Be The Jam

Position: Victoria Port - Mahé. Seychelles .

S 04°38.99'

E 055°29.60'

Sat ‘right now’; at the Seychelles Yacht Club. Had some lunch and I'm waiting for Rupert to come back from town. We are here to meet the sail maker, to hand over our sails to be repaired. Found out this morning that the engine has had water in it, via the exhaust pipe, meaning it's now seized. Conclusion; the engine will have to be removed, overhauled and put back!! This means a delay of over a week. I went to immigration this morning and got our visa's extended till the end of the month, just in case. Well the engine is the final straw in a long line of breakage's and things going wrong; our luck has to change soon. What makes things worse is that the Seychelles is very expensive. It seems the yacht club is subsidised in some way, it is the cheapest place to eat, drink and generally be, this makes for a very boring stay. We were hoping to get the engine fixed today, thinking it was something minor, and then drop of the sails and nip of to a nearby island for a few days, then come back, pick up the sails and disappear of towards the Red Sea . Well that's gone out of the window for now till we can assess the full extent of the damage to the engine.

1400 hrs

Just had lunch. This place is worse than I thought. The Seychelles government impose a 250% tax on new vehicles coming into the country, and you are not allowed to import second hand cars. Feel sorry for the people living here, they do seem a little subdued. Beginning to understand the vibe here, keep picking up little snippets of info here and there, basically this island is run similar to a Marxist society, more on this later.