A month in Vuda Marina

 With some parts in hand, we were able to complete a few jobs. 

The easy, but most expensive job was to replace the radar dome. We used a sail bag, the bottom connected to a halyard. The opening of the sail bag slipped over the radar dome, then we tightened the draw string of the opening, unbolted the radar and disconnected the cable. Down came the old radar.

The same method was used to hoist the new radar, it does have the same bolt pattern, the old cable needed a pigtail adapter to mate the connector of the new radar. While up there, Silvie took a couple pictures of the marina:

A side job was to replace the foam of our mattresses in the aft berth. The last replacement only lasted 15 months, usually we get 3-5 years from a good foam mattress. The foam available in Fiji doesn't seem to be of good quality. A 120V electric carving knife was in the packages we still had not received. A fellow boater had one on board, for the very same purpose and with that we completed that job in a day.

The new foam is grey, we hope it lasts a bit longer than the old yellow/green foam

The biggest job was to replace the damper plate that connects engine and transmission. Because of a lack of space, to remove the transmission we have to first move the engine forward, then unbolt the transmission, remove it, and unbolt the old damper-plate.

After a bit of clean up, we mounted the new damper plate, then re-mounted transmission, then moved the engine back to about the original position. Then we redid the alignment between transmission and propeller shaft, and reconnected our new exhaust elbow. Sounds easy, but took us a week in this heat. 

While we were at it, we cleaned the turbo's exhaust side (a foaming oven cleaner works wonders) and also treated a couple of rusted spots on the engine bed and engine mounts.

dirty

cleaned turbine

Two weeks after the first delivery, the rest of the parts finally came, so those parts were at least 3 weeks late in total. The bigger jobs are done now, and we are going to leave the marina for a test drive and fun in the islands.