Sunday 5th October 2014
Well man does the time fly, I have been meaning to write daily, but it just gets away from me.
So what have we been up to?
The normal stuff, hanging about the Island, cracking coconuts, swimming, well we did for awhile but now we have the islands entire population of resident sharks taking a liking to our boat, and some friends boats as well.
So no swimming has been had around here for awhile, most of the sharks are just reef Sharks, but we have seen a few that we have no idea what they are.
The other day The Captain, Roseario, and myself, went off spear fishing around the corner of the island, I sat in the dingy and watched the two guys do their macho stuff, every now and then they would come back to the dingy and jump aboard, as there were too many sharks hanging around, these guys were not little reef sharks.
Every time one of them would spear a fish the sharks went crazy, The Captain decided to stay onboard with me thank god but, Roserio would wait about five minutes and then jump back in again.
We managed to get about five fish and Roserio and Elizabeth come over to our boat where we had ourselves a nice BBQ dinner, but when we threw the left overs overboard the sharks went into a major feeding frenzy, it was really scary.
Roserio and Elizabeth arrived on their yacht Andross about a week ago, and offered us some fresh fish that they had just caught before they arrived this started off a very nice friendship, we have been back and forth on each other's yachts for Happy hour and have really enjoyed each other's company.
On Friday we all decided to dingy over to Home Island and check out of the country and then catch the ferry over to West Island were there was supposed to be a better supermarket.
So we pay our fees and then go to the local police station and check out, then walk over to The Ferry, it takes about half an hour to get across to West island then we walk a bit to the little bus/vans and they take us into the main town.
Now I'm not sure what I was expecting maybe a few modern shops, hotels, supermarkets, nope just one little supermarket that was shockingly expensive and had ants running all over the sugar...haha and a run down hotel, but they did have an airport, a nightclub, well I think a night club, and two little kinda cafes, one was at the airport, but they had run out of food at 12pm, the other was near the beach so we went there after the supermarket to fill in time as there is not a thing to do on the island and we had a three hour wait for the next ferry to arrive.
We eventually get back to home island finish getting groceries, as the supermarket here was a lot better, than dingy back to our boat.
Roserio came over to give The Captain a hand with a problem we have had with the Yankee sail, the rope that pulls it up and down snapped right at the top of the mast, yeah the rigger in Bundaberg that fixed it for us did not secure the shackle at the top which resulted in the rope chaffing through.
As you can imagine The Captain was not a happy chappy over this, I was the gofer racing getting this tool and that, holding ropes, and stuff.
But we just ran out of light so we downed tools and they started back at it the next day.
First thing in the morning The Captain races over to Home island to the post office and picked up our latest expensive delivery for the generator, Roserio and himself fiddled with it got it all into place start it up, and yeap still not working, we have decided to leave it till we get to South Africa now, so yeah no blow drying my hair, no microwave, no vacuuming, no hot water, and did I mention no blow drying my hair, yeap it sucks, I have had a bad hair day for about two months now, it's looking ferrel, I told The Captain if it does not get fixed soon I'm gonna have dreadlocks....haha
Actually dreadlocks would properly look better than what it does now.
So they leave that and spend almost all day fixing the Yankee, the major problem was they had to feed a new line down the inside of the mast and find it with a hook and pull it through a little pulley at the side, this just did not work at all, in the end they had to drill out a fitting in the side of the mast and get it that way, but it's all fixed now, so that's good and we are just so lucky that we found it before we left it would of been a major disaster if it happened out in the middle of the ocean in big winds.
And that brings us back up to date, at the moment we are sitting here waiting for the water maker to fill the tanks and in an hour or so we are once again taking off, I can't do much as I have hurt my arm, am not sure how, it may have been when I was oiling the outside of the boat in rough conditions, but man is it giving me hell.
The next stop is Rodrigues, it should take us about two to three weeks to get there, here's hoping for calm seas and smooth sailing, yeah right only I'm my dreams...haha
Well tomorrow is another day.