Overcome.

I've delayed beginning this post for weeks for fear of ending up with an unfair and resoundingly negative review of Rarotonga in these Cook Islands. I wondered if my reasons were all wrong as I contemplated such titles as The Crook Islands and the remarkably embittered Cook Islands: A Place And An Excuse. Even now I am not entirely sure whether the chosen title is result or disposition. Nevertheless, as I near departure from this place, I can look back and say that my life is richer for the experience. And, from now a more tempered point of view, I feel that I can provide a somewhat impartial account.

Firstly, the sail over here was glorious. I've reached the portion of the South Pacific that, especially given the time of year, is more or less constantly affected by a march of alternating high and low pressure systems as influenced by the South Pacific Convergence Zone, the Roaring Forties and the last of the winter gales from the Tasman Sea. As such, I left Mopelia with wind near the nose and proceeded to make about a dozen sail changes over the first day as the wind clocked slowly around from the northwest. I made barely 60 miles in the first day though I was content trudging along. As the wind backed and finally made its way to east-southeast, I began to make up for it. The second day saw 120 miles. Admittedly I was carrying a bit of excessive canvas to make up for lost time, making 130 miles on the third day and the final 115 miles from there in the next 22 hours. I was feeling great about the crossing as I dropped sails and began to motor towards Avaitu Harbor from a quarter of a mile out. It all changed so fast.

A knock came up in the engine. It got worse. Soon, at 2000 rpms it sounded like a machine gun was firing. I had to do what no sailor in the history of seafaring wishes ever to do. I shut down the engine, threw the wheel over and pointed back to sea from only a few hundred meters off the breakers. I put out just enough jib to maintain a touch of headway and went below to see about the engine. It was only a few minutes before I was quite sure that this issue was one I could not fix. After what seemed a very long time, I managed to get the harbormaster on the radio. I advised him that I was disabled, that I may need a tow but that I would see if I could come in under sail. I hoisted the main and unfurled more jib. I had to tack my way back to the approach line before settling in on a close reach past the breakers. I breached into the bathtub that is Avaitu, where I dropped an anchor as I swung the bow around to face out to sea again so that my stern could be moored to the quay. As I secured the boat, I began to realize how this harbor had gained its ill repute. The swell wrapped in basically uninhibited threatening constantly to back my transom into the concrete wall of the wharf. Without an engine to power off, such a situation would have been disastrous. I was bit tense.

Over the following few days, thankfully with the company of a good friend, Zac, who was meant to join the boat for a while and had flown to Rarotonga a few days prior, it became clear that the engine was basically destroyed after only two thousand hours since a full re-build. Now, I try to keep it clean in my writing, subscribing to the idea that my mother has always touted that curse words are a cop-out for thoughtful expression. I don't mind admitting, though, that in speech I am very much a sailor. And I sat in the unrelenting washing machine of Raro with an engine that was completely fucked.

Glad to have some mates about.

With the invaluable help of a local Kiwi charter captain-mechanic-drinker, Keith Christian, we pulled the sump off with the engine still in the boat to learn that I had thrown a rod and that the crank shaft was destroyed. Despite maintaining some degree of optimism for as long as I could, it was then clear that the engine had to come out. I weighed my options. I could be towed out of the harbor and sail straight to New Zealand without motor. I could re-build my no longer perky Perkins completely. I could fit a different engine in if one could be found. Or, I could sail the boat a mile or so off, open a thru-hull and let her go. Granted, the latter wasn't really considered, but my mindset was then dire and I knew that to stay in Raro for cyclone season was simply not an option. In fact, staying for even a few weeks or a month was painful as I was being charged daily for the pleasure of being tied up in this place. Fortunately, I had been allowed to move over to a somewhat more protected location where the few local fishing boats and a couple of small tugs sat. Still though, in the first days I had lines snap and a fair-lead on the stern rip out of the toe-rail. My boat is an extension of my body. The stress on her weighed heavily on me.

We pulled the engine out of the boat- a feat that was much easier than I had thought it would be- and set about looking for parts or used auxiliary diesels. Alas, it was the familiar British Marine in Oakland that was the only place literally in the entire world that we could find everything that was needed. Not even suppliers in the UK, where the engine was built some thirty years ago, had it all. It is difficult to describe fully how grateful I am to that operation. Soon assembled for shipment were a new crankshaft, a new conrod, a new oil pump, a new water pump, new main bearings, new conrod bearings, new thrust bearings and about a thousand gaskets. In the end, the cost to ship the parts was more than twice that of round-trip airfare from the States. So, while Keith left for a five day charter to Palmerston Island, I hung out with my mom, who graciously delivered the parts and made an impromptu holiday of it.

Zac took off for Auckland, my mom soon went home and Josh, another friend who decided to take a holiday in Raro, came and went. It had only been two weeks, though, and Keith returned ready to help me with the re-build. Naturally, as I would pessimistically come to expect, when we began to dismantle everything, we discovered that the drive-plate was also ruined, or nearly so, and should also be replaced. So I put in an order for one from New Zealand and was set back another week and another five hundred dollars (I knew I'd spend in Raro since there were bars and restaurants and all, but I've just now surpassed the four thousand dollar mark... note the new donation tab on the blog).

We stripped it all down and built it all back up and only somewhere in that process did we actually discover the source of the problem. I don't know who had rebuilt the engine, which was sold to me with a mere 1500 hours and marketed as pristine, but they did an incredibly half-assed job. There were seals put on backwards (alas the source of the ever perplexing oil leak), bolts not properly torqued and, the real kicker, four bolts too long. They were those that held the fresh water pump. Instead of bolts, studs were placed, which normally would be fine, except that they were spun in too far, akin to bolts that were simply too long. The internal pulley on the water pump slowly but surely ground away at the ends of all four bolts sending bits of shaved iron through the sump and eating away at everything. This explained why even the main bearings, which should stay perfectly smooth longer than the average human life, were etched like primeval carvings. Finally we understood why the conrod bearing of the third piston looked like the leper of machined parts and why all others were in various degrees of decay. I went through waves of anger and depression, but it was certainly a relief to know exactly how it happened so that we could be certain that it would not be repeated.

The engine is now rebuilt. It still remains sitting on the old rusty fishing boat to which I am tied. Given the abundance of time I've had here and the lack of much to do on this island, I made sure to have her done up right. I cleaned every inch of rust and oil and my sense of despair before painting her. There is no blue engine enamel on this island, so she's silver now. Everybody knows silver is a faster color, anyway. I'm estimating an added two to three horsepower after three coats. As Keith continued to declare even in the face of shockingly eroded pieces of metal, she would be a runner yet.

A few days ago, still awaiting the drive plate from NZ, we attached the starter motor with the engine sitting on the deck of the fishing boat and turned her over and over, bleeding her through and through. She spat and coughed and finally, as I stood using a screwdriver to short the leads on the starter to turn her over, she fired. Alas, she's a runner.

Tomorrow, Monday the first of October, the drive plate should arrive, barring any delays (fear not, I have learned not to get my hopes up). We will bolt that on and I will once again dismantle the galley sink and companion way steps so we can twist and torque and tumble the Silver Spinner back on her mount. Though I remain sad to have eaten so far into the time I had wished to spend in Tonga, I have learned a great deal here from this experience. To be sure, I've gone from knowing only basic diesel maintenance to having a damned decent grasp on diesel mechanics. It was an expensive course, but my hope is that I can rebuild the next one on my own.

It's curious to sit here now and try to provide a review of this island. I was lucky to have my mom and some buddies around, for there were no yachties at all for the first two weeks I was here and I would have been awfully bored otherwise. It's clear that I was lucky to have stopped here as well, for if my engine had shat the bed in Mopelia, for example, or if I had gone to Aitutaki to the north instead of the capital of the Cooks, my situation would have been that much worse. I can count my stars knowing that, in spite of it all, neither I nor my precious little boat was ever actually in danger (thanks be to the blessed sticks and canvas and the flow of air and the stubbornness to avoid always a reliance on that hunk of iron that is forever only a few metal shavings away from becoming an artificial reef).

Josh the pig-whisperer.

That said, I wouldn't come back here. Definitely not by boat and almost certainly not at all. I know that my experience is marred and that I have been here too long so that the charm has long since worn and I've been given too much opportunity to see the negative aspects of the place. But I find myself continually longing for French Polynesia. There are many wonderful Cook Islanders in Raro, but there are also some who so clearly resent all of the outsiders here and make no qualms of expressing it. It's the capital, though, and, like Papeete, the Polynesian hospitality is perhaps inevitably spoiled some by so many tourists and the persistence of economics. The pattern may be that the more flux of people and the faster the pace and the greater the influence of wealth and business, the more conditional becomes any sharing of community or love. No longer is the human condition enough to unite in such an environment, as it was on the little atoll from which I sailed to Raro or in so many of the places I've been blessed enough to visit on this journey. It is a reminder that the world can be a cold and fractious place. There remain, though, reminders in kind, all about, even in Raro, that people from disparate backgrounds can come together and share and be happy. I've had to squirm a bit to see it, but it is here. I have been fortunate to make some great friends on a fellow disabled boat, enjoy a beautiful landscape and share laughs with kind and generous locals and tourists alike.

Partying at Trader Jacks (again).

 So what can I say. Too long in Raro, that's all. Next time I cross the Pacific, it will be a stop in Aitutaki or Palmerston or Suwarrow or Penrhyn instead. Then, perhaps, I'll have a better perspective on this place. I don't hide the fact that I have had a lot of fun here, but I advise that I've also had a lot of frustration. I've gone through so many emotional stages and put in so much work and paid so many dollars that I feel just a little bit exhausted. In one or two days I will sail on, though, and I will have five or six days alone to reflect. In spite of it all, I remain exuberant as I will in a couple of weeks catch up to my friends that have long since sailed on from the Cooks. Though abbreviated, I will still see Niue and Tonga and, in just six weeks time, I will be approaching New Zealand, obstacles overcome, people and scenes and life seen in all their glory and in all their dirge.

Zac waiting. It's what you do in Raro.