Getting into the detail of the thing

This afternoon I thought I should read something about our destination. Perhaps a little late in the piece, I admit. I've been distracted by bread, but a solid working knowledge of flour, salt, yeast and water can take a person only so far at sea. As for brushing up my French, well, I need to concentrate more on the task at hand. As I ran my eyes down the French/English "mini-dictionary" in the back of the cruising guide to New Caledonia my foolish pride in having read and enjoyed Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog in French collapsed. The deep philosophical musings of a hyper-intelligent Parisian concierge don't throw up vocabulary like tide tables,  mooring, breakwater, crew, harbour master's office, quick flashing light etc., the sort that could help us out of a tight spot in Noumea.

Alex and I had spent the morning, a sublimely warm one, drinking coffee in the garden with new friends John and Shauna. “Are all your friends from now on going to be sailors?” I was asked yesterday by one of the Tribe. Perhaps. It's an interesting thought. John and Shauna are planning to leave Sydney in mid-May, like us. Unlike us, they’re still working their day jobs, he as a doctor and she as a nurse. This will be their third consecutive season cruising around New Caledonia and Vanuatu.  They walked in our front door, carrying boxes of extravagant pastries, but pulled up short at the sight of the solar panels. For several minutes, they lingered with Alex in the hallway, discussing and admiring the panels' fine and fulsome capacity. Shauna even got down on her haunches to inspect the connecting leads. It was that which pushed me towards the cruising guide when they'd gone. Seeing Shauna's involvement. I felt a twinge of shame that I hadn’t yet got past seeing the solar panels as a hallway traffic obstacle. Where was my cruising spirit?

Amidst all the serious stuff, Shauna and John offered this little gem of advice. A rubber plunger, the sort used to unblock drains, pushed up and down in a bucket of warm suds works well as a laundry agitator. Clever, huh?  They also gave us great tips about what we might have on board to trade for fresh food in Vanuatu, outside Port Vila.  I’ve traveled plenty, but until now I hadn't registered that money doesn't always talk. (Alex has told me how he and Jan smoothed the path of their Combi with gifts of cheap cosmetics, cigarettes and so on when they drove across Asia in the early 70s . But if the past is a foreign country, it's all the more so when it pertains to your partner's previous relationship.) I got out pen and paper and noted down Shauna and John's suggestions: short-grain rice, raw sugar, small fishing hooks, torch batteries, deflated soccer balls, tee-shirts, school supplies (“don’t buy those cheap coloured pencils because they don’t work”), thongs (“size 8 - they’re small people”), even cutlery. I’m onto it.

  Kukka's new stainless frame, fitted by the wizards from the west, sits sweetly under the boom. The solar panels will be mounted on top of it.