First the good news, after a generally good but grueling six month air/road trip, we are back in beautiful Fiji and very ready for our version of aquatic domesticity. Not so fast.... Leela had been due to have her topsides repainted after the current paint started to blister badly. Initially this was delayed by incessant rain but it looked like it might still get done around the time we arrived back - until the "senior painter" quit.

Anyway, we came back to the sad sight of our lovely boat stripped of paint and an interesting shade of 'old fiberglass' brown. We are not going anywhere for quite a while.... We contemplated changing contractors to speed things up but the work done to date has been done well and saving about a week was not worth the commercial morass and uncertainty of a mid-project contractor change. Done that on a house remodel - it was not fun. The current contractor has a solid plan to get us completed and is very committed to doing a good job.

Bottom line is at least another month before we can launch AND we are still living out of a suitcase, now on a good friend's boat in the marina - what fun! There are some glimmers of good news in all this. We were very concerned that the blistering on the hull was a symptom of fiberglass osmosis, a very difficult problem to deal with. In any event, it turned out to have been a VERY ratty paint job, done just before our purchase. The fiberglass is in great condition. The other good news is that, when faced with the loss of the senior painter, the contractor did not decide to let the junior painter 'have a go'. The painter who will be moving over to Leela in a week(ish...) is doing a really good job of his current project so it should all end well.

We are not quite sure what to do with our extended month of land-based homelessness yet. We will have intermittent access to Leela so there will be jobs to get done and we might even be able to partially move back onboard. We contemplated a land trip but this delay is already going to be expensive without factoring in a hotel so that is fairly unattractive. Still working on a plan. Not an ideal situation, but there are a lot of people much worse off in these troubled times so we will just have to keep our chins up and battle on. Adversity is purported to be character-building so both Leela and her crew will come out of this in better shape 😊.

Hopefully my next post will include fishes!