Chores...Chores...Chores

How many times have we said it? Cruising is repairing your boat (and doing chores) in exotic places.  All of our ports of call while crossing the Indian Ocean have qualified as exotic and of course, we had lots of chores to accomplish in all of them. The to-do list was long when we arrived at each port, but this last passage has knocked it through the roof. We broke out a new notebook to record the to-do's and make lists of required purchases. They'll be no time for lazing around in a hammock while we're in Durban, that's for sure.

We've not left the marina since our check-in excursion the other day. Our noses have been to the grindstone. David will regale you in future posts about his progress and challenges, but suffice it to say, he won't be bored from lack of things to do here. We got the foresails down and stowed and he's already servicing the furlers.  I'm tackling the stainless at the moment, which is in an incredibly ugly state.

We were making good progress when a single-hander friend asked if we could help him move his boat to a berth. Sure!  We dinghied out with him to the anchorage and helped with lines as he adeptly maneuvered his catamaran into a rather tight spot. We headed back to Cups to resume our work.

Lots of folks stopped by to chat and then came a dockhand to tell us that the owner of our berth had unexpectedly returned and we needed to move as quickly as possible. Sigh! We were all tied up nicely, powered up and now we had to move. By the time we walked over to the other jetty to check out the new berth, walked back, got disconnected and off the dock, the wind had piped up. We made the move and got all situated again, but we lost two hours total before we were back to work again. Whole new neighborhood; lots of new neighbors. Not much accomplished. The views of downtown are good though.

We ended the evening by meeting up with friends on two Aussie cruising boats, Ocean Wanderer and Mi Corazon, who had just made the same passage as we had. We commiserated and regaled ourselves with sailor's tales over dinner. It's always nice to know that we're not the only ones who have gear failures at sea and crappy weather.