I love the Mandolin. It’s a Cal 36 from 1970 that Yachts For Life has been using for the past 10 years. It’s the first boat I skippered by myself, and where I gained my confidence as a sailor. It’s also the boat where I met Naomi and, a year later, started dating. We’ve had a wonderful time on board this boat, and we feel at home. So when we were given the opportunity to sail the Mandolin on a 4-day sail in Fiji, and then sail the Seahawk back the same way, we of course said yes!
Although most memories we have of the Mandolin are good, we also have a few bad ones, and they are usually all related to the engine. We have battled that hunk of steel, that have been put in backwards just to make everything ten times harder, so many times. But usually I have not had to do it myself. Billy sailed with us the first year in 2022, and he got many battle scars. In 2023, the engine worked through our whole SONS (School of Navigation and Seamanship) with only minor hiccups. In 2024, I didn’t sail her, but then Billy was back on, doing his SONS, so she was in good hands. This year, it was my turn to try and nurse the engine into life.
Sailing season is just starting in Fiji, and Yachts for Life has a few outreaches planned. But every year, maintenance is a job few sign up for. This year, a gentleman from Canada named Stephen has spent 5 weeks working on the Mandolin. She is getting some much-needed TLC. When we arrived, we were just going to do an oil change and get things ready before setting off. Well, to do an oil change, you should have the engine running for 10 minutes first. And getting the engine running turned out to be quite the challenge.
Earlier this year, the Mandolin almost sank in the harbor. The hatches had been left open for a while and the heavy rain had filled up the boat to just under the mattresses by the time it was discovered. That means the engine had been sitting halfway under as well, so it wasn’t happy to get started. Turned out that the bushings on the impeller casing had ceased, but it took a few days to get it fixed. I spent a day just trying to get one bolt loose that had a stripped head. In the end, we got the motor running, and after discovering some more idiosyncrasies, it was running well.
Finally, after a week of hard work, we were ready to go. It was late in the day, so we were only planning on going until sunset before setting anchor. Turned out we were not even going to last that long. After 1,5 hours we lost cooling on the engine. We only had cooling on very low rpms, so we limped ourselves to anchor and got to see the sunset. A night of sleep gave me some inspiration, and the next day I knew I had to battle the engine again. My previous scars were just healing, but there was nothing else to do. Turned out the impeller we had put in was bad, so I changed it out and we got going.
It’s a good thing we had the engine, cause on the whole trip north-east we only had headwind or no wind. But it still wasn’t smooth sailing (motoring). Another issue we have been having is getting air into the fuel. A couple of times that day, the engine died, and we had to bleed the low-pressure fuel pump. We ended up anchored by a reef before continuing across the Bligh Water the next day.
Bligh Water is an infamous stretch of open water between the two main islands of Fiji. It acts as a funnel for all the wind and waves, and crossing it is usually a taxing experience. But for us, it was dead calm! Never have I seen this stretch of water so calm, and neither had Hinrich, to whom I sent a photo, who has crossed it many times. And to our surprise, the motor worked all day with no problems! We were hopeful that our last day would be an easy one.
Alas, our next day, and hopefully last day to Savusavu, would be another challenge. We found that we had air in the fuel line again, and we needed to bleed it. But now the bleed bolt had stripped the threads on the pump housing! We were not able to get the bolt tightened, and we were bleeding fuel into the bilge as the motor was running. It was another calm day, and we needed the motor to get us all the way to Savusavu that day. Honestly, by this point, I very much doubted it. I tried to use teflon tape, but it didn’t work great. We entered limp mode and motored at 3 knots with a dripping bleed hole. It started dripping more and more, and we decided to stop the motor and try to fix it properly.
Thankfully, by now we had some wind, and we were able to sail a 2,5 knots in the right direction. I decided this was the time of drastic measures, so I went to get the marine sealant, wanting to glue the bolt to the housing. I tried, but it failed. Turns out that diesel is an excellent stripper of glue, and there was no way it would stick. I tried again with the teflon tape, using an excessive amount. I also removed the copper bushing of the screw. This did the trick, and suddenly we had a working motor! Off we go again towards our destination!
We made it to Savusavu before sunset. The wind picked up towards the end of the day, and we had a really pleasurable sail in the last few hours. We hooked up to a mooring in Waitui Marina, and we were all relieved to make it! To Naomi and me, it feels like being home. Savusavu holds many good memories for us. Especially since this is the place we first discovered that we were in love with each other. We celebrated the achievement by having dinner at a restaurant called Captain’s Table.
It seems a fitting end to our voyage. But we still had the prospect of sailing the Seahawk back down the same way. We were all pretty tired, so that decision would have to wait until the next day. The Seahawk is a brute compared to the Mandolin. More than twice the size and much more difficult to handle. The prospect of sailing the big boat was appealing to me, but the prospect of cleaning it out was not. Tomorrow we will go over and have a look, then decide what to do.