Well, yesterday was just a partly cloudy or perhaps a partly sunny day here in Brunei. We headed into town again for just a few more items for provisions. You have to move when Mother Nature lets you and it was yesterday. We hit Supa Save, a nice market that has a good bit of US goods and lots of very fresh veggies. Much of the lettuce is hydroponically grown so what we purchased before lasted much longer than what we had bought elsewhere that was grown in dirt. We headed back to get more. We had to be careful as to what we bought as we needed to go to another market at The Mall for a case of milk and we didn't want to lug a bunch of things from store to store.

We get UHT(Ultra High Temperature) milk that comes in liter boxes and keeps for about 6 months in one of our storage areas. There is no way to keep fresh milk on board and the UHT tastes just fine. We've bought it all the way across the Pacific. Most comes from Australia or NZ along with the cans of butter we have on board.

Once we were done at Supa Save, we jumped back on a bus to take us to The Mall where we stopped for another lunch at McDonalds. No clue where we will find one again so we will take advantage of a bit of home when ever we can. Just can't get good French Fries out here other than at McDonalds.

We grabbed our milk and a few other things and grabbed another bus back to the main terminal where we caught another to Maura where we get a third to take us back to the Yacht Club. We were loaded with several big bags, a backpack and the case of milk. When we got to Puff(our dinghy) I found we had a slight problem. I'd closed the breather valve on the top of the fuel tank and it's sides had huge bulges. Now when you close one way for the fuel pressure to escape, it will try anyway it can to depressurize. It chose to try and go through the engine fuel line. I pulled and pulled and pulled on the starter cord only to have it sputter and sputter. It refused to start. I tried with the choke and with out the choke. In gear and out of gear and nothing happened. I checked to make sure the manual off switch was where it was supposed to be--on. I pulled till I got a blister on the side of one of my fingers. We grabbed the oars and prepared to row back to Zephyr--about a mile off shore. This was not going to be fun. I gave it one last pull on the cord with the gears disabled and the throttle open full and it suddenly sputtered and with a BIG cloud of smoke sprang to life. It wasn't happy but it was at least running. I let it sit for a few moments and then we finished loading up and headed out. All went fine and we got back to Zephyr a few minutes later. We hoisted everything we had bought on board and settled in for a few minutes to recover from the thought of having to row back. This morning, I pulled the spark plugs and made sure they were fine. We launched Puff and she started up on the second pull. I guess the pressure didn't brake anything. That's one of the last things we needed just as we are getting ready to leave Brunei in a couple of days for Malaysia.

Being sunny, we have another load of laundry getting done we we will have a nice clean supply when we leave. I sent an email to the embassy asking them to check to see if they can find out any info as to when we might expect our passports since they thought we would have them in five business days. That would be tomorrow if we get lucky. Sure hope we hear from them. As much as we like Brunei, we are both ready to move on for the next adventure.

The picture for today is the view off the dock at the Yacht Club. When the tide goes out, you have only one way into shore. The Yacht Club had a narroe channel dredged from the dock to markers heading into deeper water. Stray from that course and you will run aground. We didn't know about it the first time we headed in and were a bit baffled when the engine started bucking as we neared shore. I raised the motor and we still made it in but it took off a lot of the paint on the propeller blades. Live and learn.