It’s amazing how much cooler it is at night here. We wake up these days with the sheet up to our noses with only the fan on. I am comfortable but Mike insists he is cold. It must be my internal heating system that keeps me about ten degrees hotter than him.
We have a visit from Mark on the Lagoon catamaran, Isabella. He swims over to our boat with a bottle of water in his hand because he wants Mike to test it (we met him and his wife briefly on Tucanon yesterday). The anchorage has turned very rolly overnight and one by one the boats start to leave. We were supposed to be getting another delivery of water from Tucanon this morning but it is too rough to comfortably raft up to them to do this. Instead, then they head out, we follow them to an anchorage just around the corner which smells suspiciously like fish. We pick up a day mooring while they try to anchor. After about five attempts they give up, we let go of our line and we follow them around the corner to another anchorage which is more sandy. We wait for their anchor to settle then come alongside them and raft up.
Dick passes us the hose and instructs Mo to turn it on. Mike tests the water which seems fine and we stick the hose into our tank, filling up with about 200 litres, which, added to the 120 litres we already have, should see us through the next ten days or so until we get to the marina in Fiji. I then fill our six empty water bottles and as I put the last cap on, Mike tests it again for Dick and it is off the scale! Thinking that perhaps the batteries are on the blink, Mike drinks a mouthful of water and immediately spits it out. It’s salt. We can’t work it out and for a moment neither can Dick. Then we realise that the water we tested at first was water that was already in the hose, and that when Mo switched the pump on, he switched to the wrong side and instead of pumping out water from Tucanon’s fresh water tank, salt water straight from the sea has been pumped up and is now sitting in our tank.
Dick is horrified and Mo is suitably embarrassed. We now have to waste some of Tucanon’s fresh water to flush out our tanks and fill ours again, but first we have to get rid of it all. We run it out from the galley and two bathroom sinks but it takes longer to drain it than it does to fill it from Dick’s tank. Eventually though, and with lots of gurgling at the end, it has all gone and we start the filling process again. It’s a good job that Tucanon has such a brilliant water maker and can make it so quickly as we practically empty their tank. Eventually we have to stop as their pump overheats and stops (it just needs to cool down).
Photo: Mo begs forgiveness (actually he’s too busy laughing)
Dick takes our water bottles to fill in the morning when they have more water and we go off to anchor a couple of hundred feet behind Tucanon.
The anchor seems to settle the first time then drags and we shoot backwards so I have to take it up again, groaning all the way (the windlass not me). Then suddenly it really starts to creak and groan and go very slowly but the chain continues to come up so we know we aren’t stuck. I keep going to the bow of the boat to see where the anchor is and as it comes into view, it looks somewhat larger than usual. When it is a few feet from the surface I realise why. There is a f***ing enormous lump of rock or coral attached to it. As it clears the surface of the water, I can’t believe that our poorly little windlass has managed to actually pull it up!
Photo: Our windlass is stronger than it seems!
The hook of the anchor is actually stuck through a hole in the coral. No amount of shaking or poking with the boat hook is going to dislodge this easily.
Mo, desperate to redeem himself after the salt water incident earlier jumps into the water and swims over. After a moment’s thought, Mike attaches a rope to Jeannius and throws the other end to Mo to thread through the hole in the coral. Mike then takes the end back onto Jeannius and holds the coral securely. Mo then quickly gets out of the way and Mike lowers the anchor again. With the coral unable to go with it, the hook pulls out of it and the two separate. All Mike has to do then is release the line and let the coral go. It works, and the coral lands with a thud that Bev hears as she is swimming over.
Photos: Dealing with the coral
Sometimes, it’s just one of those days!!
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