There were more noisy people outside overnight, but not as bad as last night, so we managed to get some reasonable sleep. When we woke it was sunny and on the way to a hot day. So I used the relative cool of the morning to do a few jobs around the boat, like filling the water tank, siliconing the seal around the drain in the shower, and cleaning the smelly weed that had accumulated from upstream between the boat and the mooring pontoon.

In the mid-morning we got a visit from a Japanese lady who lives with her husband on another Piper Barge in port, Karanja. She speaks little French and faltering English, while he speaks no French or English. So they have relatively little interaction with other boaters or with locals in the towns they visit. We struck up a conversation with them yesterday, partly because we knew the previous owners of their boat (Verne and Roy). Today she visited us with some gifts, to thank us for interacting woth them. We appreciated their action, and realised how brave they were, navigating though a foreign country with so little interaction.

During the day, I received several responses from other Piper owners (including the boat builder Simon Piper) to the question I posted yesterday about our battery charging situation. No one could offer any explanation as to why our generator battery was not charged on shore power, but most of them agreed that the bowthruster batteries should be charged by shore power, and suggested I look more closely for a fuse in the battery box. During this further examination, I found an inline fuse (that was hidden from sight, unless you did a little bit of gymnastics to get your head right into the battery box). I then used my iPhone to take a few photos and discovered that this fuse was indeed blown, and was the cause of the non-charging of the batteries when connected to shore power (as I confirmed by bypassing the fuse and connecting the batteries directly to the transformed output of the shore power). Now all I have to do is find somewhere to find a replacement for this industrial-strength fuse.

Later in the day, I watched Australia's first game in the Rugby World Cup when they defeated Georgia 35-15. While this was a good win, it must be remembered that Georgia is hardly a major power in World Rugby. Time will tell how the Wallabies fare in later games against more highly ranked teams like Wales and Fiji.

We waited for the heat of the day to dissipate a little, before we headed into town to make a restaurant booking for next Wednesday, when our friends from the USA arrive. Unfortunately, the restaurant we were thinking about told us that they would be closing for the season tomorrow, with just the bar being open on Wednesday. So we ended up walking around lost of restaurant areas in town looking for a replacement - unsuccessfully.  As it was getting late in the eveing, we walked home around 2300h, and will look again tomorrow.