FINGERS CROSSED!!!

Today (06/06/13) may be a very good day or a very bad day, depending on what happens next. Intrigued?

Well, it's like this.

After a lot of bullying of our agent, and a lot of help from a lovely young lady who speaks wonderful English we met accidentally, we received our big yellow box from DHL that Rachel sent. It had been held up in customs and needed some more information sent to Ecuador, including an emailed set of documents from Rachel. That was step one, and I was delighted to track it leaving customs, but despondent to see it flag up that it had been refused by the agent! So it was another job for Carla and her English; she knows the agent and he would not want to lose face with her. So $186 more in customs taxes, and it arrived on Saturday evening. I was almost in tears of joy. A big surprise was in it too - more in a minute.

So with that accomplished, what else is there?

6 very heavy batteries for the boat. We have just looked out and the freighter is here as expected and somewhere in the hold there are our batteries. That has been a saga as well, as we spent 2 weeks trying on our own to source them (they are not common) and we were told eventually a chap would get them in for us but it would take 3 weeks to get them. We mentioned this to Carla and she picked up a phone. This was Thursday morning and the boat for here loads once a week on a Friday. After an hour she told us she had found the batteries in Quito, her brother would get them to the boat in Guaquil and we could have them when the boat got in on Tuesday, or Wednesday depending on where they were in the unloading. And the boat has just arrived!!

All we have fingers crossed now for is that they really are the right ones and will work. We are down to a very dodgy battery for overnight fans, and it is about to go to heaven with the other ones.

And then there is more! The lovely Carla has arranged 2 trusty air divers to clean our hull as it has become a marine forest in the couple of weeks we have been here.

EVEN MORE!!
In the big yellow box there was a card for Grandpa Dave - his birthday was the next day, how good was that! And Alex had written his own name and drawn som artwork as well. I cannot thank Rachel enough for the foresight to include it, it made Dave's day.

Then there will be the hunt the agent chase for our clearance papers and we can move on........

MAYBE TODAY!!!
07/03/13) Having stared at the lovely green freighter in the harbour entrance disgorging goodies for the town Carla came by and said that it was not our boat, which was turning up in the late afternoon and would be blue. So the battery saga continues. I really do hope today is battery day, as the ones we are using really are not well at all.

HOWEVER
Yesterday turned out to be a good day after all. We were looking our for the taxi driver who gets the water for us when Carla turned up again, this time in an open boat with 2 young men to introduce us to our dive team who were going to clean the bottom of the boat. And they were the business, compressor and bottle gas, what more could you ask for. And a bonus - English! So while they returned Carla to shore the water arrived, all 14 jerrycans of it to be emptied and cans returned. Just as well the divers came back as we managed to lose 2 overboard in the swell. Not daunted, one of the trusty duo dived in and retrieved them and put them in the dive boat to give back to us. So while Dave started the emptying of water bottles into the tank at 20 litres a go, I collected brushes and scrapers and other useful things and got the team underway.

Then it rained - and boy, did it rain! 2 buckets full collected so washing of undies and non-laundry items was accomplished with no depletion of the tanks. My halo is well polished!

So we now have a very clean hull and had better get going soon before it all comes back again. I was delighted to see a couple of sea lions swimming around near our divers and showing them how swimming was REALLY done - wonderful, but they had no way of holding a scraper so it was all show and no substance!

FINALLY
The great scrabble fest is underway in the afternoon with the usual ups and downs. Have to tell -"squeeze" down on a triple word score for 90!