We’ve been doing the mundane things around town such as a small re-provision to get us to Japan, Dean needed more rope and a few things from the hardware. I had fun poking around the hardware, the items on the shelves are a bit different to ours. Guns, and handy canisters of mace and pepper spray to fit on your keyring for instance! Dogs are a bit of a problem and we met someone who carried the pepper spray in case a dog attacks her.
We also did a snorkel on a partially submerged tank out in the bay. There are three of them but they are spaced quite a way from each other, and we figured if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. Well I thought that, I am sure it wouldn’t have taken much convincing for Dean to do all three. But there was no reef to see interesting things, and there was lots of sea grass floating around getting caught in my hair.
To give you an idea where it is, you can see the top of it and the gun turret out there in the lagoon. The dark stuff in the water is sea grass.
Unfortunately my underwater camera died so we could only take a few pictures with Deans phone, that although is water proof isn’t designed as an underwater camera!
The photo above is interesting, because although the tank could go no further, it had probably fallen into a shell crater and got stuck, we xould see from this angle the gun is still pointing directly at a bunker on shore.
We had to move out of the marina for a day while they held the Wahoo Fishing competition, so we anchored near the Port. We used it as a day to work on the boat. I did some hand washing that I couldn’t do in the marina because we aren’t allowed to discharge soapy water. It also gave us an opportunity to empty our holding tank.
Dean had a few jobs to do including working on our bow thruster. It stopped again as we were leaving the marina. When he fiddled with it when it failed in Guam he wasn’t happy because he said he didn’t really do anything and it just started working again. He would rather have found a fault to fix properly.
We needed to get back into the marina by last light so had to be content to go back in without the thruster working. Thank goodness that while tight it is actually very protected from the wind and is an easy berth to make. I say thank goodness because we had an audience of people we had already met, watching. It is a popular walking track past the marina down to the point so many locals are around.
With further fiddling he finally found a loose connection on the high amperage cable. A bit hidden away so difficult to see.
You may be able to see from the photo below, how closely we need to hug the wall going in. There is reef to the other side. If you zoom in on our chart plotter you can see the narrow channel into the marina. Since it was low tide, at the most shallow point we only had 0.7m under our keel.
I mentioned in an earlier post about the casino, and some people we met said we need to ask security if we could check out the foyer but wouldn’t tell us why. I was a bit apprehensive but on our last day in Saipan we went. Oh my goodness, it was worth seeing. Two enormous dragons hang from the ceiling, and there are huge dragon eggs all over the place. I find all the gold a bit over the top but this was pretty spectacular.
Before we handed back the car we also did some final shopping. I love to look at what is for sale that we just don’t tend to have back home. I mean what do they do with all of that blood? I looked it up and apparently it is very nutritious!
And can you imagine seeing a sign like this in an Aussie supermarket? I think it means past the used by date.
What about fish heads?
And have you ever seen this much spam in one place?
But a thing I appreciate about travel is being reminded that home is pretty good. Some sailors I follow online posted about their shopping bill. Amongst other things they bought 12 x 1L bottles of milk and it cost almost AU$20. I had also brought some of the same and decided to compare prices. Mine was AU$3/bottle.
And those fish heads? Check out the prices in the photo remembering that is US$. Honestly how many fish heads would get sold in an Australian supermarket, no matter how cheap they were? No matter that they still have a lot of flesh, and highly nutritious.
So my opinion, yes prices are high at home, but there are people paying way more in other countries. And that is the beauty of travel. You always find there is worse off than yourself. And as an other example can you imagine our children’s schools being closed down because the government had run out of money? That is what happens here. Once the budget is used, the teachers don’t get paid and the schools close. So COVID was actually a saviour for them. They were just at that point, but the US injected billions of dollars into the islands, in a similar manner in which Australia did back home, and although the schools closed for a time- no home schooling here- then some of that money went towards education, and they were able to reopen.
Wow, well we nearly left Saipan but were delayed by paperwork. I will fill you in on our clearing out of Saipan and into Japan later.
Run to Paradise 