Much has happened since my last posting on June 26th, and yet another week has gone by. So far we have been at Vuda Pt. Marina for 4 weeks as of tomorrow the 3rd. The new transmission arrived last Friday and yesterday the guy came by to install it. Of course, it was not the right transmission and it has to go back. I suspected as much when I first opened the box since the model number did not match the original one. However, it looked right to me, and yet something still was off.

The dealer in NZ advised me when I ordered it that the model number was confusing since he had different numbers but he assured me it was because in different years Borg Warner used different model numbers (mine was a 1017 and the NZ one was a 71C). I phone the US to ask an official Borg Warner repair facility (Doc Freeman's in Seattle) and what I heard from him was that the two are the same. But in fact in different years they also made the rear housing (reduction housing) slightly differently and the one I got from NZ had a housing with a slightly different shape, hence it would not fit in the ultra-tight space available for the gearbox.

So this morning I phoned NZ again (my long distance call costs are already astronomical) and the man was very apologetic. In fact, it is *virtually* the same gearbox and, space permitting in the width department, would have served perfectly. I don't think our boat is especially unusual in the tightness with which equipment is installed, but we only needed 2 or 3 inches more clearance to fit it. Anyway, he asked me to call him back in a few hours and before I did the girl from the marina office brought me a fax from him in which he said he had found one and was getting it to his shop first to check it out to make sure it was in good working order. When I phoned him at 4pm he reported it checked out great on the bench and that it would be on the Thursday morning flight to Fiji!

Otherwise it has been raining here lately. It was beautiful the first 3.8 weeks we were here, but the last 3 days it has been shitty. Hopefully by tomorrow the front will pass completely and sunny weather will return. Meanwhile Jonah has been ill with a fever for 4 days now. It looked like he was all better on Sunday but then last night he had a relapse with a high fever. This morning though he was excellent and in high spirits. We kept him indoors today to rest though, esp. given the rain.