Life in Puerto Ayora

Wednesday 5th March

Life here in Puerto Ayora carries on as normal.

The WARC people have organised (?), through their agents, a fuel barge to go to each boat and fuel them with as much fuel as requested and pre-paid for. Most boats are complaining of being short changed in the quantity delivered. It is also $2.35/US gallon. This is about 60 cent / litre. Not a bad price. However a lot of boats, including us are using taxis to bring cans up to the only filling station and fuelling up ourselves. The cost at the station is $1.02/ US gallon! This more than covers the $1 taxi fare to the station and the $0.60 water taxi fare to the boat!

I have just been on the radio arranging a water delivery to the boat this noon, just to top off our tanks. The water comes directly from the de-salinator plant and so is clean even if not very tasty.

Some of the Blue Water Rally boats have left, but there are still quite a few here. The ones who left have run into head winds and not so pleasant wave conditions as well. We'll see how things are on Sunday, our day of departure.

Our generator stopped again with no cooling warning. Another impeller? No, not this time. 2 small fish in the water intake strainer! Removed them and re-started. All OK.

We said goodbye, for the moment to Marcel. He has transferred to another yacht, and Shin has joined us on board. We are expecting Val's cousin Paul to arrive on the island today to join us as crew until Hiva Oa.

There have been several day trips by other boats to other islands. These trips all seem to be on slow boats. For example the trip to Bartholome takes 5 hours by boat a 7 knots, and 5 hours back again, and 1 1/2 hours on the island! Not great viewing value! Especially when you think that the boat we used travelled at 25 knots there and back! We had several hours on the island and off the island snorkelling.

Shin is away today diving on the north of the island, and I'm hoping to do a dive before we leave. It depends on the time of everything else that has to happen before departure.

We were fortunate to get here early, due to not stopping at San Christobal. As a result we are anchored closest inshore. The later boats have much longer water taxi rides out to the boats, and are getting much more of a roll as well. However as one person pointed out, they get much better value for their $.60!

2 baby sharks swam past the boat yesterday, about 1/2 metre long and a vaguely pink colour. Turtles and seals are common, in fact we had one seal sleep on board in the cockpit one night! We now close the back doors at night. There are also flocks of pelicans flying by looking for lunch. They are ungainly on land, but they fly so well. Also there are the dive bombers. I don't know what they are, but from a height of about 40 metres they fold their wings and go straight in for the kiil in the water. They do miss all the boats at anchor, but not by very much, maybe a metre or so. What a mess if there is a misjudgement!!