Work has started up again now that I'm all well. We pulled up the stern bunk on Sunday morning and pulled out a bunch of things we had in storage under it and I went in with a wrench and a pair of pliers(why are they a "pair" when it is only one tool?) and grabbed hold of the hydraulic steering lines and did the final half turn to the connection and stopped the small leak that has plagues us for many months. I didn't want to do the job before we got to a place where, should I screw it up, I could get good parts and help to fix it. With flashlight affixed to my head and a fan going to stir up the air in the cabin, the job was done. Tracy went on deck and spun the wheel a couple of times and, so far, no leak! Yea!! Once the job was done and the mess cleaned up from the leaking oil, I marked the hydraulic line(it's attached to the binnacle in the cockpit) with a piece of tape so I could see if there was any more leaks. By Monday morning, it had gone down about a half inch in the tube. I said a few colorful word under my breathe and moved the tape to the new location. By the afternoon, the level was now above the tape line. The oil was going up and down with the heat in the engine compartment. When hot, the oil expands and when cold(over night) it contracts and goes down. I guess I will be studying the tubes oil level for a few more days to see where the level ends up and if the leak is all fixed.

I pulled the small zinc from the hot water heat exchanger(a part on the engine)to see how much was left after a couple of months. It was just fine which is good to see since if it had really fallen apart, it would have meant we had a problem with the electrical system. As it is, we dangle a huge chunk of zinc over the side that's attached to a central grounding area on board. Other boats in the marina may be leaking stray current into the water(we're surrounded by older boats) and they will also zap your zincs given a bit of time.

Yesterday, it was finally time to take Puff in for her repairs. We lowered her into the water off the bow and I rowed over to the ramp where boats come in and out. I'd attached the dingy wheels so we could roll her over to where the pick up spot was to be. I tossed a line to Tracy as she walked down the ramp and as she grabbed it, she promptly slid on the algae lined ramp and fell down. So much for clean clothes. She was going to hurt later. I stood to get out of Puff and as soon as my foot hit the ramp, I went down just like she had. Sure glad no one had a camera on us. We slowly pulled Puff up the ramp sliding only a few more times till we hit dry ramp. Over we went to the pickup spot and deflated the tubes and got her ready for her ride.
We loaded Puff into a pickup trunk along with another dingy and off we went into Namaka to the dingy doctor. I'd visited him at the end of January and he'd finally gotten in his shipment of glue from New Zealand. We've had problems with water leaking into the boat where the seals had broken around the stern as well as the fiberglass floor panel filling with water. He'll be checking out all the seams and getting her back in good working order. With luck, we should have her back by the weekend.

Once we were through with getting Puff to the doctor, we grabbed another bus and headed farther toward Nadi and stopped in at McDonalds for lunch. We haven't been there since early on in our stay here in Fiji. This time(since we had planned on having lunch there) we took along our own salt and pepper as they had none the last time we were there. This time, they even had napkins! Wow, we were eating high on the hog!. We both had the Big Mac Meal with lots of their wonderful french fries. While it was a nice break from what we are used to when eating out here, it's no longer part of our diet. A special meal but not so much any more.

As we hiked back toward Namaka to visit one of the newer gracery stores and happened to pass the local SPCA(Society for the Prevention to Animals). We're looking for a vet(last office we found had closed) for the kids to get their shots. We walked down the dirt road(not much paved here)to their offices to find a note on the door that said they would be back in an hour. Of course in normal office manner, the note didn't say when the hour started, just that they would be back in "an hour". Well, we waited the hour, and no one showed up(gee what a surprise). We copied down the phone number on the door and headed off for the market.

On our previous trips to Nadi and Namaka, we had passed a "new" grocery store called JetPoint. This time we stopped in. While it was nice and new, we didn't really find much to set it apart from many of the much smaller store we normally frequent. We bought a couple of "tubes" of cookies and browsed around the rest of the stores in the "shopping center". Just about the time we were finishing in the last store of interest(electronics) the sky let loose with huge quantities of rain. It poured and poured and poured some more. Add in big flashes of lightening. We'd see a bolt and get to 1001 and the sound of thunder would come crashing in on us as we sat under the roof of the center. Car alarms were going off around us. This went on for over an hour. We finally decided to take a taxi back to the marina as there were no signs of it letting up. We dashed across the parking lot from store to store till we got out near the street where we could grab one of the few available taxis. As we headed north to rains slacked off and when we got back to the marina, it was dry. No rain at all. We'd heard that just a bit farther north in Lautoka, it had poured through most of the afternoon. We were sitting in the one dry spot along the coast.
We adjourned to the marina bar for drinks last night to catch up on what's been happening on other boats as more people are returning to the marina to get their boats ready for the upcoming season. We were home by 1900 for a nice evening of watching movies.