Day 149, Year 5: Food, Fuel, and Internet
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful Day, Not Quite As Hot
Location: Gan Island, Addu Atoll, Maldives
Food, fuel, and internet. Now what more can a sailor ask for. Good winds and fair seas, I suppose, but we don’t need those for a few days. And a freezer that works, but that is tomorrow’s fun. So for now we are happy. We finally figured out the cheapest and the best way to connect to the internet here and to have a good Skype video connection right in the cockpit. We do have to sit in the cockpit instead of inside the boat, but from up there we have great wifi-some of the time. We can’t figure it out, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work at all and none of the settings have changed, so we’re not sure what that is about. But if we persist, we know we can have a good Skype call. We called Justin this morning as a test. At first we had trouble getting through, but he switched to Jo’s computer and then we had one of the best connections I think we have ever had. At 8:30 am here, it is 9:30 pm in New Mexico, but Justin, Jo, and Ziggy were all still up and Ziggy was a delight. We had tried earlier to download some video of Ziggy that Justin had posted on his website, but we can’t seem to get video off Picasa or other websites. So Justin sent two of the videos via Skype. That took an hour to two, but now we have lots of Ziggy video to watch in the next few months while we have no internet connection. Heather and Jed posted video of Sam and Jonah on their Picasa site, but we can’t download it. Jed has been under extreme pressure getting a grant written, but that should be done today. Tomorrow they are traveling to Washington, DC, by train, to celebrate Jed’s mother’s birthday. Maybe once they get there, we can connect via Skype and get them to send their videos through Skype as well. So internet is off and on, but at least we have it.
The delivery of diesel fuel happened this afternoon and into the evening. The truck would come and Mark, Ed, and Edi of Single Malt would fill their jerry cans and return to the boats to fill the tanks. The truck would leave and then return, but the wait between returns was quite long so that it was almost dark when the job was finished. Earlier in the day, Lynne of Constance and I had walked to the third island in this chain, Maradhoo, to the ATM to get enough money to pay for fuel. Then we walked back to Feydoo, the second island, to go to Two Plus One to buy limes, ginger, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, razor blades, and a few other items. During our walk to Maradhoo, Lal (our friend from Sri Lanka) picked us up and took us the rest of the way to the bank. On our way back to Feydoo, a car pulled over to tell us that he (the driver) had a supermarket named Two Plus One. We told him that is where we were headed, so he drove us the rest of the way. We made our purchases, talked with a local woman who couldn’t speak English (the staff at Two Plus One interpreted for us) to tell us that we need to stop and spend a lot of time here. We won’t be doing that since we need to get to the Chagos, but even if we did stay here, our movement is so restricted that it wouldn’t be the happy time the woman was indicating. Still, we appreciated her welcome. Lynne and I then hiked back to the anchorage. A little later the fuel run started and is now complete. We still need to get petrol for the dingy, but then we will be ready for take-off.
Mark talked to Ali, one of the refrigeration guys, and he said that they had trouble finding one connector, but that will have it and be here by 10:30 in the morning. We were going to have to take Windbird over to the seawall so we could connect to local power to vacuum the refrigeration system, but late this afternoon Claude and Carmen of Koukouri arrived. They were anchored just in front of us in Cochin and beside us in Uligan, and it was their transformer that we borrowed to have the work done in India. How fortunate that they came in this afternoon. It is now a really crowded little anchorage, but its looking like we all fit just fine. We already have Claude’s transformer onboard and are looking forward to the return of the refrigeration crew. Once that is done, we will be ready to head to Chagos with the other three boats with whom we share this anchorage.
