We had some important completions yesterday and some frustrating times, too.

As I mentioned yesterday, while torquing a propane fitting to stop a leak, the wrenches slipped and the end of the wrench punctured the fitting: the fitting that connects to the tank! I found some old fittings aboard Wings and then we went on the hunt for something to cap one of the tank lines. Plumbing store? No, nothing but EU fittings. Nautisport, the nautical store? No, nothing but EU fittings. Everyone said that there was no chance of finding SAE fittings. We weren't hopeful. We had been told to stop in the Chinese-owned hardware store, and there, as luck would have it, we did find some bouchons: caps. We cobbled together a bushing to adjust size and a cap to seal the branch. After an hour of trials with the sealant and arrangement, we finally got a workable propane system. Perfect? No, but workable. I couldn't get the cap to seal on the bushing so Conni came up with the idea to use Teflon tape. She used overlapping strips in the cap and around the bushing threads to seal the cap.

The new solar controller actually arrived in Papeete this morning. FedEx has been coy about sending on to us, demanding ever more paperwork, but perhaps tomorrow it will arrive. We'll have solar power, anyway.

Our wind speed instrument is still broken, and I'm afraid that it will remain so, but otherwise, things seems to be getting better. We asked the yard owner, Dominque, to help, but he's had other project of more importance. Grrr.

We plan to splash the boat on Friday, tomorrow. Tonight will my last entry for a while since we'll have no connections other than the SSB.