Flat Earth, a Nordhavn 50, is back in the lower 48 after completing a more than 2400 NM passage from Ko Olina, Hawaii on Oahu to Astoria, Oregon. We departed at 9:30 AM HST June 6 and arrived in Astoria at about 3 PM PDT on June 22. I will divide the account of the passage into several emails. This one is the first and will encompass pre- passage preparations. The second will talk about the passage itself and the third will discuss the summary. This email will interest the "gear heads" most. Lat year, we took Flat Earth down to French Polynesia for a total of four months. The cruise consisted of a 2300 NM passage down to Tahiti with stops at Palmyra Atoll and Christmas Island. At Christmas we had failures of two pumps: the fresh water recirculating pump on the generator, and the overhung load adaptor that drives the hydraulic pump for the stabilizers. The failure of the water pump is very rare and turned out to be a bad casting that was obscured by paint. We plugged the hole with epoxy and were able to use the generator for two hours per night to make water; however, we were crossing the equator in very hot weather and had no generator to run the air conditioning. (I know: I'm a wussy.) The replacement pump arrived shortly after we did in Tahiti. The overhung load adapter proved more problematic. We completed the last 1200 NM of the passage to Tahiti without stabilizers (or air conditioning because of the generator). I ordered replacement parts from Naiad while in Christmas and they began arriving two weeks after we arrived in Tahiti, but they were either incomplete or the wrong parts. Each time I had to reorder parts, it took another 3 1/2 weeks to get there and cost me a bundle of money in shipping charges. The overhung load adaptor required a keyed shaft on the hydraulic pump and Naiad sent me a pump with a splined shaft. When we finally received the new overhung load adaptor, they sent it with the wrong sized bushing. Rather than wait another 3 1/2 weeks for another part to arrive, I had a machine shop fabricate a new bushing for me. The cost was $350 for what was a $50 part. The system continued to give us problems for the rest of our cruise. We couldn't get a perfect alignment of the pulley wheels so belts would only last a day or two until they failed. When we returned to Hawaii, Dave Cooper, Captain of Swan Song, picked up on the deficiencies within three minutes of inspecting our engine room when he visited us last year in Hawaii. Essentially, we were using a 4 HP design to power an 8 HP pump as installed by Nordhavn. We replaced the overhung load adaptor and hydraulic pump that we had installed in Polynesia with new units because of the stresses they had gone through. They went into the spare parts locker. On the new pump and adaptor, we installed a new double belt pulley and bought commercial size B drive belts which seem to be almost 100% thicker. We looked for belts like these in French Polynesia, but could find none. We also took a great deal care in the alignment of the pulleys. Before the cruise, we judged that the new system was at least 100% stronger than the old system, but only the passage itself would determine if that was true. Additionally, we inspected all of the hydraulic hoses for the stabilizer system We replaced about half of those, the ones that appeared to be "sweating" oil through the skin of the hose, with a higher temperature resistant hose. We also bought and replaced several of the pumps that we judged critical. While Flat Earth was in Papeete, we met Scott Flanders, Captain of N46 Egret, and learned much from him. Egret crossed the Atlantic with the NAR, cruised the Mediterranean for a couple of years, crossed back across the Atlantic, down the East Coast of South America, around Cape Horn, up the West Coast of South America, across to the Galapagos and Easter Island, to French Polynesia, and across the rest of the South Pacific to New Zealand where he is currently berthed. Scott had a sail boater's mentality for cruising, but a power boater's mentality when it came to spare parts. He had parts stuffed everywhere. He even had spare anchor chain snaked down in the drip pan under his engine. Scott had a spare pump for EVERY pump he had on board. We are gradually building our parts inventory on the "Scott Flander's model for spares". We replaced the main fresh water recirc pump on the main engine before our crossing because my brother didn't like the slight whine from the bearing when he spun the shaft. The whine went away after we removed the pump and the shaft was tight with no play, so into the spare parts locker it went. We picked up another spare pump for the generator and felt like we had a back up for every pump we had on board. We have also had a continuing problem with lack of drip from the stuffing box since we took delivery of Flat Earth back in 2003. There has never been any excessive heat from the stuffing box, but little if any drip. Lack of oxygenated water can cause a type of anaerobic corrosion on the shaft and we saw evidence of that last year when we had the shaft pulled during a haul out. We were very careful in how the packing was replaced. When we left Hawaii for Tahiti, we had adequate drip. One day out of Hawaii, the drip stopped again. Heat seemed to take a large toll on Flat Earth during the Polynesian cruise. Crossing the equator, we experienced much hotter weather than ever before and things that we had never had problems with began to fail. This year, I pulled out the standard packing and replaced the high tech packing produced by the Gore company. Supposedly, this packing was better at dispersing heat. We were surprised when we pulled all of the old packing out and had no drip at all. My speculation was that the wax in the standard packing had melted and filled in the small gaps between the shaft and the cutlass bearing. Instead of the three rings of packing used by Nordhavn, we started with just two rings to encourage a drip. After running for about an hour, the stuffing box began to drip and now has an adequate and reliable drip. Also, because of the heat we experienced in Polynesia, we replaced the engine room blower fans with much larger fans similar to the modifications Milt Baker made to his N47 in order to get cooler engine room temperatures. We also moved one of the old exhaust fans to the air inlet to increase air flow through the engine room even more. We checked out both dinghies and found that the water pump for the main dinghy was broken. The 400 gallons of fuel left in our tanks after the 2200 NM non-stop passage back from the Marquessas was thoroughly polished and cleaned. We then filled up with fuel over at the Kehii Marina. Fuel at Ko Olina, which is off the Barber's Point Harbor on the very southern tip of Oahu, was $3.60 per gallon. Fuel over at Kehii, which is right next to the airport on the east side of Pearl Harbor, was $2.45 per gallon. Over the last year, many boats have been leaving Ko Olina marina because of a pervasive feeling that management has been gouging cruisers. We departed Ko Olina about half an hour earlier than our planned departure of 10 AM. Next email: 16 days at sea. Phil Eslinger Flat Earth N50 Portland, Oregon