Courage has been rebuilding the rudder and it's looking nearly complete. Needs many layers of fiberglass outer-coating, maybe some sanding, some bottom paint, and it's done. He used spray foam, which isn't as strong, but it's what we had available. We don't really plan on hitting anything else anyway, and with the welded straight shaft, we really can't be taking on force anyway. Our straightened prop is doing well for us and our spare prop from the shipwreck is on our back steps, but looks great.
We dove on the shipwreck and got the lifelines to make them into a nice dinghy anti-theft wire. We ran out of air in the SCUBA tank, so we went up, but I wanted to see more of the boat. Maybe next time in Tahiti we can fill our tanks and dive again.
We also helped another boat with US fittings gravity fill their propane tanks (cheaper), then we kept the French tank and bought ourselves a fitting so that we can use it since gravity filling the tanks only gets our tanks partially filled and takes a long time. We understand that we can use the French tanks, exchange them (for a fee) whenever they are empty, and then return it for a refund of the deposit when we are leaving French territory. We'll see how this goes. Gravity filling was OK, but not great. Maybe buying into their system will be better.
It was so nice to have fresh stuff again; I loaded up on everything I thought we could eat before it rotted just before we left. The kids LOVE it! We had apples for snack, pears, tangerines, and mangos for lunch. They ate all the yellow bananas, but we still have a few bundles of green bananas. The fruit from the Marquesas is significantly cheaper than the other fruit around here - mostly US and New Zealand. Marquesan bananas are 72 cents per kilo, whereas other bananas are 1.30 per kilo. Marquesan limes were $1.00 per kilo while other limes are $3.50 per kilo. Grapefruit are 89 cents per kilo; there are no other grapefruit. But apples are $3.50 per kilo, tangerines $4.30 per kilo, nectarines $13.95 per kilo, plums $12.00 per kilo, strawberries $13.00 per kilo, etc. They look great, but are ridiculously priced. Potatoes are $1.14 per kilo and carrots $1.00 per kilo, so those are more our speed. They also have nice lettuce for $2.00 per kilo (which goes a long way). It's very interesting to me to see where all the food around here comes from. Nothing is close, so there is food from everywhere - Asia, New Zealand, US, Europe, etc. Interesting collection. Things you don't see in the US - canned butter (good for tropics when you can't refrigerate), radiated milk in boxes on the shelves (non-refrigerated), literally legs of lamb sitting in bags in the freezer section (I saw a cart with 3 of them in it at check-out, very bizarre). But in general, the grocery store by the marina is huge and has everything we could think of American, plus these other sections and items. It's nice, you just have to be selective about the prices for the imported items or it can add up pretty quick!! Best of all, baguettes are $.50 each. So you could get 26 baguettes or one kilo of nectarines. . .
Shannon
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