What a beautiful night again to be at sea, except the wind has died away to 5 knots, so we are motoring along merrily at 6.5knots. It's great to sit on the aft end of the boat, and gaze at the millions of stars glittering up there, just wonderful. One motor launch passed within 20 meters of us, that's not funny in this area as these people are worse than the Irish for drink, and most traffic accidents here are drink related.
06.00hrs We were abeam " Huahine" ( Wah he ne ).15 years ago, Aileen and the skipper chartered a yacht here from the " Moorings" yacht charter co. and sailed all these Islands, so it will be interesting to see what has changed, if anything! It was the most expensive place we ever visited at that stage, and that has not changed.
09.30hrs We entered the Uturoa Pass and made our way inside the lagoon to the public harbor, where the regatta is being held. We were asked to moor stern onto the quay wall, so we had to reverse into the quay and pick up a mooring buoy on our way. This was easy enough, except the mooring lines were not long enough to let us reach the quay wall, so we had to add our own lines to make enough length, now that all became difficult and with just 2 of us on board, even more tricky, however, an hour later we were secured to the quay, happy out.......but exhausted.
We met lots of others ashore from the World ARC, and after some scouting around, we had a chinese lunch on the quay wall. Yum, yum! We were joined by Jimmy and Bill, who had a few beers, later we returned to the boat first, and then registered for the regatta and paid our fees, 48,000xfp (€400) and that included dinner for the 4 on board for 3 nights. We have a loan of the two lads from Ronja for the event.
Later in the afternoon, the wind got up and it rained cats and dogs, which happened again one night 15 years ago and the dinghy sank as it filled completely with rain water. The rain continued on and off for the entire night...so we just closed all windows, hatches, and washboards, and turned on the generator with the a/c.
Aileen is enjoying looking after young Jamie in Dublin, while Leah & Johnny have a break for a few hours. Jamie, is suffering from a dose of tonsillitis, which is not unusual for Asian kids living in Ireland. Skipper had a long nap, even before Donal could make it to his bunk for the usual mid afternoon siesta. Whacked ... were getting old or is it we are old...? Anyway, it doesn't matter, because we think we are still youngfellows!
Late afternoon, we used the washing machine to wash and dry some clothes, a great bit of kit... thanks to Aileen for insisting on having it installed in Lagos, Portugal.
Fats did a pork chop dinner, yeah, Ok...
We stayed on board after dinner, as it was rain outside and we were not up to getting wet again.
We discussed our friends and foe again, laughed and cursed at some and eventually went to the scratchers.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
That's it for today,
Stephen Hyde (Skipper)