Rowan is really progressing with his wing foiling, getting up and staying up much longer, he reckons he went 4 miles today. Just not enough wind today to get the foil out of the water, which is why you see him pumping the wing on the video. He came back absolutely exhausted, but very happy to have done some serious exercise.
Adrian the instructor invited us to join him and friends for a beach BBQ at sunset, which was kind. Rowan shared his lesson with a South African couple, he grew up in Umtata, and they got married and lived in Durban, had two kids and then immigrated to Brisbane, Australia They are doing a big sail from the East coast of America where they bought the boat, back to Australia, their kids are now 15 and 13. They said they just have to follow other boats with kids, it is all about socialising. I made a bit of a boob by asking if they were coming to the BBQ because we could catch up there. Clearly they hadn’t been invited which was a little awkward, so Adrian invited them but they never came.
The only other non French speaking person was an American woman who is an ex International political student who travels the world telling stories (her words) and photographing environments that need publicity. She has done 8 weeks in Polynesia on a coral research assignment which sounded very interesting. Trying to highlight the issues of overfishing. She was in Peru filming the destruction of the jungle by the loggers. Earlier this year she had been in a refugee camp in Uganda on the Sudanese border filming an organisation called African Women Rising, I will quote from her instagram as it is fascinating, a whole new approach away from handout aid. “….. I can truly say I have never worked with a program where everyone from participants to staff told me that the program had transformed their life. From permagardens to micro finance to adult literacy, to girls education, the programming may sound familiar, but the end goal is quite radical. The education ensures food security and financial stability for their programs participants completely flipping the outdated aid paradigm on its head. Now the largests employer in Northern Uganda, they employ many former participants who have lived the work they are doing. I had the opportunity to spend multiple days inside the Palabek Refugee Settlement where as the World Food Program is ending, they have launched a large scale regenerative agriculture training centre to train and feed 1000’s”. Really fascinating lady!
One french lady could speak English and they have sailed against the Trade winds from New Caledonia to here in a tiny boat with a young daughter. She is French but went to work in New Caledonia as a waste water engineer! Her husband is also French, an Alpinist who trained the French Alpine climbing team, he went to New Caledonia to build a climbing wall there. They met and after 7 years working there had a baby, got married and decided to sail to French Polynesia. Very gutsy and incredibly hard work going against the wind. We were the youngest by quite a stretch and felt we couldn’t monopolise the two English speakers so we did not stay too long. Anyway we are both ready for bed by 9:30, it’s exhausting all this sun!
Amazing rays from the sunset
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