Who Do Vuda? We Do Vuda!

After our brief one-day stay at Port Denarau, we motored five miles due north to our new home for the next one and one/half months at Vuda Point Marina.  The bad news is we have to stay here a long time to get much needed work done on the boat. The good news is it’s a great place to be stuck.

View of Vuda Point Marina from atop our masthead.

The very popular Boatshed Restaurant is on the point at the top of the photo.

Vuda Point Marina is essentially a big circular pond, but very well protected from wind and waves. It is normally full, so we had to wait outside for several hours until a slip became available. You then enter a narrow, but well-marked channel and follow a chase boat to your “slip.”  It is interesting to note that your “slip” won’t appear as a slip, but usually as a slightly wide crack between two boats that you slowly motor into as your beam wedges the adjacent boats out of the way. The whole thing, as Meryl describes, is like a giant accordion that expands and contracts as boat come and go.

Our first slip was a bit away from the bathrooms and stores so we moved closer in the next day, and were delighted when our Austrian friends Kathi and Wolfgang on Plastik Plankton pulled in right next to us. A day later new friends Maurice (French Canadian) and Maria (Italian) on Captiva pulled in on the other side. It was like old home week all over again.

Our reason for coming to Vuda was to take advantage of the relatively low labor rate in Fiji and the number of well skilled (compared to the rest of the South Pacific) workers to get projects done. A short list (but not complete) of what we had to accomplish included:

• Repair Speed and Depth instruments
• Replace sagging headliner in boat
• Repair Yamaha 15 outboard
• Replace Yamaha 2 outboard
• Replace high water alarm
• Replace engine room light
• Replace Command Mic at helm
• Replace hose and repair aft head
• Replace transmission
• Replace bimini and dodger

As you can see, it’s not going to be a fun or inexpensive month here. So first things first:  Meryl took a cab out to the airport to FedEx to ship our Speed and Depth instruments whose LED screens were too clouded to read. It’s common for anything with a LED display to fail in the tropical heat. Luckily we had found a guy in the US who repairs them (the Raymarine ST60 instruments are no long made, sold, or repaired) so we’re looking at a two-week turn around. And you can’t have a boat here without a depth meter.

Next we contacted Baobob Marine to see about repairing our transmission. It took them a couple of days to respond but they said parts for our transmission are no longer available (is this sounding like a trend?) so we’d have to buy a new transmission, but first they’d have to see if someone actually makes a transmission that will fit our engine. Luckily they found a ZF model that will work and we ordered it out of Australia. They were supposed to ship it via ship but that would take too long, so we decided to air freight it, only to find out that it got bumped off the flight (sounds like us when we fly) to put on additional passengers. And so it goes.

Next problem was the outboard motors. Our little Yamaha 2 hp engine (30 years old) had been the best engine we’d ever owned. It always started on the first pull, but when we took it to an outboard guy in Suva (Frances) he found the impeller and housing were severely corroded and would need to be replaced. Again, trying to find parts would be a challenge, time consuming, and expensive. We found we could buy a new engine out of New Zealand for about US$700, but they called the next day and said it would only be $500 since there would be no GST tax as it was being shipped out of the country. We can’t pull our dingy up on a beach with the heavy 15 hp Yamaha, so this was a no brainer. Should arrive next week. Frances boxed up all the parts of our old 2 hp motor and we took them with us.

Meanwhile we called Frances’ buddy in Vuda, a guy called Tom, who could work on our 15 hp motor, which had not run right since it was stored for four months at Raiatea Carenage. Tom quickly found that the problem wasn’t a clogged carb like we thought but a defective coil (which had to be ordered from New Zealand and whose price you don’t want to know). When he brought it back we tested it on the dingy and we went flying out of the marina. Since previously we were just put putting along it was a huge improvement. We gave Tom the old 2 hp Yamaha as a gift for helping us out.

Sandeep and Brakesh carefully glue the new headliner in place.

The old headliner was puckered and hanging down.

Many of the panels were Velcro'd to the ceiling and dropped down for access to the wiring. I had to redo all the wiring with quick disconnects for easier access.

 Next we arranged with Marshall Sails to replace our headliner. The bid wasn’t cheap but I have to say they are doing an incredible job. Everyone else we talked to said we’d have to remove all the teak trim in the inside our boat, which I figured would be at least a $2,000 job alone. These guys have been able to carefully remove the old headliner and install the new material without removing the teak. The original problem was the headliner has a foam backing, and the foam disintegrates in the tropical heat. The actual nylon backing on the foam tenaciously stays stuck to the wall, however, so it has to be sanded down to give the new stuff something to bond to. It’s taken over a week but what a difference the new stuff makes. Previously we thought we’d been living in a Bedouin tent with our saggy ceilings.

Ever since we were in the South Pacific large yellow wasps would slowly cruise around the inside the boat. We later found that one had set up house keeping on the back of our curtains.

As far as the bimini/dodger goes, they won’t be able to start on the bimini and dodger until next week, and it will take three weeks so we’re stuck here for longer than we had hoped.

The other projects, replacing the high water alarm, the engine room light, and the command mic, were quickly accomplished once I received the parts from the States (nothing seems to be stocked here in Fiji). I was shocked when I placed the order with Fisheries Supply in Seattle on a Thursday and the package arrived on the next Monday. I guess we just got lucky for once.