Big winds and gloomy dark skies with periods of heavy rain today, as we sit safely tied with six big lines to the super convenient deck level dock, right here in the middle of down town Raiatea. So we decided to clean out the fridge and freezer. What else would you do on a gloomy tied to the dock day in paradise anyway? Something was giving off an odor in the fridge that we could not find and the freezer had become a dumping ground and required an organizing and logging. Yes you have to log the contents of a big freezer least you lose track of what lurks down low and,,, parish the thought, (pun intended) have to empty it to look for something or to survey the contents looking for a creative idea for dinner or snacks and watch it all thaw in minutes, then watch as the amps are gobbled up when the equipment tries to cope with the massive heat load you just introduced and we have already covered the "being a slave to the batteries" scenarios. And we have been saving some good stuff, for good! In any event, Gwen went through the entire contents of the fridge, cleaned it all, wiped everything and the interior down and put it all back without locating the stinky culprit but it seems to smell better now. Then we emptied the freezer, found all kinds of stuff we had held onto way too long (saving it for good) some of which was done for and hence a waste. It always feels better to replace old stuff with new stuff that you were saving just for that special occasion or, saving for good, but actually decided to employ it and therefore have removed the offending bit to be stored, yes stored so we can, yup, save it for good, or at least in case the good one goes South and we have to re employ the old ones. We have been through this saving it for good lesson a few times now and still have not learned. There are all kinds of spare parts and lines and equipment on board intended to provide us with a rolling or rather floating warehouse of stuff we can just grab at will to replace all the stuff that breaks. But we have saved it all for good! We know there is a shackle that is a bit bent, a line or two and one sheet that are showing some chafe and we have the exact and in most cases two spares or even more, but we are saving them for good! The dinghy needs new seat holding strips which we bought last time in Vancouver along with a couple of patches which means we need to open one of the 85 dollar cans of adhesive which is good for one use, so we are saving it for good cuz we don't want to waste it and we may need it one day,,,knowing of course that in this heat, the adhesive will have kicked off and be useless by the time we get to a point of actually having to do the job so we will have wasted it by, saving it for good! We brought several spare pumps and rebuild kits for all of those pumps and the ones we remove to replace with new, so we can rebuild them and have them in line for quick replacement when the last new one kicks the bucket but we are saving those rebuild kits for good, you know, just in case. Really don't want to use those up cuz you cant buy more out here and we would be left with none then. We are sure to really need those recycled broken pumps that we have replaced with the nearly last of the new ones soon enough, because pumps are designed to last between five and forty five minutes of use at best and cost hundreds each. So having all those spare rebuild kits will come in handy when the last of our new pumps fails and we can just dig out the repair and rebuild kits and rebuild them while at sea in heavy weather and we can feel pretty good about having saved them for good, cuz we will have them. But when will we realize we should use those rebuild kits while sitting in a calm anchorage so we have rebuilt pumps that we can save for good, rather than sit around all day making lists of the stuff we have stored on board that we are saving for good, and of course shifting the umbrellas from drink to drink. We have a new head sail we have not even seen, never mind hoisted yet, wonder why? Yup, saving it for good! So,,,Captain, penny wise and Mate, pound foolish, will use the old sail till it needs lots of work to give us something to do, rips top to bottom or worse, lets us down in a blow so we have something interesting to do to break up the monotony of this sailing life. But we will have a spare, way down in the sail locker up front, buried alive without formalities, never to see the light of day, nor give us our "moneys worth" till we sell the boat to the next owner one day, so they can get "our moneys worth" out of it. I have several small fuel jugs up front for the dinghy outboard. One containing fuel from Alameda, yes California and one with fuel from La Paz Mexico cuz we just keep getting new fuel in the dinghy tank so we can save the old fuel for good, so it will still be there when we need it no matter whether it will actually still be gasoline by that time or not.

Same thing at home, we save things forever just in case or "for good" and then finally we think, we can save these really nice knives ,,,for good of course, or we can use 'em cuz we like them and we can enjoy them ourselves rather than save them for good, and they end up unused and in someone else's hands after we die, (cuz we will never wear them out no matter what we do) so maybe they can save them for good cuz we kept them so nice. We have fishing gear on board, lures still in their original packages all nice and shiny, line we have never laid onto a reel and we use the old line and the old lures which breaks once in a while and we loose some of the old lures, but not to worry, we have some saved for good, that we could maybe use some day, at least the ones we are not really saving for good. There are sheets and towels we have not seen since leaving home two years ago when we vacuum bagged them so they would stay fresh smelling while we moth balled them and saved them for good. So we wash and dry and wear out the one or two sets we have out right now but take comfort knowing we have laid away some nice new ones, for good, and that these old ones will make great rags for polishing and engine room work one day when they are really worn out and we break out the new, now old, but saved for good ones. Then I can save the old sheets and towels for good, for use in the engine room and for polishing when the current ones I am using finally wear out and I can bring myself to part with them.

We have cloths we have not seen since California, cuz we just reuse the one or two sets of shorts and watch them get thread bare and will continue to do so until they need patching when Gwen will pull out the, iron on patches and sewing machine so we can use up more amps recycling old cloths so we can save our good ones ,,,well, for good of course. Oh,, but we will be using up some of those patches we were sort of saving for good! Such a conundrum to deal with. The food items are the worst, we save things ,,,for good,,, because you cant get many specialty things way out here and we think, wouldn't it be great to have this or that while anchored in a nice lagoon,,and then throw them out when they go bad, angry at ourselves for saving it for good, and not eating it. It is just so stupid. So from now on we will only save the good things for good and we will use up the not so good things that we were saving for good and it will be good to get our moneys worth out of the good stuff we would never have experienced if had saved them all for good. But wait, would we be able to enjoy all those things now, had we not saved them for good???