Caught out by our bad French again
10 July 2021 | 08 55.038'S:140 05.994'W, Nuku Hiva , Marquesas
NC
8th & 9th July
08 55.038 S
140 05.994 W
Weather; overcast with showers, wind gusty, waves causing a horrible swell inside the harbour
A couple more days of nothing much happening, the wind hadn't died down on Thursday but at least it wasn't raining although it continued to threaten as the surrounding hills were covered in a blanket of cloud. Gerry mentioned going ashore but I really didn't want to today and we ended up staying on board the boat and having a day of doing as little as possible. We spent a good part of the day sitting in the cockpit and reading our books, a good way to spend the day! Gerry of course couldn't help himself and had to invent a job that needed doing, it was so desperate that he chose to put muriatic acid down the one working toilet that we have, causing it to gurgle and bubble away as it ate its way through the scale build up. I suppose it is quite important that we keep this one toilet working or we will be up shit creek ! We watched a super yacht come into the fuel dock and tie up late in the afternoon, it is the first super yacht we have seen in the harbour, they are of course allowed to go alongside for fuel whereas us plebs aren't allowed to (it might have something to do with draft or the amount of fuel that they needed to buy but who knows!) once they had filled up though they moved off the fuel dock and went out towards the entrance of the harbour and dropped their anchor there. The owners didn't appear to be onboard as there was no invitation for drinks and /or dinner forthcoming, plus we could only see lights on in the very lower deck, where the minions are billeted.
Disaster has stuck this evening, we have finished all of the rum and every last drop of wine that we have on board so unless we go and buy more we are down to drinking the half bottle of tequila that we have left and a quarter bottle of brandy, oh and then of course there is the 150% proof, rocket fuel, rum that neither of us dare to even sniff!
So Friday has rolled around and we were definitely getting off the boat today. The sun has even chosen to show its self today and the water is a little calmer. We listened to the cruisers net, not that there was anything really worth-while apart from a report of a system coming off of Bundaberg that will have some impact on anyone wanting to leave for New Zealand in the next week, that's not us so we didn't pay too much attention to it. After the net finished we jumped in the dinghy and headed into the dock. Gerry stopped to ask Kevin at yacht services why we couldn't get a hotspot with our sim card, there apparently is a simple answer, which we weren't aware of, you need to go into APN and put in "Internet" and low and behold the hotspot appears, who knew! Once that was sorted we walked along the shore line to the smaller supermarket to pick up some flour which we badly needed along with a couple of other bits that we couldn't live without (a bottle of rum and a bottle of wine to balance out the backpack!). As it was a nice day we strolled back along the foreshore where a group of school aged children were lined up to have a turn of riding one of 3 horses along the water line, apparently it is mid-term school break and the children were all at a camp and this was a "keep them busy" activity.
Back at the cafe we had coffee then ordered lunch, Gerry got caught out with his French yet again as the menu said "roast pork roti" which he duly ordered expecting a West Indian style roti - a bit like a wrap. To his horror what arrived was a plate with pork ribs! A quick look at google translate and we discovered that roti in French is actually ribs.
Gerry was, of course, mortified as those of you who know him well are aware that he doesn't do any sort of meat that comes with a bone in it. The ribs smelt good and I would have offered to swap my meal for his but I'd ordered raw fish in coconut milk so he wouldn't have eaten that either, he had to bite the bullet and eat the ribs! We pulled up the West Indian roti photo to show the girl behind the counter as she couldn't work out why we were so surprised at the sight of a plate of ribs, so yet again we have to remind ourselves that all is not as it seems with the French language and we should be checking everything we expect against the reality of what it really is! Once we had finished our lunch it was time to head back out to the boat, whilst we had been ashore the swell had picked up once more and it was a bumpy ride out to the boat, difficult to get back on board as the stern was going up and down like a lift and rolling from side to side at the same time but we made
it and nothing ended up in the water.
The afternoon was spent watching a movie for the millionth time - Pulp Fiction. Now I have to say at this point that this was the first time I have ever watched the entire movie from start to finish, I have always only seen bits of it in the past and it has never made any sense to me, I'm not really sure that it does now but at least I have a better idea about what went on in it now. Gerry put a second movie on, one that I would like to have seen from the start (Cloud Atlas, I thought of you Kay!) but I really wanted to make the most of being outside in the sunshine and left him watching by himself to begin with. It just means that we will have to watch it again some other time! I sat and did nothing in the cockpit except watch the comings and goings of the boats around the harbour, I did a count of the boats and in the last few days there has been an exodus of 12 boats - that's 25% of the boats that were here when we arrived, it must be time for the next bunch to turn up shortly.
I watched the end of Cloud Atlas before we returned to the cockpit to have a rum thingy, way past cocktail hour, but better late than never. So that was our lot for the past couple of days. The super yacht is still at anchor, we suspect that the owners must be flying in to join the boat in the next couple of days. Oh, one other thing happened today that I almost forgot to tell you, Gerry had an email from the rigger who tells us that he now has the money transfer in his account, thank God. Gerry wondered if it had anything to do with the trace we put in place but I doubt that, I think that the bank just puts the money on the short term money market for a few days to make what they can out of it - well they have to make their money somehow! So now we wait and see how long it takes for the new shroud to arrive here, hopefully not another week! Now that we have a hot spot I will try to upload some of the photos that I have taken here over the next couple of days - there's something for you to look forward to!