Aroha is really clean now.
Early this morning we took her thru the Indian Ocean version of a car wash-
a tropical squall. This thirty minute blast of wind (up to about 32 knots)
and rain (lots) (no really, lots!) left her topsides squeaky clean. It's
the first squall (I'm sure of many...) that I've been in, so once we'd got
the sails away, donned foul weather gear (the Musto gear's great- highly
recommend it) and secured loose objects (including ourselves), it was quite
interesting to have a look around. The rain was intense, but quite warm.
The strangest thing though was the state of the ocean. Just before the
squall hit, it was fairly bumpy, as it was almost immediately afterwards.
During the downpour the sea surface went quite flat with a gentle rolling
surface. Apparently it's to do with the pressure of the rain flattening the
waves.
Earlier in the trip, a leaky freshwater pipe put about fifty litres of our
fresh water supplies in the bilge. That accounted for about 15 percent of
our fresh water capacity. The leak itself was quite easy to fix, and the
water sloshing around was dully removed by sponge after it had cleaned every
corner of the bilge.
And just to make this a trilogy of events, a day or two back a litre of
shower gel spilt itself over the floor of the shower. It still smells like
'Revitalizing Mandarin' in there.
The result of these events is that now Aroha is cleaner than she's ever
been. However the limited remaining water (and shower gel!) have resulted
in three blokes who are far from the cleanest they've ever been!
We are due to arrive in the Maldives tomorrow morning. I'm not sure if they're
ready for us...
