Fanning Island - Who needs TV?

Busy the last 4 days.

 It took 3 days to redo all the seams on Moondance's jib. Whew! Big job - but glad it is done. All the urgent chores are done on Evergreen as well. The generator appears to be working properly. We rehung the radar reflector, and Josh checked the sails while he was up the mast and we are making water. I even got some non urgent things done - cleaned out paperwork and the storage behind our bed. Got some things together to give to the school here and reorganized. Good job done there too.

first load of lumber

piles of rice and flour

Really - I don't think so....

We watched the unloading of the Kwai today. Coffee and boat unloading - nice way to start the day. I am not sure I can even describe it. So they set up the crane and first moved lumbar. The bargie type boat (primary job is ferry/school bus) was busy so the first loads were taken in with an aluminum fishing boat. The first load of 2x4s seemed reasonable, but the second load - 2x6s was way big, we thought for sure it would sink the boat, I guess they thought so too after setting the load in. Out it came and reloaded with a smaller batch. Then they opened the cargo hatch on the deck - it sort of accordions to one side leaving the whole middle of the boat open. They off loaded lots of boxes of dry goods first - into the same small fishing boat, shortly after they started that, out came a pallet that went into the bottom of the boat - wow they filled that thing up, then loaded on 6-7 people - talk about the little engine that could!!! After that load there was a pallet of rice and flour. Finally around 1000 they barge boat came by and the process started going more quickly. Only one hard hat to be seen - and gotta love those steel-toed flip-flops/bare feet. But, seems all survived intact. Frankie was on shore with Cindy checking things in and out to people. Was definitely like Christmas here - appropriate I guess since the Kwai came from Christmas Island!
After lunch (fish tacos) Dennis and Josh went fishing after dropping me off at the wharf. I dropped off the books/paper etc for the school with the mayor, then walked to Bruno's. I was hoping to catch Tabita so I could write down here fish with gravy recipe. I passed her leaving - she said she would be right back. Oh yeah island time. Finally JoJo (one of Tabita's helpers) talked me through the recipe and I headed back to the wharf. Earlier when I stopped by the internet place, I met the government officials that are here checking things out. They are from Tarawa ( the capital of Kiribati is there) and are out visiting all the islands to ensure things are in order.

Great white hunter.  Barracuda - yum! who woulda thought?

Just as I was getting to the wharf, I saw Josh and Dennis coming in from the pass. They stopped by Moondance, so I figured they must have had a successful expedition. Sure enough Josh was dragging a big (30 inches or so) Barracuda and there was a Travalle in the dinghy. Great white hunters. Then the hard part - cleaning the fish, the dinghy and the deck. It would be nice if the rain that the clouds keep threatening us with would come down hard.

So we are getting ready to wrap up our time here on Fanning. Tomorrow I will start restowing things, retrieve my sewing stuff from Moondance, clean up a little more. The winds have been light on the gribs. Dennis says he thinks that means convection (remember rain), and also unreliability in general. So we will continue to check and pray for the best, but will probably head out be the end of the week.

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