We awoke to gray skies, on again off again rain, and winds screaming at 10 27 knots. But, as promised, the water was relatively calm. It is probably rocky in some other anchorages, and rough in the ocean. Needless to say, it was a lazy day. We spent the majority of the day reading and playing “name that tune”. There are some hilarious quotes from the game, including “This is that girl band, Hansen!” and “I don’t recognize this song. Oh wait”¦ wasn’t this our first dance at our wedding?” The crew of Far Niente, Eric and Gisela, had arrived in the anchorage the day before, so in the evening we went over to their boat and hung out with them.

Yesterday the sun came out. We were thrilled to see the sun after more than a week of gloomy days in a row. We went snorkeling in Point Maurell bay. The snorkeling wasn’t all that spectacular since a lot of the coral has died, but we still saw some cool stuff. There are a few pretty coral formations, and a lot of mauve coral that almost looks like antlers. There is a plant that tends to grow near the mauve coral that is light brown and fuzzy looking.

We saw a couple of fish we had never seen before, including a white fish that looks like a Chihuahua (not pictured) and a funky looking yellow and gray fish. Eric saw a cuddlefish, which is a type of squid that changes color. We saw a green pincushion starfish, more bright blue starfish and some sea anemities (not pictured). There is also a picture of a trumpetfish and a triggerfish. The cuttlefish was really neat, it would change colors to match its background.

At one point in time, an enormously large school of small fish came right at us. The school of fish went right through us, and for a couple of minutes we were completely surrounded by thousands of fish on all sides.

We also tried a soursop (aka cherimoya or custard apple) today. We had tried the juice in French Polynesia and liked it, so when we saw the fruit in the market we bought one. It is a citrus fruit. It is white and juicy inside. Much like an orange, the peel pulls off without a knife, you can pull it apart in sections, and it has seeds imbedded in the meat, but unlike an orange, the meat is soft and custard-like in texture. It is both sweet and tangy, tasting kind of like a persimmon, kind of like a pineapple with a hint of banana. Christi and Adrienne like it a lot. Eric doesn’t really like it

This morning we headed back to Neiafu to do our usual “get ready to go” routine. Of course, there is absolutely no frozen microwave food in the grocery stores, but we are happy to report that a restaurant called “The Crows Nest” does catering and provisioning, so we ordered a pan of lasagna and a family size chicken pot pie and meat pie. We took the food back to Kosmos and cut them into individual servings and froze them. The food at “The Crows Nest” is really good, and we are thrilled about having good, hearty food on the passage to Fiji. Before anyone criticizes Christi for not cooking herself instead of buying ready made, it is important to know that many of the ingredients needed to make all those dishes are not readily available in the markets. After a few more errands in town, Adrienne and Christi went to war with Kosmos’ underwater ecosystem. Adrienne did the waterline while Christi did the bottom. Adrienne will attest that we are not exaggerating when we talk about how lush and thick the grass is, and how much scrubbing it takes to remove the grass. The bottom has a new red algae type plant growing on it that takes a little extra scrubbing.

Much to our disappointment, we found out that shortly after we left, a mother and baby whale swam into Pt. Maurell bay and hung out in the bay for a while. The people that happened to be in the anchorage swam with them and the whales didn’t run off. Stories like that are pretty common in the anchorages around Vava’u. The magic of Vava’u is getting out to the isolated areas. We had really hoped we could spend a lot of time kayaking around the little motus, exploring the islands and snorkeling in a variety of neat places. It was disappointing for us that the majority of our time in Vava’u the weather was uncooperative. Today the weather was finally good enough to go kayaking, but it is time to go. We wish we had a few more days to spend in Vava’u. Sadly, we are leaving without getting to experience the best of what Vava’u has to offer.