided to lay a haul for the rest of that day and the night. In hindsight not sure if this was the correct thing to do, as it was a very rolly night, but we did get some rest.
The rest of the trip (48 hours) was hand steering, not fun after getting used to the wind vane, at least the rest of the trip the winds was great and we had great sailing. We were hoping to reached Palmerston before sunset on Saturday, but we were not that lucky. On Sunday morning we managed to speak to the local people from Palmerston Atoll and they came out to assist us with tying the boat to the buoy.
Tomorrow morning customs and immigration will come aboard for clearing us into South Cooks Islands. First thing after that is to get the water tanks filled up. Dinis said he will be able to fix the wind vane and we already ordered a new motor for the water maker. This spare parts will be send to Fiji, where we should arrive towards end of August. Unfortunately this will cut our time from here to Fiji a bit shorter than we planned, but then we can take our time getting this 2 major issues sorted out.
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