Rowan had an early start glueing and sealing in the new magnet into the windlass with help from Kruno, the Croatian skipper on Lella. All went to plan, now we just have to wait for the epoxy to go hard, at least 24 hours before we know if it has worked.
We decided to dinghy over to David’s reserve as he said he would come snorkelling with us to show us a purple anemone. Alma Feroz crew came with us and the Lella crew came in their own electric tender. It was very low tide, David’s son Charles came out (all these English names!), poor David’s asthma is too bad to snorkel so Charles showed us where to go. We had a wonderful long snorkel, we found the purple anemone with its dramatically contrasting orange clown fish, sadly Rowan has got water in his Go Pro, so no pics (you may be sighing with relief!). There was a lot of fish life, and definitely saw a couple of fish we have not seen before. There was some good coral, huge big soft coral heads, loads of anemones and plenty of colourful clams, including one enormous giant clam. It was a very successful snorkel.
We got back to PolePole and wondered what had happened to Lella’s tender as it had not got back after half an hour. Finally Rowan went back out to see if they were ok, they had used up most of their battery getting to the snorkel site, and now had to crawl back. We are beginning to see the downside of total electric boats!
Chief John’s son and friend came and scrubbed the boat’s bottom, which was a great job done. I did a mountain of laundry as we leave tomorrow for a day sail to our next destination. Chief john arrived at dusk with the most incredible flower arrangement as a departure gift. He is very talented, and obviously loves his flowers. He had plucked frangipani flowers and re threaded them onto stripped bamboo leaves so they looked like sprays of flowers, both a pink and white one, what an effort. He arranged them beautifully in a bamboo vase he made, he had orchid sprays, rock roses, and beautiful foliage, a real art. He had made the arrangement into a boat shape with a mast, all out of bamboo, and filled the base with delicate hibiscus flowers. This likeable, rogue looking character should be a florist, I was so impressed! We gave him a farewell present of a rip off Leatherman, he said it would become his new gardening tool. They can’t get phone signal here so Rowan set up a guest wifi to our stinky which he could use from the land, plus we charged up his phone which did take most of the day. I think he was chuffed. No matter what, each boat got a farewell flower arrangement. I’m sure rather camp Anthony on Lella would have loved the flowers, not sure that macho Kruno the skipper would have thought! It has been lovely here we will be sad to leave.
Kids trying to sell us some weird nuts, it’s great they trade and don’t expect something for nothing. We gave them choc biscuits, we are running out of books and crayons
Chief John with our farewell flower arrangement
Truly spectacular, the white and pink frangipanis are individually threaded onto a cut bamboo leaf, the smell was so evocative.
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