Ali got back and dove straight into doing what she does best—deep cleaning. There is little that is more satisfying than a spotless boat.

What can’t be cleaned onboard gets sent out to me.

I had thought I’d be able to replace the gas regulator and solenoid here in town. A friend on a neighboring boat had. But when I went to the gas distributor they didn’t have a single item I needed. Amazon and Ali took care of it, though. This was a good repair/replacement. Never a great idea to mess around with old corroded gas components on a boat. I don’t worry one bit about the boat sinking, but if I did, it would be a sinking due to fire that would cause it.

More cleaning. The front lockers house way too much junk. Chief among that junk, to my mind, is the insane amount of fenders that came with this boat. We already had five fenders hanging off the side of the boat when I took this picture. Thirteen fenders! Even when leaving the boat for a couple of months during cyclone season I had only left seven fenders hanging outside. Another six were just taking up space in the locker. I was happy when Ali agreed to let me get rid of four.

She listed them on a Fiji cruising group on Facebook. The very next day we got an email from the marina. They were passing on a message they had gotten from Fijian Customs: “Please kindly notify SY Bumfuzzle that anything disposed of in Fiji will be duty paid.”

Whoops. Even though we hadn’t listed them for “sale” the customs officers were monitoring Facebook and were ready to pounce.

There aren’t many cruisers around at this time of year. A few of these boats are empty most of the time, a few have owners (like us) flew off for family visits, and a few more are hunkered down inside with their air conditioning on most of the time.

A friend told us about a meat shop that we hadn’t known about previously, because it’s not on the main drag through town. When he told me about it he explained it as being in the alley alongside the “pink grocery.” That’s pretty much all you need for directions in a town the size of Savusavu. I was surprised, actually, to see that they had stenciled a small name on the building across the alley from the pink grocery.

It’s a pretty good idea to air out the mainsail regularly here. The heavy rains fall daily, and mold is constantly threatening.

This is what happens when the freshwater pump gives up the ghost—we’re forced to run a hose through the house while I try and solve it.

I’m trying to decide if Jabsco pumps have just gone to shit, or if there is something wrong with our boat that is causing them to fail so often. On previous boats I would go years and years without ever thinking about the freshwater pump. On this boat I’ve been burning through them constantly. It isn’t the pump itself, it is the $30 pressure switch. Of course, out in the islands of the South Pacific it does you little good to know that it’s the pressure switch. The only real option is to find a replacement pump.

I limped this pump along with gentle hammer taps on the switch whenever it stopped working. In the meantime I went to the Yacht Shop here in town (an actual chandlery) and he was able to both order me a replacement as well as a spare switch. So, at least next time I might be able to trade out a $30 part rather than a $250 pump.

My gentle tapping on the pump turned into pounding, and eventually death. I dug around in the locker under the bed and found a little 3 gpm pump that I had bought somewhere in the Marquesas a while back. That at least solves the problem until the new pump arrives in a few days.

The marina is across the water, but Savusavu has three dinghy docks scattered along its length for anyone to use. This is the one I use when we are running errands. It’s closest to the bakery, the “meat shop”, the local market, and the supermarkets. I tend to go at the same time each day and keep landing at the same time that four local guys are eating their lunch in the shade on the dock. They always hop up to grab a line and make room for me, and then they offer me their lunch. The friendliness I encounter around Savusavu may be unmatched.

To beat the heat each day we have the same routine. The kids skurf (water-skiing with the surfboard) for about three miles out to Split Rock, where we spend some time freediving, then they skurf home again. A good couple of hours of water time usually cools us down for another hour or so back home. We are always the only people out on the water, even at Split Rock, which is located just a short swim from shore.