Saturday 28 February – the Crickmore’s arrive

Rowan was over to get the Crickmore’s from the dinghy dock at 9am, Finus had picked up the Crickmore’s from the airport, they were pretty impressed with his old minibus! I did not go to meet them as we knew the dinghy would be pretty full with 5 people and their luggage. The kids have grown up a lot since we last had them on the boat in the Caribbean. They have come from Australia where they have been a couple of weeks, so at least they were not jet lagged. We picked up the anchor and got going straight away and headed for the Rinka island Ranger station where we planned to do a hike tomorrow morning. The Crickmore’s came laden with boat parts, including a new motor for the loo, that they have lugged around Australia.

It was a very hot motor across to Rinka island with no wind to cool us down. We stopped off at a gorgeous white beach island to have a snorkel and cool down, there was a mooring ball we were able to pick up and use. The coral was not in great shape, but there were enough fish to impress the Crickmores and it was a wonderful way to cool down. We had lunch there and mid afternoon headed to the Ranger station which is in a well protected deep bay. There were a couple of tourist boats on the jetty when we arrived but they soon left. We got the anchor down and enjoyed the place to ourselves no other boats around. Rowan and Jonny went in to see if they could book a guide for tomorrow morning, but they were closing at 4pm and told us to come back at 7am tomorrow morning. We enjoyed an evening under the awning until a squall sent us rushing inside. It felt like a typical english BBQ – in the rain with a brolly!