While Tracy headed into Davao for her lung capacity test yesterday, I took off with Charton(marina manager)to pick up our long lost chain. As we neared the ferry, I saw a large plum of smoke on the mainland. There was a BIG fire burning just north of the ferry terminal. You can see it in my picture today. It was consuming one of the squatters villages. Squatters have rights here. If you go onto someones property and build a shack of any kind, it's very difficult to get that person off your property. Just because you own it, doesn't make it yours out here. Anyway, as we watched from the ferry, a helicopter showed up with a big bag under it to ferry water from the bay to the fire like we do to put out forest fires in the US and around the world. There are no fire hydrants out here. Heck, many people don't have running water in their homes here. Suddenly we see a stream of water from on shore. One of the water tankers had showed up and started blasting the fire. That lasted just a couple of minutes and then they ran out of water. Over the course of the next few hours, more tanker trucks were brought in to fight the fire. Eventually, they got it out but now many people have no homes. I'm sure there will be rumors all over the place that the fire was started to get rid of the squatters as from what I've heard, there is a developer that wants to put in another ferry terminal there. Time will tell.

Anyway, we finally made it to Beta Springs to get the chain. They did a good job with the re galvanization but some of the links are jumbled into a solid mass needing to be pounded apart. No problem. I've got a hammer. The problem is that approximately the first 100 feet of chain is worn out. The links are now so thin after the acid bath to get rid of the rust that there is barely half the metal left. It looks great,but it's shot. We brought it all back to the marina where I laid it out on the dock for further inspection(had other cruisers come and all were in aggrement) and marking the chain in 30 foot lengths. I'll cut off the old and splice on a bunch of new. We'll reverse the chain so that what was at the other end will now be attached to the anchor. What all of us found strange was that the first 20 feet or so still looks pretty good while the next 80 feet look trashed. Why is the first stuff good and the rest gone. All of it hits the water. Oh well, I have two locals(Charton(marina manager) and Johnathan(electrician that has worked on our boat before) looking for a supplier of "good" chain.

We did get word that our batteries left Manila last Saturday--four days after they were ordered. It is "Island time" out here. The supplier is trying to get a bill of lading and any info she can as to where they are.

We had a meeting with the Indonesian Consulate yesterday afternoon and evening. Had a nice sit down with the head of the consulate. Nice guy. I told him that Indonesia was the first country that welcomes cruisers. Most countries make it much more difficult to enter and leave their countries. Indonesia is making it easy. The rally is down to about 10 boats now and may get less as one of the boats has a HUGE supply of booze on board and they are afraid that it will be either taxed heavily or put under lock and key while they are there. We should find out about that today.