Our plan was to go diving, then into town to check out of the country, do some internet stuff such as sending blog updates, then spend the rest of the day getting the boat ready. We were going to leave the next morning for Suwarrow, an atoll in the Cook’s.

Eric awoke with a really bad cold. Diving was out. The wind in our protected anchorage was howling at 20 knots. The weather forecast for Thursday was 12 foot seas at 8 seconds intervals (for non-boaters, this means bad seas). Leaving was out. Much to our dismay, we found out that the large boat anchored between us and the wireless antenna at Bloody Mary’s blocks our signal. So, with all our plans cancelled for us, we took it easy all day.

Christi continued the fruit eating quest. For breakfast, Christi made smoothies with papaya, banana and vanilla yogurt. For lunch she made quesadillas with brie cheese, topped with papaya salsa. For an afternoon beverage she made tropical blender drinks with papaya, pineapple and ice. For dinner it was more quesadillas and papaya salsa. After dinner, she made a triple batch of papaya-pineapple muffins. They were even better than the papaya-banana muffins. She is serious about eating up all this fruit!

We have neglected to mention that the pineapple here is smaller, sweeter, more flavorful and much better than what we get at home. It is phenomenally good.

Next day”¦

Since we were not departing, we decided it was a good idea to equalize the batteries. It is battery maintenance that needs to be done once a year on our Lifeline AGM batteries. Once the batteries have been charged as normal, you put a high voltage (15.5 volts) on the batteries for a solid eight hours, which refreshes the batteries. This meant we had to stay on board all day and monitor in case there is a problem. Eric is still sick and Christi feels like she is fighting it off, so we weren’t up for a busy day out, anyway.

Christi is still on the fruit eating mission. Now it was coconut day. She checked her favorite three cookbooks and could only find one coconut recipe. Coconut brownies. She decided to make a double batch and went to work on grating the coconut, which was a lot more work than she had ever anticipated. The brownies took forever to make, but they turned out to be worth the effort. They are rich and decadent.

We also tried a new juice. In French it is called corossol, and our translation book says in English it is called soursop. We have never heard of soursop before. The juice is white. It is definitely a citrus fruit. It is sweet and tastes good. It doesn’t really taste like pineapple juice, but that is the closest we can come to describing the flavor.

Once we were finally done with the battery maintenance, we went to Bloody Mary’s for dinner. We needed to go to shore to do our internet stuff, so we figured we may as well eat. We were working on the laptop through the majority of the meal. We had the opah again and marlin. Neither of us have ever tried marlin before. The marlin is more like swordfish in texture, and we prefer the light, flaky fishes. Both were excellent quality fish.