Our damage assessment revealed that there was no major structural damage sustained during our time in the squash zone.  Nevertheless, there were things that had to be repaired before we went to sea once again. 

The most serious problem was the blown trampolines.  We had pushed the boat to windward in rough conditions and the trampolines had taken a beating.  Actually, it was not the trampolines themselves that had suffered.  It was the stainless steel eyebolts that had failed causing the trampoline to have gaping holes at its attachment points to the hull.  We needed stainless eyebolts to make the repair.

Noumea has several chandleries where you can find basic yachting supplies.  One chandlery had several of the stainless eyebolts, but they were not the right size and they only had a couple of them.  My only option was to order parts from West Marine in the USA and have it shipped to Noumea by DHL to be able to make the repair.

I got on the phone and ordered the parts.  It took about five days for the order to arrive in Noumea and get through customs.  Actually, French customs were not a problem and the parts were delivered right to the marina where we were staying.

Once the eyebolts were in hand, I had the challenge of removing the remnants of the old eyebolts from the hull.  It was time to get out the grinder and drill.  I had to grind and drill and grind some more to expose the eyebolts on the inside of the hulls.  Some of them were easy to reach, remove and replace.  Other, required major surgery. 

The tough ones were buried in several inches of "bog" which is a hardened putty made by mixing fiberglass resin with microballoons.  It took many hours of grinding out the "bog" to be able to remove all the damaged eyebolts and replace them with new ones.

Once the eyebolts were replaced, it was simple to lace the trampolines back into position so that it was safe to stand on them.  It was at this point that I decided to start using black bungie chord to hold the trampolines in place.  The bungie chord would not chafe the same  way that synthetic ropes had chafed against the eyebolts during the storm.  This proved to be a wise choice as the bungie chord keeps the trampolines tighter than small diameter rope which stretches and then allows the trampolines to flap in the wind.  Now I mount the trampolines with both bungie chord and small diameter low stretch rope, and this combination has been extremely effective.

The second job that I needed to do was rinse out and dry the parachute, parachute bridle, and  yacht braid that we had used on the trip up from New Zealand.  When you use your parachute sea anchor with all its attendant shrouds and rope. you must religiously rinse it out and hang it up to dry in order to get the crystallized salt out of the canopy and lines. 

Salt crystals are sharp and they cause the canopy, bridle and lines to chafe and degrade if you don't rinse all of the salt out of them after you use them.  So when you get back into port, you have to get out wash tubs and rinse them out with fresh water.  It does not sound like a hard thing to do, but actually doing it properly takes a long time and involves a great deal of work.

When you rinse the parachute canopy, you have to be careful  to not allow the parachute shrouds get entangled on each other.  If you let them get tangled, you end up with a puzzle that you can never solve because it will be impossible to get the lines straight once again.  Tangled shrouds are weakened and they will chafe against one another while you are using the chute, so rinsing the chute needs to be done with careful attention to detail so that tangles do not occur.

Rinsing five hundred feet of yacht braid is also no easy matter.  It has salt crystals all through it and it takes a long time to dissolve the crystals and rinse them out to complete the job. 

After you get it rinsed, then you take a halyard and pull the collapsed parachute up the mast to dry.  You make the five hundred foot parachute tether into ten loops and then you pull all five hundred feet up the mast for it to dry as well.  Even when you think you have gotten all of the salt out, you find salt water dripping from the parachute and tether onto the deck.  Salty rope and parachutes never dry well because the salt holds the moisture in the cloth.  So if the chute and tether do not get dry, that means you have more rinsing that needs to be done to remove the salt.

When the chute and tether are finally dry, you must repack them into their rapid deployment bags.  This job took more than one day to get it sufficiently dry so that it could be repacked into their respective deployment bags.

One job remained before we left New Caledonia for Australia.  We have heavy duty alternators on both of the engines.  We had used up a couple of alternator belts on our trip up from New Zealand.  When the house batteries become discharged, the alternators have a high output that they initially produce when the engines first are started up.  In order to achieve that output, the alternator belts come under a tremendous load and sometimes the belts slip.  When they slip badly, they can quickly be destroyed.  I did not realize that the belts were not up to the job when the batteries were heavily discharged.  I thought the belts were slipping because the alternator bracket was not properly adjusted.  So I brought several replacement belts and tightened the alternator brackets thinking that would solve the problem.  I was wrong.  I later shredded the replacement belts and then I figured out that I need to use ribbed belts that would not slip and that could stand up to the loads.  By the time I got to Oz, I was nearly out of spare belts and I brought ribbed spares so that I would not have this problem again.

If it sounds like all we did in New Caledonia was work on the boat, I have given you the wrong impression.  Actually, we spent a week cruising to the islands in the areas around Noumea.  There are beautiful sheltered coves that offer excellent anchorages with good wind for sailboarding.  The water is clear and the anchorages are secure.