Organising Parts

Hi everyone,
Thanks to everyone for the comments on yesterday's blog. We had a busy day today. We started by going ashore to meet Bruce who recommended how best to get goods into East Timor. Bruce runs the Beachside Hotel (mailto:beachsidehoteldili@gmail.com) here in Dili and was involved with the rally. Next we drained the engine's coolant and removing the fresh water pump. We then took the clearly damaged pump ashore to A1 Services where Leigh had a look at it and declared it unrepairable. Evidently pressing the shaft out always damages the casing. Yanmar's workshop manual says to always replace the full assembly. Leigh gave us further information on importing goods rapidly.

The next job was to obtain SIMs for our iPhones. We hadn't bothered previously but now needed a phone to arrange the spare parts from Australia. A SIM for an iPhone costs US$10 here and took about 30 minutes to buy, fit and test at the Timor Telecom office. Take your passport! With US$20 credit added we suddenly had voice and data communications! A combination of phone calls and emails resulted in Darwin Shipstores ordering the required parts from Sydney and SDV in Darwin being prepped to transport the package by air to Dili, through customs and to their office (only 200m) from the beach. With luck the parts will arrive in Darwin tomorrow morning, but if not they won't get there until early next week due to the public holiday in Darwin.

We've booked into a the Dili Beach Hotel (US55/night) for Thursday and Friday nights. We might as well enjoy our enforced stay in Dili so being ashore for the first time since early May will be fun. We also hope to do one or two day tours into the hills around Dili.

We've informed Sail Indonesia of our delay in Dili. There's a chance we may make it to Saumlaki before they all depart, but if not we can clear in ourselves without them. We have all our paperwork aboard.