Well, another beautiful sun shiny day - filled with boat projects. In a good way though.
I am having trouble sleeping. At the risk of TMI, the whole getting older thing is killing me. Just can't sleep if I am hot and last night I was up until 0200 trying to cool down. Anyway - I slept in. Can't believe Dennis didn't wake me up so he could get started on the generator. I sure appreciated the sleep though. Believe it or not - Josh was up before me. That is pretty scary.
Last night I promised them a real breakfast this morning, so I got right on that. Probably should have just given up right then and gone on deck to read a book. So yeah, waffles need eggs. Sadly all my eggs went moldy and I have had to pitch them all. Thankfully I have some Thrive whole powdered eggs. They worked great. Was quite frustrating though, breaking and tossing a 1 1/2 dozen eggs. I am not even going to bother with the last 2 dozen. So we had breakfast at the butt crack of 1100.
After breakfast we all started (or in Dennis' case continued) our chores. Another productive day on the good ship Evergreen. Right after breakfast I helped Dennis by cleaning up the remaining fluids on the bottom of the generator compartment while he worked on hoses in the galley. By the end of the afternoon, he had the generator most of the way reinstalled. I set Josh to work on dishes and hanging the second wind scoop (more air flow, cooler, better sleep for me). With those projects done, he then went to work on the dinghy engine. He cleaned and replaced the fuel filters and voila - working again - took a couple of hours. He then hung his hammock and chilled for a while.
In the meantime I redid the lines on the radar reflector (the one that fell of the spreaders on our way here) and then spent most of the rest of the day looking for the new dinghy engine harness (used to lift the outboard from the dinghy to the boat). Understand that that was not exactly a linear process... I thought it might be in the spare bunk, but had to go thru the veggie bins and throw out science projects, then rearrange the snacks. It wasn't there. Then I thought it might be in the anchor locker. So I moved things around in there, moved the fan from the spare bunk to the forward part of the anchor locker. - Not there either. Went thru the cockpit cubbies - 3 times. Not there. Checked the outside deck boxes - soaked up the water in the one with the crack. Not there. Checked the storage behind the settees - removed the pillow cases from the settee cushions and hung them out to air. No luck. Checked the tool cabinet - nope. Under Josh's bed - nope, but lots of beer there :). By this time it was 1530 ish time to make wacky cake to take to dinner at Bruno's.
Wacky cake is Josh's forte, so he puts it together and I search down the ingredients. Flour, cocoa powder, sugar, vinegar (oops that one is distilled water - dammit could you mark the bottle? OSHA would have a fit!), oil, water, and vanilla. Where is the vanilla? Well, after tearing apart my galley twice I sent Josh to Moondance to get vanilla from Carla. I think the motor harness and the vanilla are having a sordid affair somewhere on this boat. Next thing you know we will have little vanilla harnesses running around.......
Dinner at Bruno's.
Wow! Personally it was the best meal I have had in the South Pacific - rivaled Gaston and Valentine's in Tuao. We had whole baked red snapper, fish with onions and gravy (local dish), a variation on poisson cru, rice, pasta salad, bread fruit french fries and wacky cake for dessert. I told Tabita (Mrs. Bruno) that I need to come and be her sous chef for a week to learn how to cook those dishes. A pretty involved process I might add. The French fries were made from bread fruit, but she did not boil it first, just cut it up and deep fried it (yum!) The poisson cru type dish was made with raw fish, curry, onions and freshly ground coconut. Carla and I watched her crack open the coconuts then shave out the meat with a Tahitian style coconut meat shaver outer (i am sure that is the technical term for it). Picture a flat board with a crescent shaped scraper with teeth (about 7 inches long by 3 inches wide) attached to the middle of one end. She sat on the board on the edge of a rock with a bowl on the ground and scraped out that meat in no time.
It was an interesting group. Our host is French, but has been on Fanning for 30 years. He has guest rooms on his property as well. Tabita is from one of the main Gilbert Islands, but met Bruno on Washington Island. They have two small children Paul (5ish)and Agnes (annyay) (18 months). Fortunately Tabita has a couple of female friends that help her cook and with the children. Not sure why she did not come to the table to eat, but I gave her and her helpers first dibs on the dessert, which they willingly took. I guess rice and fish are no big deal, but chocolate is a treat. At some point I will post pictures to go with this post, as I am not sure words can adequately describe everything. Really wish we had had a video camera so you could have seen Carla and I do the land crab shuffle. We were minding our own business standing in the living area of Paul's house when this land crab - slightly larger than a dessert plate came scuttling across our feet. Watching us jump was pretty funny, but it was equally funny to watch the kids chase it around the kitchen with a small bat. Little Paul got a huge kick out of the whole scene.
Finally called it a night around 2100. No street lights or signs here, so we were dependent on our flashlights and memory to find the right path to the beach and the dinghies. Oh and the stars! and the milky way! and the southern cross. Totally amazing and beautiful. Reminds us of how fortunate we are to be able to see it in a way that most people will never experience.
Time for bed now. Dennis says I am not allowed to sleep in tomorrow - he wants to finish up the generator. I am going to dig out the sewing machine and restitch the sunbrella on Moondance's jib. Josh wants to go see about real internet. And maybe the Kuai will be here tomorrow - that will be interesting to watch as well.
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