Crazy Gringo - what were you thinking?

This has been a strange day. I started out this morning waking up with the dawn, around 5:30. Got up, brushed my teeth, shampooed, shaved and scrubbed. It was too early to go in for breakfast or internet and I forgot to get eggs at the market on Saturday, and it is closed from Saturday noon until Monday morning. So I started working on changing the fuel filters on the engine to prepare for our next passage. So far, so good.

I started with the dual Racor filters that are between the tanks and the engine and the engine fuel filters. I only have to change one and it is an easy job, usually. Well, I got the old one out, put the next one in then started pumping our little cute inline fuel primer bulb but nothing was happening. You have to get all the air out of the system or it will air lock and not pump to the engine. I pumped and pumped and pumped - nada. It was getting close to 8:00 by now so I left it to go in to get something to eat and get online to talk to Cindy who is leaving tomorrow from Denver to fly back to Maggie Drum - hurray!!

Did the internet and breakfast and met a friend who has been looking out for unflavored potato chips (preferably Lays) here in Neiafu. All the stores periodically run out of everything, let alone something exotic as Lays potato chips, but I did see them once over two months ago. Nick told me that he saw them at what is called the "American" grocery store which is quite a walk from town and one that I had not been to. There is no sign and the building looks like they just started building it and quit for a couple of years long before it was finished. There is a store inside but it is much, much smaller than a 7-11 back home and you have to ask for them to pick something off the shelf for you after you look around from 15 feet away.

They actually had Lays potato chips that had just came in on the last freighter but they were the Wavy (Ripples) kind. Beggars can't be choosers and I have been freaking out and not eating well without my Lays (sounds neurotic doesn't it?). They are an addiction of mine. I had already asked Cindy to fly some home with her and she finally agreed in the interest of marital harmony. 7,000 miles of hand-carried luggage!!

Hurray! I got my chips, in fact I cleaned them out and got 3 bags at over $5 (US) per bag so I had to go to the ATM for more cash on the way back. I walked way over a mile during the heat of a brilliant noon sky, but I am happy knowing that we will have potato chips for lunches all the way to New Zealand.

Well, now we get back to the fuel filters..... I get back to the boat and on the way I smell diesel, something you never want to smell on the water. By now you have figured out it was coming from Maggie Drum. I am mortified, and worried. I get on boat in a rush and find diesel running, pouring out of the open fuel filter housing that I could not get to fill by endless pumping earlier. I am sick to my stomach, both from the smell of the diesel inside a closed up boat and the horrible pollution I have caused in a beautiful harbor, not that it is totally pristine any way but it is something that you just don't do.

I got most of it cleaned up and will go back to clean the rest up. A minor environmental disaster! I am still sick about it but I guess it is just one of those things. I now know never to leave any thing unbuttoned up and leave it. It seemed Ok at the time. So now I am the Crazy Gringo with diesel to go with my chips.

BTW - I had intended to write about the Tongans this time - a very friendly and crazy group of people themselves, and, about our leaving next week. We plan on starting out for New Zealand via almost a rhumb line in about a week or less depending on weather reports. I have hired a weather forecaster and router to get some extra insurance on the weather part as it can be nasty on this leg. The weather is settling down quite a bit though from what it was so hopefully all will be easy with no dramas along the way. If we average 5 knots we will get there in just over 10 days from our start. We might get there quicker or later. We will be checking in to the regional radio nets on our brand-spanking new Single Sideband HF radio daily. We will get daily radio updates (oral and email).

So - I will write more on the Tongans after I get the diesel mopped up. What was I thinking?