Hi to all my friends and family out there
It has been a very long time since I last posted but the new era has started and that means changes are happening and its time to start sharing my adventures again
You all know I sold galileo and decided to come and see if it was worth salvaging Opela in the Marquises islands where she had been standing on the hard for almost three years. Well in September the French allowed me a one year visa to come back and look at her to make the decision whether I should walk away and abandon her or get her back into sailing condition
My journey began in Grenada just after I had sold Galileo I was told I could get my hernia operation done and so I moved off the boat and handed it to the new owner and booked into Cool Runnings so I could recover from the operation
The op went well and when I woke my good friend Jock was waiting outside the hospital to help me home and support me which I wasn't expecting but was a really pleasant surprise. I rested the first night and in the morning had breakfast and jock came around to offer me support again as did so again every day until I was declared healthy by the hospital
I had cooked my stews and had 18 days of food prepared so I wouldn't have to be slaving in the kitchen while every one else was having happy hours
Nurses said I should not walk but I didn't have a car so had to walk to the clinic to change my dressings and they were horrified but just told me to go slowly and if I could walk to the clinic it meant I could also walk to happy hour at one love. So I did .
Now to explain, Happy hour is at 5 to 6 pm most days and the restaurant sells 3 beers for 12 ec dollars and I and a few of my friends meet and solve all the worlds problems over 3 beer each and then at the end we all go home to our boats happy to have had a great time with friends
While I was recovering I applied for a visa to enter French Polynesia and was given an appointment in St Lucia so as soon as I could I flew to Castries and attended the appointment
They said it would take four weeks to process so I asked if I could go visit Nicholas while I waited and they were very happy with that plan and next day I was on my way to UK
After five weeks I got an email telling me I could collect the Visa so I flew back to St Lucia and collected it
Well then I booked my flight to Tahiti and onto Hiva Oa which came out to spending 4 days in different airports to get here
I got the keys and Vincent said I could sleep on the boat and that's when the nightmare began
Its really hard to describe in words what I found and the photos I am putting in here, just don't do justice to my shock when I went inside the boat It was disgusting
Needless to say I went quickly back to the office of the yard and asked if they could find me a backpackers of some sort but there is none on the island and town is three kilometres away as well so Vincent helped me to get into an 80usd per day BnB to stay at until I felt I might be able to move into the boat.
First morning I came back and brought cleaning equipment and started scrubbing
By the end of the day I was exhausted and I saw how little progress I had made, It was nothing, so I went back to the store to look for stronger chemicals and found the ultimate weapon called EXIT MOULD and started again and wow it was amazing stuff
long story kept short two weeks later I was able to move onto the boat with the reasonable certainty that I wouldn't die overnight and it was a relief because the bungalow had slatted floors and the roaches the size of rats were visiting to see if there was a human meal on offer because they had gotten so used to me they thought I was a friend
It took another week of cleaning before I was OK but the other things were that the wood laminates were coming apart because someone had turned to automatic bilge pump off and rain had dripped into every spot possible and wrecked all the wooden finishes
After doing as much as I could and I am still doing it I thought I should look at a few more things so the stove was essential so I managed to get one plate working (coffee in the mornings was essential)
The gas cylinders were jammed so I had to fix them as well but I made it.
The fridge was so rusted it literally fell apart in my hands a s I looked at it so first order was placed one new fridge compressor and that came three weeks later and Viri the yard fridge guy installed it for me
Until then I was using one long life milk every second day or it went sour but breakfast cereal and coffee made the perfect balance
Once I had a fridge and clean place I was styling
I got stuck in at 5 am each morning and went through every cupboard and locker in the boat and threw everything I hadn't used for 5 years away and cleaned rusted tools and all those things and then repacked the lockers
I must have cleared at least a ton of clutter I was carrying around for 10 years and knew it was there but never used or needed it. It was amazing and the church and people in the yard loved all the free stuff they were getting
I also went through the boxes the yard had packed which were two 2 cubic meter boxes that John sergel had given them and were filled from opela's lockers and threw and gave away most of the contents
Then came a potential delivery and while I waited for information Christmas came closer so I decided to go to UK for Christmas and enjoy the time with family
Getting to UK was an issue because my B1/B2 visa had expired and USA said there was no way they would let me transit through any of their airports so I had to book an epic journey to eventually get there. That meant flying from hiva oa to Tahiti to Fiji to Sydney then onto Doha and finally to London and bus to Bristol and Weston super Mare taking a total of 5 days
Turned out that was a really good decision because I love spending time with Nicholas Kristel and the grand children.
Max and I could have adventures together and visit the library the crystal shop and do all sorts of fun things
Time passed very quickly and after Max birthday at the end of January I booked my flight back and flew for 53 hours to get back again and realised I had in the time I had left Grenada until the time I got back to Opela I had flown all the way around the world by plans and stopped in 10 countries doing that.
During my time with Nicholas and family I had made the decision to carry on and get Opela out of French Polynesia so I bought loads of gadgets and goodies to tell Mrs Opela I was really sorry for abandoning her and was going to buy her forgiveness
I had 2 23kg bags of things to make my job easier and to get Opela working again so I put them on the boat and that brings me to the beginning of my next journal about the repairs
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