Friday 27 February – stocking up

We met Finus, the ancient mini bus driver at the dinghy dock at 9am. We had a morning of sorting things out, Finus had got our toilet pump repaired at some backstreet workshop, we looked for a new dip stick for the dinghy engine, it accidentally fell into the sea when Rowan was checking the oil, picked up all Rowan’s shorts that a tailor put new elastic into, and so on! We then did a mega supermarket shop to last us through to the end of the month when we put the boat away. We pick up the Crickmores tomorrow and pick up Grant and Judith (Rowan’s best man who lives in California) middle of March. We also had a very successful shop at the Italian deli again where we got loads of meat, cheeses and fresh lettuce, basil, rocket and coriander. We are going to be living off guacamole as we have bought a mountain of delicious looking avocados. The dinghy was packed solid as we returned to PolePole.

The rest of the day was tidying up, cleaning and making beds. Rowan had fuel delivered to fill the tanks up. Max, Noah’s friend spotted us motoring past his resort yesterday and had been in contact, so we arranged to meet him for dinner tonight at 6pm. At 5:30pm there was an absolute torrential downpour, that made it impossible to leave on time. As always these squalls don’t last long and we headed into town. The worst part was walking through all the deep puddles. We met at a very nice restaurant called the Copper Hut and had a delicious meal. Max was in great spirits and told us all about his exciting plans for starting up his own resort. Bizarrely it is on one of the islands we anchored outside before we got to Wakatobi. It is so remote he could not believe that we had been there. All sounds a very exciting plan with his American girlfriend. Max is fluent in Indonesian and has lived here for over 10 years, it doesn’t sound like he will return to Sweden to live, he loves the life out here. It was a pretty hairy dinghy back to PolePole in the dark and storm clouds threatening again, our torch was flashing as it was on low battery. Thanks goodness it stayed alive until we were safely back, too many boats and things in the sea here to do it in the dark. It poured down with rain about 5 minutes after we got back, we timed it perfectly thank goodness.