Friday
17th June 2016
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| Pete on better days |
Sometimes on 2XS
Pete is able to relax and read a book or two.
At this moment – not so much…He is doggedly trying to find out what is wrong
with the autopilot. So far…another mystery
of the sea. This is not fun; he has to
go down into the engine hold, he has to peer into the spaghetti nightmare of
wires in the electricals locker, he has to read through endless not very useful
manuals.
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| Down the hatch |
I am no use at
all. All I can do is speak in soothing tones
and make sure he gets the odd cold orange juice drink.
Today the boats
came in - our friends who have been constantly on the rally, and who left with
us from Ocean View. We came here the long
way round, via Palau, and they have been having a glorious Raja Ampat adventure. Sherry and Dave on SV Soggy Paws (USA,)
Monique and Jan on SV Evia Blue (Holland,) Wendy and Greg on SV Verité (Aus,)
Michael and Jules on SV Sirius (NZ.) And
John, on SV Sapphire, a lone sailor from Toronto, who we hadn’t met before. We are all going out to dinner tonight with the
staff from the tourism office (our shout; they deserve it.)
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| Four cats and one monohull lined up |
This morning I
went for a swim – round and round the starboard hull of 2XS…no crocodiles would
come so close to civilisation! I did 72 lengths,
which I know is 1 kilometre, and this was very good for my mental health. (Oh and physical too of course...)
At 1pm eight of
us went into town in two rental cars, provided by the tourism office thank
you. I abandoned them all at the hotel ATM
and went off on my own mission, to the Randy Bridal Salon, where I have been
twice before. Andy has always been very
careful and has listened to what I want – NOT TOO SHORT! Just a SMALL amount off. Please.
He recognised me and was very pleased to sit me down in his chair and to
say yes yes of course he understood
NOT TOO SHORT. Well…he got carried away…
It has been worse; I have had to wait many months for my hair to grow back in the
past; it won’t take so long this time. I
suppose it looks OK but…I never ever like having really short hair. No photos just yet…
I cheered myself
up by buying a very beautiful new umbrella, for my “collection.” My collection only ever equals two at many
given moment…these Chinese umbrellas are very beautiful but they don’t last
forever, sad to say. And they get a lot
of wear and tear, in wind, sun, rain.
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| Oh the glory! |
I also wanted to
go to the market to give the fish ladies copies of the photo I took yesterday. Pete thought they would love it even though
they are looked at me like psychokillers.
And…he was right!
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| This lady looked particularly unloving |
I was very charmed
to see a market cat stalking proudly across the path with a fair sized fish in
her mouth.
Not so charmed to
find big gaping booby-traps in the footpath.
You would never want to walk the streets of Waisai in the dark without a
very effective torch! Underneath this
big gaping mantrap hole there is a plunge of a metre or so and then…a stream of
fetid water…
I wanted to take
a photo of some more of the concrete street art along the main wall on the esplanade. I remembered a mermaid…but had forgotten how
very ugly they made her!
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| WHAT were they thinking?? |
One of the
helpful men who live on the edges of the marina, Berjon, sent his little boy
David into his house to get a dog-eared photo – Berjon and Pete, last
year! I thought I would take a few more
of him with his little Julia, who was totally horrified at the thought. She looked at me in absolute terror but I did
it anyway!
PS Good
news! Pete has found the fault in the autopilot! He can fix it!! WOOHOO!
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