Commodore
April 11, 2023

Tuesday 11 April – resting in crystal clear blue water

What a good night’s rest, so peaceful. It was already baking hot in the morning, we got a few chores done and then went exploring in JeldiJeldi (the dinghy). We found some coral heads about a mile down the beach and saw some nice fish but a lot of dead coral. The Black Tipped Reef sharks are so curious and immediately came to check us out. We moved a little way further down and had some fantastic snorkelling, with 4 very curious sharks. One shark had a little yellow fish that was frantically swimming for ages just in front of the sharks nose, poor little thing must have been exhausted. Not sure what was going on, may have been just a game for the shark! Sadly Han forgot the goPro so no pics!

We had to be back at 2pm as Megan had a call with her Tutor and we needed to get ready for the beach bbq that Rowan had organised with the other Arc boats. We all had to take something to bbq and bring a dish, plus I made a chocolate cake for pud. The girls had put on some dried beans in the slow cooker this morning, they added loads of garlic, turmeric and ginger, so it smelt fantastic all day but sadly come 4pm they were still not edible. We frantically rustled up a coleslaw, my choc cake we decided not to sacrifice our precious breakfast eggs so substituted them with very ripe bananas from the deep freeze! Plus I had to make bread as we were out. The kitchen was like a furnace with the oven on. At 4:45 Rowan went over with Han to find a bbq spot, she dropped Rowan off and returned to pick us up as my bread was still baking. It wasn’t long before we got plaintive pleas from Rowan on the vhf he took, we could hear him but he could not hear us. He finally said if anyone could hear, the bbq was cancelled as he was being eaten alive by no seeums! Amanzi heard and went and picked him up, the bbq was relocated to PolePole. We had to do a massively quick tidy up of a very messy boat! The only non Arc boat was a Danish boat, Rowan had invited them too, they arrived with 5 people. The owners had their 17 year old daughter with them, she has taken a year out of high school to sail with them. She heads back to Denmark and school in a couple of weeks, she will live with her sister, such a mature approach to life the Scandinavians have.

There were 15 of us on board for the bbq, Rowan spent the entire time cooking on our little weber on the sugar scoop at the back. On board we had Amanzi, Dutch Mark with English wife Clair, Cepa with German Thomas and his new crew Nevil, and then Jan with Giorgio an eccentric Italian/American retired heart surgeon and his wife Jan. Jan was the Arc boat that joined us in the Marquesas from Baja California. They joined the World Arc in 2020 and got locked down in the Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia had one of the longest and most restrictive lock downs of all the countries. Jan and Giorgio finally opted to return to American, the only way they could do it was by sailing to Hawaii from the Galapagos, then across to Alaska and then down the Canadian and American coast over two years. It sounded like an amazing trip. Now they are back completing the World Arc Rally. It was a very good evening, Nevil was very pleased to catch up with the girls.