17th -19th September

17 46.369 S
177 22.935 E

Weather; Sunny, wind n/a, waves n/a

I've purposely left the blog for a couple of days as nothing very interesting has been going on. Sitting in a marina can be good when things are open but it's boring as can be when things are closed down. So we have been gradually doing the irritating jobs that can't be ignored like cleaning the stainless steel of the stanchions, one of those jobs that get put off as it's out in the sun and you need to work hard to remove the rust marks. Of course this is a "Nicky job", having said that I did the port side and it took me the best part of 4 hours, Gerry decided to do the starboard side whilst I was doing the laundry, I think he spent less then 2 hours and it shows - it needs a second going over! The laundry here is a self-serve one and I have to say that it is one of the nicest, cleanest looking places to do laundry that I have ever seen. It operates with tokens and we underestimated how many we would need so some of the washing is on hold until we can get more tokens when the office opens up again on Monday. Then there are the inside jobs that Gerry seems to gravitate to, like changing out the fuel filters, bought about by the spluttering of the gen set. When he changed them out they were once again choked up with debris even though the fuel has been polished, but I guess we ran the engine for a great deal of the passage to here with no problem so I guess the time had come, who knows how much more debris is lurking in the remainder of the fuel in the tank ( there is about half of one tank left so we will be topping up with what we hope is going to be clean fuel before we leave here). Gerry has removed the MacGyvered chain plate from the cupboard in the forward toilet as the new plate is meant to be turning up tomorrow and they need the old plate to use as a pattern for where to position the holes for the bolts, once that is done it will be a case of installing the new plate and reattaching the shroud then we should be good to go. The sail maker has collected our 3 sails and the instructions for things that need attention - slightly more than we would like really as we discovered that the cringles at the sheet ends of both the main and the jib had worn though the fabric of the sail and would need replacing somehow (the real answer is new sails but that's not going to happen on our watch, it will be an expense for the new owners once we sell the boat). We have also given a cockpit seat cover to the sail maker for a new zipper to be installed as the salt water has corroded the slider out on this one cover. Then just yesterday Gerry was trying to close up the front window of the enclosure and the zipper on one side of the central window fell apart. This is a pain in the butt as it means removing the entire dodger to get it replaced - a job for another day perhaps! We have obviously reached the obsolete date for zippers!
The awnings are now up and trying to keep us cool, they do a good job but being in a protected marina means that we have very little breeze blowing though the boat and it gets horribly hot and uncomfortable without the air conditioning - oh for a US power outlet!
We have done a couple of walks to the nearby mini mart, chandlery and found the bottle shop, it's not very exciting and we are struggling to find stuff that we want in the shops, I think we really need to go further afield but the heat us putting us off of going out. There are 3 restaurants close to the marina but so far we have only eaten in one of them, the food is good and as I think I already mentioned we had asked the chef for a curry which he produced on Friday - it was awesome and we have asked for a repeat sometime soon, we just have to let him know when! We plan to eat at the second place tonight, they have lobster on the menu and I just won't be able to go past that! The final place is strictly take out only so we probably won't be going there. The curfew has been lifted slightly, we are now allowed to be out and about until 9pm - I hope the authorities have let Covid know to stay home until 9 pm! There is a sailing club building at the marina which sadly is closed,
it apparently had a kitchen and bar but seems to have been closed for the duration of the virus. All of the furniture has been removed and the building stands empty - very sad as it looks like it would have been a great place to hang out. The marina itself is very quiet, I've never been in a marina that lacks noise and movement as much as it does here, it's very odd. We are at least getting caught up with rest / sleep as there isn't much else to do and we are going through books like nobodies business. The WIFI on the dock got knocked out by the last cyclone that came through this way and has never been repaired on our dock, you can access it if you go over to the next dock but that's no use if you want to stream Netflix so we are having to use a hotspot which isn't the best way of doing things. We have thought we will hire a car and do some sight-seeing but we just need to make sure that we have all the repair stuff in hand first. So really that's the state of the Opal nation for the moment, as I said nothing exciting happening but sometimes that's just what we need.