Waterlogged and Sore in Port Vila

Here we sit on our mooring watching the rain come and go, but mostly blow sideways towards us. This is definitely the rainiest place we have been in a long while. Seems like the good ol' Pacific Northwest, and it is winter here, but we have gotten use to sunnier weather. No progress was made with the main engine starter. I did not connect with anyone on Saturday morning. Most garages were closed and the guy I called who had been recommended to us on the local cruisers' net did not speak English well enough for me to get anywhere with him. We will start afresh tomorrow (Monday) morning.

I did take off the spare starter (boy they sure weigh a ton!) and will take both of them in to a truck repair garage and see which one is easiest to fix. They are different makes although they both have Lucas solenoids on them and both will have to be replaced. One might be repairable but it is doubtful. The other is cracked beyond fixing. It will be another adventure to get this done. Today we got out the Honda electric AC generator and charged up the batteries since with all the rain we did not get any solar power.

Today we stayed on the boat all day. I took the starter off, changed the pencil zincs on the main engine heat exchangers, charged the batteries, found a long lost bag of sailing hardware (shackles), and finished a bad book. Cindy read most of the day. We intended to go to the dock and get fresh water in our jugs but the rain kind of put us out of the mood for that so we will do it tomorrow after chasing around for repair shops with two starters that weigh about 30 pounds apiece.

Yesterday we did do some walking around Port Vila. It has a great fresh food market on the bay, much like the ones we have seen in Fiji and Tonga. The women selling their produce are all friendly and very photogenic with their Mother Hubbard style dresses and easy smiles. It is all very hectic with goods all over the concrete floor with the ladies sitting cross-legged on the woven mats. We also walked across town to find a marine hardware store mostly just to go for the walk and see more of the town in the intermittent rain. We found the store which wasn't much but also found a great home furnishings store that would rival the best found in the US anywhere, except that almost everything in it was handmade, excellent quality furniture and accessories. They had some really interesting "tiles" of river rock cemented on to a woven mat, about a foot square, that you could use for flooring either indoors or out. You would need a good vacuum to keep it clean inside but it was very pretty with several different variations. If we had a house and could afford it we would do it completely from this store. It wasn't cheap so must be patronized by wealthy ex-pats or the elite Ni-Vanuatuans here.

We did find a hole in the wall pizzeria last night and had a pepperoni/mushroom pizza that was OK. They did not want us to order a pizza when we got in there despite giving us the pizza menu - they said it would take too long as the oven was backed up. This baffled us because we were the only customers in the place and we did not see anyone coming in for take out. Oh well, it only took 15 minutes and it hit the spot. The walk home to the dinghy dock was very dark and the sidewalk uneven and we talked about all the reported crime in Port Vila but we made it safely. Tonight we are supposed to go to a Vietnamese restaurant with White Swan if they are still up for it. They have been sick and are stir crazy but it is still raining sideways so we will see. Wish us luck with the starters tomorrow as we are stuck here until at least one of them is fixed.

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