Pitufa.at

I am testing a service to automatically share our blog posts on our facebook page. It’s called dlvr.it, and I’m not sure yet whether it works or not. We will know as soon as this post shows up at @sy.pitufa…

Sometime in July our Leeloo turned 20–quite an age for a cat… She’s seen a lot during this long life: she lived in our garden flat with us in Austria, went on a student exchange with me to Madrid as a kitten, roamed Swedish forests, resided in our British ‘long garden’ in Cambridge and when we decided to start sailing in 2009 came along on our very first journey under sail. She’s lived full-time afloat now for 9 years on Pitufa, a truly old salt

Pitufa’s previous owner was German, so she came with many gadgets ‘made in Germany’. One of those is our shaft seal: a ProfiSeal (www.profiseal.com), based on the design of drip-less face seals. Instead of a flimsy rubber harmonica (like on the PSS), it features a solid metal housing that is flange-mounted to the stern tube. Inside the housing, a rotary unit (fixed to the shaft) consists of a massive stainless steel spring and a graphite ring, which is pressed against the forward end of the housing where a stainless-steel ring sits. It has a hose barb for the intake of cooling water, is very compact, only 11 cm (4.3″) long for our 35 mm shaft, making it probably the only face-type option when space is limited.

Our ProfiSeal has kept the boat dry for incredible 23 years and its endurance against the constant galvanic attacks from a much nobler close-by neighbourhood is extraordinary. We only changed the rotating unit and the stainless counter ring after we had to pull the shaft for repairs six years ago. We contacted the company and were astounded by the swift customer support. Spare parts were available without delay and came with professional advice which helped with the re-installation. As the aluminium housing now showed some corrosion, we installed a new shaft seal when we were on the hard last week–of course a ProfiSeal again.

Installing our new ProfiSeal

While no flights were allowed into French Polynesia we observed that people went back to their normal behaviour–no masks, kisses for greetings, etc. We were worried that they would not change these customs when the borders were opened again. Fortunately we were wrong: In town almost everybody is wearing masks now (many in colourful Polynesian patterns), people queue with respectful distance in supermarkets and I was surprised when the cashier at ‘Champion’ disinfected every single coin and banknote when I did my shopping there today. No cases in Tahiti so far, we hope for the best.

Being on the hard means hard work all day long (and a few times into the night–ever tried to apply black antifouling in the dark?). As we live on Pitufa, we cannot walk away from the building site in the evening. We usually need at least one bit from every single one of our many lockers and by the end of the day there’s no free surface available. In order to being able to sit down, we first need to stow away at least the worst of the mess.

Of course such chaos also means searching for bits and pieces and it’s especially annoying when you think you’ve handed down all the stuff that’s needed for a job (by bucket elevator), only to find out that there’s one tiny bit missing–4 m up the ladder, around the deck, 6 steps down into the boat and the same way back again. At least we can’t complain about lack of work-out.

Fortunately we managed to get all jobs done within a single week (antifouling, paint repairs, new shaft seal, new cutlass bearing, new depth sounder in a bigger thru-hull, closing a no longer needed thru-hull, fabricating a platform for a new swimming ladder, having it welded on, installing the ladder, etc. etc.) and we splashed this morning! Hurray!! We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the boat and clearing away the chaos. Oh yes, and Christian of course couldn’t resist finishing the installation of the swimming ladder–a job that turned out to be more complicated that expected needed bits and pieces from hidden storage spaces. Anyway, now we’re done and ready to have an after-work beer!

We needed a new cutless bearing

Toxic stuff...

Birgit's painting the new antifouling

Boatyard chaos

After welding mounts for our new swimming ladder, plenty of fairing was necessary.

Deep draft means working high up on the hard.

After just one week, Pitufa splashes again.

On July 15 international flights are supposed to resume to French Polynesia and we are a little bit worried that this will lead to another covid alarm and subsequent inter-island travel ban. We therefore have changed plans, will head to Tahiti today and try to get a haul-out, some repairs, some doctor’s appointments, shopping (the yearly routine) done before that may happen.

The weather’s not ideal, a rough start then dying winds, so we hope we won’t be stuck with flapping sails in high seas. 420 nm to go!

There’s more Austrian boats than you’d think in the South Pacific, but as it’s such a wide area we don’t run into them very often. At the moment there are two others here in Raroia though and we’ve met up in the Southeastern ‘Austrian corner’. We met Alrisha (www.alrisha.at) in the Gambier last year already, but it’s the first time that we manage to catch up with SY Nomad (www.seenomaden.at). Doris and Wolf have been out for more than 2 decades and their popular presentations and books have inspired many from our landlocked country to go out sailing the seven seas. It’s fun to hang out with those ‘sailing stars’ for a bit!

For our 25th anniversary yesterday we had planned to spend a lazy day with Tuamotu entertainment (motu walk and snorkeling). Unfortunately it was grey with pouring rain, so we spent the day in front of our laptops, working as usually. At least we opened a bottle of red and cooked up a gourmet feast. Still a bit disappointing.

Today we were rewarded with that perfect day in turquoise we had wished for: a motu walk with birdies and a huge, old whale skeleton on the outer reef, snorkeling with beautiful coral, colourful fishies and curious sharkies and on the way back a blue-fin jack bit heartily into our lure–as good as it gets