Stuck in Tuvalu.
06 December 2012 | In Tuvalu
Bill
It never seems to matter where we are, we always get stuck by weather. We got stuck trying to leave Fiji for a couple of weeks and still got bad winds when we did leave. We had to plow to weather on the trip from Tonga to Am. Samoa and then got stuck there as the winds were either too light or from the wrong direction. When we did leave, instead of a nice downwind sail, we ended up beating into the wind again for the second half of the trip and the spinnaker had problems keeping full during the first part of the voyage. Now we're in Tuvalu and the weather has again decided to keep us here for probably another week! The weather files for north of here show a totally confused set of winds all swirling around and in a couple of days, the wind starts coming out of the West to Northwest, the direction we want to go. And to add insult to it, what is coming, while from the wrong direction, it's light enough that we would still have to motor into it. So here we sit, exploring the little atoll of Tuvalu. Again, very friendly people people but not much to do. Some beaches(more than on American Samoa) but many are on the outlying islands. No problem since we can just pull up our anchor and head out for our own little piece of the atoll. It's about 87 degrees with the water being the same temperature so there is little relief when you jump in.
We've pretty much finished cleaning the bottom but it will take some work to keep it clean. I hope to find someone that can refill our scuba tanks once we empty them. No real dive shops here on the atoll, but the "Fisheries Department" had scuba tanks in their shop so they probably have a compressor. I'll try and see if I can get ours filled there.
They use the Australian Dollar here with a rotten exchange rate of .86 to the dollar. So for every US dollar I give them, I only get back 86 cents Australian. There's only one place that changes money so you bite your tongue and just swap out what you need.
We found a Chinese restaurant in town. Tracy had the cabbage with chicken while I had the Curry Chicken.. We each got a big plate of food with only the serving spoon. So dinner plate. Just eat off you serving plate with a huge serving spoon. For $6.50 Australian each and soft drinks run $1.20 per can. Bottle water is at $1.50 for a pint bottle. Not cheap but a cold drink sure tastes good when it so hot outside.
So here we sit. I'll let you know when our weather router says we might stand a chance of getting out of here. Maybe by next Wednesday. We'd like to be in Kosrae for Christmas but that sure not looking good right now