That’s the best I can say.

Actually, Ann got a lot done today. She did laundry and started a really cool project to create a rain catcher. There’s a fairly major “rain event” due day after tomorrow if you can believe the forecast. We’re low on water and fuel, so need sun to power the watermaker. Guess what? With this wind comes clouds. There’s not a lot of sun. So…Ann spent part of the day working on a canvas tarp-like thing to funnel rain water down the deck plate where the connection to the water tank is.

Back in the day before watermakers this is how folks would fill their tanks. Many still do -but watermakers are so much easier and more predictable. However, now that we’re in the deep, deep wilderness, it’s useful to have some extra survival skills- such as the tarp rain catcher thingy. We’ll report on how well it works. Other cruisers have said that they have been able to fill their 100 gallon water tanks in very short order in the heavy rains. We’ll see.

Speaking about wilderness sailing. We emptied our jerry jugs of diesel into the tanks today. We figured the weather’s not getting better, so we should do it while we have some fairly benign conditions. It’s windy, but we’re tucked in where there are no waves, so it was fairly easy. I’m now estimating we’ve got 18 gallons of fuel left to get us back up to Savusavu where we’ll resupply and pick up the engine parts that have arrived that we can give back to Bright Angel who so kindly lent us what we needed to get our engine working. We used a lot of fuel coming down here since we wanted to test the engine, but we’ll sail all the way back. At this point the fuel is just for charging batteries when the sun doesn’t cooperate and for the last 1/2 hour of the voyage to get into the anchorage or mooring, so 18 gallons should be plenty.

Speaking of resupply, we have absolutely no more fresh fruit or produce. We used the very last of our supply tonight when I made a Waldorf Salad with the last half head of cabbage and the last apple. I added Ann’s homemade yogurt, blue cheese and walnuts as well as left over corn fritters Ann made yesterday, and we had a great meal. After this we’re into our “long term” supplies. Actually we still have some eggs, some bacon and some smoked salmon so we have some good meals planned for the next couple days including bacon and egg scramble tomorrow morning and probably smoked salmon pasta in alfredo sauce tomorrow night. So, we’re biding our time right now for an estimated departure from Faluga on Friday. Tomorrow is supposed to be very windy and Thursday (remember we’re a day ahead of the US) is forecast to bring heavy rain. Friday looks more settled and good for a departure. The rain catcher is in the “refinement phase” and almost ready to be deployed and then Ann may start working on a quilt! In the meantime if we have a little sunshine we’re going to try and go for a snorkel.