Wednesday 18th July

Nuku Hiva
Marquesas

8 54.888 S
140 06.115 W

Well Ross must have been knocking on the door of the store this morning as he was back at our boat yelling at us to come and get the bread at 07.30hrs. Gerry got out of bed and I followed about 15minutes later (when the tea was made). We ran the engine to top up the batteries and cool the fridge down then it began to rain. I raced about closing up the hatches and putting out the buckets to catch the rain water and then it stopped – of course, why wouldn’t it? We played the open and close game for a while until we finally got sick of it and left the hatches closed – that way we knew the rain would stay away. Gerry fiddled around on the computer for most of the morning trying to sort out stuff with the generator. It got to 11.00hrs before we finally took the dink into the dock to collect our laundry and when we arrived the girl asked us to come back at 13.30 hrs as it wasn’t finished yet. I could almost explode, they have had it for 5 days now and it was meant to be ready 2 days ago! Oh well, I guess it’s the island time thing in action again. We went from there to the store intending to buy the few provisions that we were lacking but just as we got there they were closing up and turning the lights out – apparently they close at 11.30hrs and not midday as we had thought! To add insult to injury it began to rain during our walk to the store and we got a little wet.
We did buy the vegetables from the lady out side the store though and then made our way back to the dinghy dock where we risked life and limb to get into the dink which was now 10feet below the level of the dock, the tide having gone out in our absence. We made it back to the boat before the next rain burst and sat eating lunch in the steamy interior of the boat, I do hope the rain hurries up and passes by it’s getting to be uncomfortable cooped up inside. Unfortunately it would appear that the rain gods have decided to stay and keep us company, it rained for the entire afternoon on and off which meant that we did nothing except read our books. Ross and Sue had asked us to join them for a roast lamb dinner on their boat and as we hadn’t heard from Tom Cruise (it’s an Aussie in joke) we accepted and made our way across to their boat around 18.00hrs. We spent a very pleasant evening drinking wine and enjoying a fabulous roast dinner and exchanging tales and tall stories about our sailing adventures. When it came time to go back to our boat it was of course raining again so we got wet – again still we are now use to it and soon had ourselves tucked away inside the boat for the night.