Shortly after we secured Van Diemen to the marina dock labeled "Visitors" yesterday, a very attractive woman who worked for the marina walked down the pier and told us that we needed to leave because another boat was expected shortly. "Are they visitors?", we asked her.
"Oui, Messieurs", she answered.
"But we are visitors too," we pleaded, "and we were here first." She would not be swayed. The other visitors apparently had some pull, so we cast off and powered across the harbor to the anchorage. We dropped the hook on the fringes of a mix of visiting, local, and what looked like derelict boats to await the arrival of the quarantine officer. Three hours later a dinghy from another cruising boat delivered the officer who was moving through the anchorage inspecting the day's arrivals.
We've been allowed to keep prohibited food items in the other countries we've visited because the food was going to be consumed on the boat. This quarantine officer was a bit more of a stickler, and he took our lamb sausages, three Fijian steaks, some celery, and a big bag of chicken. Zappa and Marie brought some vacuum packed prime Australian fillets with them when they joined the boat, and I suspect there would have been a fight if the officer had insisted on confiscating them, but since the meat was Australian he let us keep it. He also let us keep our ham and eggs, but only if we ate it all right away, so we had the world's largest omelet for lunch. Once again we weren't hungry on Van Diemen.
After our friend from quarantine departed we took down the yellow "Q" flag, all piled into the dinghy, and went ashore. Our mission was to find WIFI, a place to watch the Australian Rules football season championship game, and get a beer. A bar that fit the bill was right there next to the dinghy dock, but that was too easy to be the right answer. We needed to explore and see if there wasn't some place better. First we hiked down town where we found free WIFI advertised on lamp posts. It was indeed free and pretty fast too. We all caught up on our email and I got in a Whatsapp video chat with Lori. Asking around, we were told that a good bar to watch the football game would be the Fiesta Cafe "just over the hill".
We wisely decided to travel via taxi, and split up into two vehicles to get there. "Just over the hill" ended up being a couple of miles away, and when we arrived we found The Fiesta just closing for the day (it was Saturday). We had released the first taxi before figuring out that the bar was closed but held the second taxi to send half of the group back to the marina. Michael, Marie, and I started walking back hoping to flag down a taxi on the way. Of course, there were no taxis to be found out here in the boonies. About half way back we found a citizen sitting on a bench who helped us catch a bus back to town. We arrived back at the marina about an hour behind the first group. We found them in the marina bar drinking beer and watching the game. The game, beer, and food were all good so we stayed there for dinner finally returning to Van Diemen at 8PM. A second bottle of wine was consumed aboard along with a tutorial card game of "May I", a version of gin rummy.
This morning at sunrise we were awoken by a man shouting from a power boat along side, "Bonjour Messieurs! A ship, she is coming. You must move!" We scrambled to get the engine on, hoist the anchor, and pick up a vacant mooring out of the fairway just before a 600+ foot cruise liner entered the harbor. Hopefully we can either hang on this mooring or get a slip in the harbor until we clear customs and immigration first thing on Monday morning.
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