Tonga Chores, Visitors and Jinxes

Eric spent the entire day yesterday doing boat chores. He changed the pre-filter on the water maker and cleaned the sea strainer, and changed the generator impellor. He also did some good stuff like secure the toaster oven and dish drainer so they don’t go flying when we get hit by a side wave, re-running wires so we could move some of the computer gear to better locations, general reorganizing, and cleaning.

Yesterday was the last day of SCUBA class for Christi. She took her final exam and did three dives in other parts of the harbor. The other dive sites had more life than the site on Tuesday, but were still mostly dead. There were lots more of both starfish and a couple of sea anenomoies. Christi passed the class with flying colors. After three days of being in the sun with her mask on, she has stylish mask tan lines. Continue reading

Monkey Island, Suwarrow

First thing this morning, John, the caretaker, called and asked us if we would like some fresh fish they had just caught. We said “sure” and headed over to shore. They gave us a ziplock bag containing enough fish for two dinners for us. There was tuna, rainbow fish, and something else. Much to Christi’s delight, the fish was filleted. Continue reading

Fruit, More Fruit, and Batteries

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. Continue reading

Moorea Maintenance

Tomorrow is Bastille Day, one of the biggest French holidays of the year. According to Lonely Planet, when a holiday falls on a Saturday, everything is closed the Friday before. Since (we assumed, at least) everything was closed, the plan for today was to do some boat chores, then go snorkeling.

Conditions were ideal for several chores. It is much easier to change fuel filters when the tanks are full and when you are in a calm anchorage, so Eric changed all the fuel filters aboard. Christi assisted. Continue reading