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American Spirit II - Day 87; Breakfast Ashore, Herman Melville, Main Sheet Traveler Car Here, Fueled Boat, Got Butane and Pizza for Dinner; Monday, March 31, 2014



Up at 6:30 AM. Have a cold, 3rd day. Sore throat. No one else infected yet. Hopefully, no one else will get ill from me. I saw two more Rally boats entering the bay after sunrise.

The reference to Herman Melville in the Subject line is that in 1842 he 'jumped ship' while in Nuku Hiva on a whaling vessel. For those that don't know, Melville wrote the classic Moby Dick. A movie by that name had the Captain played by Gregory Peck.

Outside even at 7:30 AM the heat and humidity is oppressive. Sweat, sweat, sweat. Keeping fully hydrated is a constant battle. And there is so little wind that our wind turbine doesn't even turn. We need 15 knots of wind for the wind turbine to generate electricity and keep our boat batteries charged.

At 7:36 AM I observed someone swimming 15 feet behind their boat. With the sharks feeding until 10:00 AM, not a good idea.

For breakfast at 8:30 AM we decided to go into shore to the Snack Bar. As we tied up our dingy to a concrete wall, a bunch of fishermen were cleaning their fish right next to us, and throwing the scraps into the water. A half of dozen sharks were going nuts trying to get the scraps. Some were 8 - 10 feet long. Black-tipped sharks. Today is the first day in a month we had breakfast not on the boat. Had their version of scrambled eggs, crepes and French bread. Not bad. This 'open air' snack bar also has free Wifi, so they do a great business. The place is full of Rally people all with their laptops and IPhads using the Wifi.

After breakfast we stopped by the Yachting Services office and picked up the Federal Express that contained the mainsheet traveler car I had ordered. This part was shipped from St. Petersburg, Florida to Honolul to New Zealand to Tahiti to Nuku Hiva. At a shipping cost of about $350. For a one pound, $500 piece of equipment. Once back at the boat it took about 2 hours to take the old part off the boat, and 2 minutes to install the new part. The reason it took so long to get the old part off is that some of the screws were frozen in place and we had to be careful in taking them off that we didn't strip the hear of the screws, which need an Allen wrench to loosen.

Next we refueled the boat. Using a siphon hose, we transferred 20 gallons from 4 yellow, plastic jerry cans into our main fuel tank. Then we dingied over to the fuel dock and filled the jerry cans with diesel to store on deck. The ladder to climb up to the concrete fuel dock was 10 feet tall, and the ladder itself ended a foot short of the top, making it difficult and dangerous in transferring yourself from the ladder to the concrete top of the fuel dock. Furthermore, at low time, your dingy could get sucked under the dock, and they when a swell came, it could be crushed under the concrete dock. This happened to a dingy belonging to another Rally boat the day after we fueled, putting a 12 inch cut in the top of their dingy. After getting our fuel, we helped fuel another Rally boat. To fill your boat's fuel tank directly from the fuel dock, you had to 'med moore.' That means you dropped an anchor out 150 feet from the concrete pier, then backed down towards the dock. Once 10 feet away, someone on the fuel dock catches 3 lines tossed to them, using 2 of them to tie the boat's transom to some fixtures on the pier, and the 3rd line to attach to the large fuel hose, which is that hauled to the boat, without letting it drop into the water. A very trying, dangerous and exhausting process. Takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours to complete, depending on how may fuel tanks the boat has and how may liters of fuel they need.

Later in the afternoon our propane tank was picked up, except that now it was filled with butane. Butane burns a little less efficiently than propane, but we can't get propane in the outer islands. Our other propane tank we'll fill with propane when we get to Papeete, Tahiti. Because we have US fittings, and everyone else in the world is metric, its not always a given that you'll be able to get propane or butane, even if the place has it. If it can't be transferred to your tanks, you're out of luck.

Because the dingy dock area had a public, enclosed shower, we used those facilities to save from using water on our boat. Very primitive. No lighting, no hot water, no toilet paper in the toilets, no paper towels and no locks on the door.

At 6:15 PM Brian and Lauren form Ko-Ko picked us up in their dingy, and we headed off to a pizza restaurant in town. Once there we ordered 3 large pizza's. These 'large' pizzas were the size of a small Domino's. They were OK. Pepperoni and sausage were not an option. And there was no garlic bread. The pizza's themselves were cooked right in front of us in a brick oven. Very interesting. The crew from Nexus and one other boat joined us, as they couldn't get a table and we were at one large enough to accommodate them with a little 'chair borrowing' from other tables. For dessert someone spotted some Magnum ice cream cones, so we each got one.

We returned to the boat around 9:30 PM to 10:00 PM, where Joel and Mike worked on a reference letter for one of their Sea Scouts. No DVD watching tonight.

Brian Fox

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