Airblowing ladies

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sun 4 Aug 2013 08:35
As mentioned before we are berthed in the middle of Papete. This means that we can follow the city life from our cockpit.
On one side we can have one of the most expensive yachts (and most ugly) designed by Philippe Stark (what does he know about boats? asked Ellinor)
On the other side we have a street life where there is an extensive amount of traffic.
Every morning two ladies that are about the same height as they are wide clean the pavement at the waterfront. Their tools are gasoline driven blowing machines.
You might have seen them, it is a two stroke engine strapped to their back, one each. Then they have a big tube that blows air. The idea is that you can blow leaves and other stuff away from where they are to... what?
Well in their case it does not seem to matter, they blow things around, one is walking behind the other. Probably what we see, is a first blower and a second blower, and I presume the first blower must be extremely dirty after her working pass...
Well they blow at everything, dogs, tourists, runners, bikers, anything that comes in their way they just blow on. Now Im looking forward to see them every morning. But I believe they are off on sundays. On monday I will try to be ready for them and take some pictures. Hope it works.
Other than that we are quite productive. The entire deck is now fixed, every spring between the teak is filled now. Did the last on aft deck as we are tied to land. When at anchor I cannot get it done since everybody runs on the aft deck all the time.
Today I finished a 200 hour service on the Volvo Penta. Feels extremely good do be done. I'm changing in personality, I think.I feel big satisfaction from pulling the oil stick up and see clear oil on it. I love the look of new filters and I just adore the sound of the turbo kicking in when I pull the throttle in the engine room. Not to speak about the sound of waterspouts flashing through and cooling the engine. Then I get a kick of feeling the machine body getting close to 80 degrees. It is such a satisfaction to see the fan belts vibrate when they have the perfect tension rotating bringing power to pumps and alternators. Do you feel the same? It is sad that a boat does not have any tires to kick at...

Ellinor is stocking up on food (yes very genus driven).
The long list of things we needed has become shorter every day as we realize that prices here are to high. We have learned that on Cook islands prices are supposed to be more reasonable.
Ellinor is growing sprouts from different kinds of beans, lentils etc. Very successful. We are also eating homemade muesli, a recipe that we got from Winddancer. It is the best muesli we ever had!
Monday we will most probably leave and head to a island I cannot remember the name, but it takes only 2-3 hours to get there...