We are pleased to report that Sequester is aground again, but this time intentionally. High water was just about dawn this morning, and having selected the best spot and angle, we motored to the beach, spun her around, and pulled her up to the front of the Also Island boat shed facing out to sea. The profile of her bottom has quite a long, gradual sweep up going aft from the center of the boat, so she sits nearly level up the slope of the beach with the stern inshore. With a couple of sawhorses to stabilize the floats, and a good bit of the weight of cargo moved aft, she sat nicely while the tide dropped this morning. By noon I had a grinder wired up, and was cleaning up the scars, rinsing them with fresh water a couple of times and blotting them dry with a towel, then warming them up with a little butane torch to dry out the plywood. By 1:00 PM I had it all looking pretty good, and started soaking the damage with epoxy, then laying up two layers of fiberglass over any places where the coral had penetrated to the plywood. Had it all sealed up, and it was quite tacky, totally waterproof, before the tide reached the area again at about 3:00.
We had a bit of a water crisis at Also Island this morning when we found that the rain storage tank system had sprung a leak, and drained all but about 20 gallons of the water. So as soon as I had the hull sealed up, the tide had risen enough to allow us to get dinghies to the village wharf. (At low water the whole approach to Thawaro is a mud flat.) So I got out all our water jugs, and we took a couple more and some pails from Also Island, and Jhalay (Charlie) and Kalisi and I went to the village to get 200 liters of water , which we filtered and put into the tank that feeds the kitchen. I took a spare pump I had and rigged up a battery and foot switch so they have pressure water to the sink there. It looks like it will be a week or so getting the big tank moved, repaired and re-plumbed, so I'll refine the temporary system some tomorrow, and we'll bring in some more water unless it rains tonight and fills the tank for us.
It looks as if Jim will have to go to Labasa, then on to Suva within a few days, to get several business matters taken care of. One of those things is application for a work permit for me, so I can start helping him run Also Island, and set up to build the new supply boat. Without the work visa, I can't do anything for him, or we risk immediate expulsion from Fiji. Our visitor visa precludes any sort of work for anyone else, and the govt has plenty of people keeping them informed of what goes on, even in the small villages. We plan to go to church tomorrow morning, and get a chance to see Isei, the chief again. He was quite friendly and gracious at the funeral Thursday, but much too busy to do more than exchange pleasantries, and we want to develop our own relationship with him and the village, independent of Jim and Kyoko. Going to church is a major factor in the social custom in a Fijian village, so that's the place to start showing our respect for them.
Time to get this away, and rest up for another big day tomorrow. As a day of rest, I fear it will hardly qualify. Ted
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