The time has come

"The time has come to speak of many thing, of fishing reels and generator things"

Bits of boat keep going wrong at present. Some are minor. Chris's tea, minor, that was sat on the gimbaled stove (the stove is on hinges and can swing so it stays upright, even if the boat doesn't) on top of the frying pan. The Pan's handle caught under the edge of worktop creaing a miature catipult. Which was funny rather than fatal. The generator has been broken for a while, but I got some wirewound resitors of RS austrailier. Jobs a gooden we thought.

Well no. Problem soldering iron don't work. Alan's soldering iron is 240v and is more of a branding iron. Either it don't work or the inverter can't power it (inverters convert 12volts DC to 240volts AC). So the soldering job was perfomed by blow torching the bit of the soldering iron then quickly soldering the componant on. Miracle it worked! McGuiver as Al puts it, I'm more of an A-Team man my self.

Another Pole

Dunno what happened to the fishing reel. Took it to bits (fiddly as hell). Put it back to gether, then a huge fish ripped off all our line, Our new 50kilo line, it ripped off so fast the sides of the reel melted. Breaking the reel again.

The engine then wouldn't swich off. Itermittant fault. Fortunatly I know where to find the mechanical off. I do like it when things fix themselves.

The big breakage was the spinnaker pole u-j. Another one, with the car this time. This one was probalby some what over loaded. A poled out full genoa in a 40+ knot squall will do that.

Well every thing's back to gether bar the pole. That's in pieces.

I found some more bugs in my blog, and fixed them. I was trying to stop it showing a "next" link on the current month. I can't describe how much harder PHP coding is when: A: its difficult to see syntax errors due to the large cracks and black blotches on the screen. B: You have to rely on the ofline manuals for PHP and MySQL - neither of wich have a search function in flat HTML.

"I'm gonna take me bike, cos once again the canal's on strike"

Poor old Sam on Ramprasad, the Guy I did 2 of my previous Atlantic crossings with, and who I once had to fish out of the river Neva in St Petersburg has gotten to Colon for his Panama Canal transit, to find that due to a strike by the Pilots, he's sceduled for a tranist on June the 11th.

Don't scan bank notes in the Bank of England
This one scaned in Bank of Tonga

Sam seems to be making the best of it. He's going to San Blas. A place i have increadible memories of. Victor and his dog taking us around his island, having paddled up in his dugout canoe. Hopefully its as good now as it was 9 years ago. He's also planning a trip up the Chargress river. Wich We were thinking of as a waiting strategey. The Chargres was dammed to build Gatun lake that feed the canal. Its navigable for several miles into virgin rain forest. Wake up to the howler monkeys - you will they're not called howlers for nothing.

I was inicailly unhappy at missing Carnival in Trindad. Not now had I waited in the Caribean for it, I would want to be stuck in Colon for 2 months.

I can only assume therfore that due to the strike the ocean is empty of yachts behind us. Well bar the ARC World and Blue Water Rally.

Hopefully we'll get to the Cook Islands on Friday. Theoretically this Northery will go on friday morning. Apparently the harbour at Raratonga is not suitable fro northerlies.

Jackie, Al's girlfriend, who got off in Panama, is now flying out to Tonga, not Fiji, at the beginning of the month. Apparently the air port she's landing at is 10 miles from the Marina? Marina? What marina? I don't no nuffin bout no marina in Nuka'Lofa, Tongatapu (insert random apostropies in all Tongan spellings). So she knows where the marian is but we don't and we're the ones on a boat. Hope she's going to the same island we're going to......

Last time I was in Tonga the internet and the national bank were the same place. Banks need good coms. So it was a good internet cafe. We should put one in the Bank of England.

Just north of Luku'Lofa (not sure of capitaisation of Tongan capital) is a reef. Entitled "Dido Shoal", I have visions of Dido wrecked on it, I dream of waving cheefully at her and sailing off merrily, leaving her there with sharks circling.

With that pleasant thought its time to go.