SV Panta Rhei Retirement Trip

Uturoa is the biggest town in the Leeward Islands. It is about 2 blocks long and features about 4 grocery stores, 3 banks, a couple fast food huts (NOT McDonalds), a church, a police station and a poor hardware store. Basically this isn't so different than St. John, Kansas (except St. John's would have a great hardware store). You would only notice that there are about as many boats as cars since that is the easiest way to connect to all points inside the lagoon. It's easy to find a water taxi and not so easy to find a car taxi. People hitch rides here.

There is a harbor that the water taxis use and sailboats can tie outside the breakwater. That is where we are. It features a quay with quick access to the town but is exposed to the wind and waves of the lagoon and the wakes of the water taxis. Best of all, it has good internet connectivity. It costs $5 USD per hour. We've splurged and streamed NPR Morning Edition which we listen to with coffee and breakfast. It's just like "home" (i.e. Seattle).

Yesterday SV Shanti Ana arrived with our mail and the parts we had ordered shipped to our mailbox in Ballard. Its been months since we last got our mail (we got it in Panama City), yet there was very little mail. Life without much mail is much easier! We searched (twice) for big checks, but found none. Drat. The good news: we found no bills either.

I shopped the hardware store long enough to realize that people don't have electric hot water heaters here (they use butane) and therefore they have no electric hot water heating elements, which we need. Instead we found a cruiser with a machine shop and he fabricated a plate to cover the hot water heating element hole in the hot water tank. The plate allows us to refill the hot water tank and use alternative means of heating it. It will get heated by the engine heat loop or by the webasto heater until we can buy an electric element (probably in New Zealand). Once again we've recovered the functionality of our vessel while in the "wilderness". It's amazing that we can keep up with all the failures, much better than I imagined could be done. Even so it is a good idea to keep moving toward a first world country where the spares can be restocked and the vessel refurbished. A survivalist would notice right away that this is not a long term safe haven. We need support parts and services on a regular basis.

We took a hike to the mountaintop located behind Uturoa. There was a cruise ship in town so there were many other hikers on the trail. We were fortunate to meet another couple Nicole Esposito and Andrea Corocher from Podova Italy. After the hike we invited them aboard Panta Rhei where we had drinks and conversation. Given all the news about Europe it was especially fun to hear their views. Andrea manufactures Lemon Armonia, an original Italian lemon cream liqueur. We have a bottle in the freezer now and will sample it on a future special occasion. The picture is SV Panta Rhei tied to the quay at Uturoa.