"I'm certainly not having a solitary life... quite the opposite! While anchored Thursday 26th in Hakahetau Bay, Ua Pou, I was invited over to "Magnum" for a drink & meal by Uwe (who rowed over to collect me!) and Anne (& little daughter Kara) with crew Maxim (who rowed me back!) and Nicky - a very pleasant evening..! Then on arrival in Nuku Hiva on Friday, Norwegian Trond and wife Leslie on "Coconuts" came by with children Camilla and Colin. Saturday morning, Steve & Susan from "Surprise" came by
to invite me for a meal on Sunday evening... and later that day, Greg ("Seven Thunders") invited me out with "Magnum" for a meal on the terrace at the local 'posh' resort hotel high up overlooking the bay that evening. My social diary gets very full!!
Today (Sunday) was spent onboard using the Wi-Fi Internet access here, catching up with emails and updates to my website - time-consuming... I did also find time to look at the back connections to my SSB radio - found a rather loose connection and cleaned up the very slightly corroded metal parts... hoping it might help resolve my problem. I still need to take some woodwork to bits to access more connections from my radio to the ATU (tomorrow first thing!) to see if they are good or need attention
also. Perhaps then I'll try to connect in to Sailmail/Winlink to see if I can connect any better than before. If there's no improvement, that means it's almost certainly an internal radio problem - and Papeete in Tahiti may possibly have someone familiar with dealing with Icom radio problems. If radio transmission doesn't improve, I'll have to wait until Cairns, Australia, in July to (hopefully) get it dealt with ...& suffer communication problems in the meantime. Fortunately, having InmarsatC
(reliable satellite system) and Iridium, means I'm not totally out of touch despite radio problems. And even my English cellphone works here close to the islands!
I still have several other jobs outstanding, but having a bad sore throat and cold (which explains my feeling so very tired on Friday when I got here) have made me disinclined to over-exert myself this weekend. Manana!!"