Commodore
January 21, 2023

Saturday 21 January – Great snorkelling

A few boat chores done, Chris seems to be in his element in our Aladdin’s Cave of a cupboard, filled with thousands of wires, switches, fuses etc. The men had a very satisfactory hour or so trying to get our tank gauges to work properly, lots of talk of calibration and complicated drawings working out how to pump the diesel from the one tank to the other. Now we just have to resolve the dreaded object stuck down the side of the dagger board.

We headed off in JeldiJeldi for a snorkel, to an area we have not been to before, further afield and near an anchorage called the Hot Tub. Rowan had spotted a nice bit of coral and it did not disappoint us. Definitely the best fish we have seen since being here, much bigger and more prolific. I think it may be a tricky fishing area as it was not easy to find a spot for our anchor. hopefully it is a bit of a sanctuary for the fish. We had a second long snorkel all the way around a reef which was also very pleasant. After that we headed to this huge patch of brilliant light turquoise water, a white sandy bottom made it a dazzling place for a swim. It was only marred by the fact we managed to lose the anchor when we threw it in and did not realise for a while until JeldiJeldi was drifting quite far. Luckily Rowan remembered the spot of the reef we had crossed to get into the area and he finally found it. It is his favourite anchor, every time we use it he comments ‘what a brilliant little anchor’ it is, so we were very pleased to get it back. We went and did a bit of exploring on the way back to PolePole going out along a channel amongst the mangroves.

It was a very hot afternoon and Rowan mentioned it might be our last beach for a while and last opportunity to put the dinghy wheels on, which we have been trying to do for a year, and take up an enormous bag in the cockpit. We tried to install them a year ago and found we had lost a part, Rowan ordered a new part, I think the wheels come from New Zealand, so no the easiest bits to replace. Poor Rowan woke up from his hot afternoon siesta not in the mood for steamy work, but we finally got him on board. Chris had read up all about them and had got them sussed. They are fold up wheels so we can pull the dinghy up on the beach, but there is not a lot of space to put them and it has to be carefully done. We finally all headed to the beach having had to borrow a drill bit from another boat as we did not have the correct size. We were armed with mats and endless bits and bobs. It was an ominous start to proceedings when Isobel jumped out at the beach and misjudged her footing and fell in fully dressed. We dragged JeldiJeldi on to the beach and got her bottom lifted onto a log. Isobel and I left the men at work while we had a walk around the island trying to boost Isobel’s step count. We got to Eben’s restaurant and his sister in law spotted me and showed me she had some molas headbands. Stella had asked after them last week and she didn’t have any. Amazingly Stella had asked Isobel to look out for one to take back to her, so we had a very successful purchase.

We finally got back to the men, and brilliantly it all seemed to be going incredibly well, the holes were drilled, it was just taking a bit longer than anticipated and it was now a race with the light and the tide. Isobel and I returned to Eben’s (benefitting Isobel’s step count a little further!) to delay our dinner booking from 6 to 7pm. Back at JeldiJeldi we had to get stuck in helping doing the messiest of jobs. The boat is aluminium and our screws are steel, so we have to put a special protective gel on otherwise the steel erodes the aluminium. Once that was on the whole bolt had to be covered with thick white extremely gooey sealant. My god we were all covered in the end but had a good production chain going, and successfully finished the job. Such a pity I couldn’t take a photo of us all covered in the stickiest white goo. Washing our hands in the sea using the sand as an abrasive made an even stickier mess. Finally my mosquito wipes managed to get the worst off and we clambered back in to head home just as the light was fading. It was then Rowan’s turn to fall in the water in our mad dash.

We had a quick spruce up managing to finally get the goo off our hands with alcohol and headed back to the island for dinner. We shared the restaurant with a few World Arc boats, including Isabel the Oyster anchored next to us. There are 7 of them, two were professional crew. Our friends from last night were there, and then Herman the German (his words not mine!) with his wife and friend, it was all very sociable. Sadly I think the crowds have overwhelmed Eben, so we didn’t get our usual delicious ceviche starter, but found we were honoured guests with lobster as our main meal while the rest all got chicken! There was a drinks bonfire on the beach for the World Arc crew but we were all so knackered after our long snorkel and boat work we gave it a skip and returned to a chocolate feast on board PolePole.