We have long been trying to buy a hookah. (pronounced who'-car)With a hookah, you are like a scuba diver, you can stay down. We have found that unlike in Tasmania, where you can haul out once a year, here in the tropics you need to have a diver clean the bottom at least once a month, maybe every two weeks! The growth of barnacles and weed is amazingly fast. With a hookah I can stay under and clean, and attach zinc anodes, check the anchor and in an emergency do a temporary repair to the hull. Without it I can't stay down for long.

A week or so back we bought one! But - when we ran a trial on board, I had an asthmatic reaction and Adrienne had a bad taste in her mouth for hours afterwards. So we returned it. And every day I call on the local net asking if someone has one for sale. Nothing.

We needed to replace the zincs and found a lovely young Mexican girl named Fabiola, who dived and put new zinc anodes on the hull. Trouble was, her compressor needed more watts than our onboard inverter could give out! So we had to up anchor and go into the local marina, where power was available, and she dived the next morning.