Not Swimmingly Good Suva, June 8 David Things haven't been going swimmingly well lately. For a start there's not much chance of a swim what with rusting Chinese fishing ships crowding the bay and a thin oil slick everywhere. No swim appeal to speak of. The rain was great while we needed the water and, to be fair, there's more sun than rain now. But Suva is wet, with showers several times a day. It quickly becomes sticky and close when we shut up the boat to avoid the weather.
Yesterday Janet pushed herself up off her knees where she had been for about a week when she wasn't sitting on the loo. Diarrhea. Shellfish. Awful.
Not to be outdone I matched her with a bout of urinary tract infection. In hind sight there were probably better ways I could have garnered sympathy but, you pays your money. I was at the very early stages, thinking that there seemed to be something not quite the same about peeing when, on the yacht, Midnight Sun, apropos of nothing at all John told us a story about playing nurse to a doctor friend who was called to the bedside of a seriously ill man on a remote Fiji island. They were told he hadn't pissed in over a week. He was clearly in extreme pain. The medical system had refused to evacuate him. "He's seventy two. A good innings." The doctor, with John's help, set about inserting a catheter which prompted first embarrassment and confusion and then immediate relief along with a quantity of seriously disgusting black fluid. The man recovered. I, on the other hand, over identified with the hapless patient and immediately began taking my fledgling symptoms more seriously. Now that we're both, apparently, on the up and up, I don't think we realised how much these conditions knocked us around nor how much the passage took out of us. The few other sailors we've spoken with all emphasise the long passage-recovery time. Perhaps we underestimated this as we rocked directly into re-provisioning, re-fueling, re-watering and exploring. Then there's the ugly scar along our topsides where the dinghy, safely hoisted out of the water, rested. Until it took on enough rain water to force the bow back into the sea where it bobbed gently up and down much of the night just below the fenders that were supposed to keep the dinghy gunnel away from our paint work. I pointed out this sad discovery to our neighbor, Lester. "You could always take the bung out." The bung. I had noticed this bung. I had, from time to time, wondered when I'd ever have reason to remove the bung. Now I know. What a useful device. Still, there's the scar to repair. Bugger! But that's not all. Before leaving NZ I installed two extra flexible water tanks and expanded our rainwater catching capacity to make us less dependent on water from ashore. On the fourth day of our passage I discovered ninety litres of sparkling fresh water in our bilge and, you guessed it, one of the new tanks empty. The other day I dismantled the space and removed the tank thinking I had probably failed to tighten the outlet hose properly. But no, that part was fine. It was the PVC bladder which had a 6 m split in it. How this could have happened is not apparent which is somewhat disconcerting. Today I repaired the split. Cross your fingers it holds and no others appear.
So, like I say, things haven't been going swimmingly well so far. Except that we're not ill anymore and were here which is pretty cool.