Hi all,

So 1 week of repairs down and we are looking so good. We are now watertight which is great as the rain started today. Hopefully it will clear over night and Al can keep going.

We are keeping ourselves really busy and lots of jobs are getting ticked off the list that we would have wanted and needed to do in Oz so at least it's not wasted time. We have a newly painted anchor chain locker and by the end of the week all the winches will be serviced.

 On Wednesday we met a friend of a friend of Mike's (Celine and Steve who live in Dubai), Jean-Yves. JY lives here in Noumea and we met him for a happy hour beer at the yacht club. It is a crazy small world as JY studied architecture at Aberdeen University for 1 year and had a lovely story to tell me about a great friend of our family's called Robin Webster who was the director of the school at the time.  

 So JY has been nothing but a knight in shining armour. He invited us for a great dinner at his apartment on Saturday and yesterday took us exploring into the southern mountains with his son Justin (7 yrs old). Even though it was bucketing with rain and I felt like I was driving through the Scottish highlands, it was still really beautiful and so great to get away from the boat. We even mananged to picnic (French style... Tuna Sushimi, brie and a very nice botle of  Cloudy Bay White (Thanks Gav & AK)) at Lac de Yate without getting too wet!

As a sundowner Jean-Yves suggested we visit the local Cava bar! I think we were both pleased to have left the Cava bars behind or so we thought.... This cava bar is in a random field on military ground not far from where the boat is moored at the moment. It is on top of a hill so great place to watch the sunset but unfortunately they only serve Cava.