Saturday, 12th June 2010 (Presently in "Kenutu", Vava'u, Tonga, South Pacific)
08.00hrs Every one got out of the scratchers, having had a good night sleep, actually, the boat rocked about gently all night, but caused no problems to the snoring population of "A Lady".
Another beautiful day, and for us, a LOVELY cool morning, the climate here is great, it never gets too hot, the breeze at present is light, never exceeding 10 knots from the east. This is very unusual, normally its around 20/25 knots being part of the trade winds, but this year has an "El Nino" brewing somewhere in the Pacific, so the temperature of the sea is higher than normal and this effects everything else, particularly the winds and currents.
Skipper did the blog and emails, sending a photo of Fats to his sister Ann, the photo was of him in the operating theater, looking an awful bloody mess, Fats insisted on sending it, he wanted to put it on the blog. But Skipper absolutely refused point blank on that one. It seems that the World ARC screen our blogs, and remove our colourful and flowery descriptions and replace them with such things as "jolly good", "hear, hear" and "I say" They insist that they do not upset the overall picture...... Ohh la la.
11.00hrs We left "Vava'u" and headed south to do a long trip around the bottom of the Islands and have another go at reaching the Island of "Kenutu" the one we abandoned the other day because finding our way through the coral reefs was too dangerous. We cherry picked our way up the east coast through the corals by identifying the deeper water by color only. The electronic charts were not accurate here, so navigating by eye was the only option, for this type of navigation, one has to have a bright sun, and preferably, high in the sky. At a few stages, we were showing just 1m under the keel, scary stuff, " bring up the brown trousers " going aground in this stuff would surely be the end of the lovely " A Lady " and of the Blogs. It has happened to other boats previously so, hopefully we will not join the list.....................
14.00hrs We dropped anchor in "Kenutu" an absolutely beautiful anchorage, but (always a but) the beautiful looking beaches had lots of weed in the shallow waters, so no swimming from the beaches, neither was the snorkeling very good, but the place was great. There were two other NZ boats at the anchorage when we arrived.
There were lot of birds around, including martins, and of course fruit bats. Skipper did some rope splicing, it took him a while to get into the hang of it again, it must be all of 30 years since he last did a proper splice, meanwhile, Fats had his siesta, the girls were sun bathing and tanning their hides on deck, and Scotty went to his scratcher, as he is down with a cold. Feck, this boat is like a hospital! That leaves only Aileen hale and harty, (except for her Gout and arthritis).
Later we all had a swim off the stern before our pre dinner drinks, mainly G & T's and Rum and coke for Fats, Aileen doesn't drink alcohol.
Dinner was by the girls. A beef bourgionne, with spuds on top, ohhhhhhh yum, yum... They really went to an awful amount if trouble cooking this dish, great stuff! And of course we had the dinner in the "A Lady Starlight Restaurant" (Cockpit).
That's it,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)