Raft, rain and recharge

We ran out of data so have been cut off from the world for a few days until we could make it to the mainland but progress has been steady without access to the internet. By the way, it costs NZ$44 for 8GB of data.

Raft

We built the raft on Tuesday and did a first test tow out to Tapana with some timber for the lock-up. The picture below is the dinghy and raft stranded by a low king tide, awaiting some water to make it to the beach. The raft has the streamlining of a brick and it took us about an hour to tow it out to the island. The boat takes about 15 minutes to make the trip unladen so one hour with the raft is OK I guess, but we would be in trouble if the wind or sea came up.

Rain

You want rain? We got rain! The rain neatly filled our 200 litre drum and we got a few 20 litre buckets filled off the tent roof too. We were able to do both washing AND have a shower yesterday. We're still running it through the filter for drinking but it's delicious.

The tent largely stood up to the rain with just a few minor leaks that we will address with seam-seal when things dry out.

Recharge

We also took a couple of the solar batteries and the generator out to the island and tonight we will have our first electric light that isn't a dim led lantern. I've even got to use the laptop again so no more fiddling with a phone as a computer.

Nevertheless, even with power, nothing beats this technology:

Other than that, we've been continuing to clear trees to build the lock-up. When you cut a tree down the vines from neighbouring trees that can be up to 6 inches thick hold it up and the tree just leans over a bit. It's not until you chop down several trees all holding each other up that they come crashing down in an unpredictable massive heap. Clearing the tangled mess of vines and branches away is very time consuming.