Day 217, Year 5: Countdown Begins
Date: Monday, May 31, 2010
Weather: Partly Sunny with Frequent Squalls, SE Winds 10-20
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

Our Chagos experience is coming to an end and it is going to be hard to let go. Arriving in these uninhabited atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean and spending two months living amongst the beauty is just a very special experience. Mark has become a fisherman and I have time to explore the islands and look at every plant and animal that lives here. Madagascar will be a very different but equally special experience and we feel so lucky to be able to be doing what we are doing. I write these logs every day to try and capture the day to day experiences, but summarizing our experience here is much harder. It is difficult to describe the peaceful existence here in words. I have been trying to write a May letter to family and friends summarizing our time here, but I’m afraid it is going to be a June letter as my May time has run out. Maybe tomorrow.

We have gotten more good news about traveling to Madagascar. John and Sue on Susan Margaret emailed a friend who works at the Madagascar Embassy in Dubai and got an all-clear message for tourist headed to the northwest part of the country. So we are feeling confident that we can proceed. Now it is just a matter of getting all of the things done that need to be done before a passage. We will leave on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on readiness and weather, so we are either in 32 or 56 hour countdown. Whichever, tomorrow will be another busy day. I spent my day today cleaning the dinghy, making granola, making chili to put in the fridge for the passage, and repotting and planting new pots of basil and arugula. Mark has filled leaky seams in the teak deck with epoxy, glued soles back on sandals that have fallen apart, took the mattress off our bed so he could work on a variety of tasks in that underworld. He worked on finding a better way to ground our high-frequency radio, aligned our wheel to the position of the rudder, and then repacked all the things that are stored under our bed. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was a full day and we have more of the same for tomorrow. The weather was not good for fun activities today, but hopefully tomorrow the sun will come out and we can do one last snorkel and one last walk. Of course, if we do not leave on Wednesday, then we can do one more.

We have had the most unbelievable thing happening around our boat for the past two days. Small Bonito (a type of tuna) arrived here yesterday morning and they race around and under our boat all day long. They look like little rainbows flying through the water herding the thousands of tiny little fish that hang out here. The Bonito literally herd the little fish to the surface and that brings the Brown Noddy Terns who dive and catch the little fish. For the past month, we have had seven Brown Noddies living on our boat hook that we have tied to the front of the boat like a very long bowsprit. But now we have over twenty residents and they are once again roosting on our bow pulpit and leaving their nice little droppings on our deck. But until the tuna leave, the birds are not going to budge. And the whole experience is just too interesting to disrupt. So we’ll be cleaning the deck in route to Madagascar. For now, we will keep watching this fascinating fish and bird show.

Day 216, Year 5: Good News About Madagascar
Date: Sunday, May 30, 2010
Weather: Partly Cloudy, SE Winds 10-12
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

Love that email. Day before yesterday we got an email from sailing friends Nepenthe warning us of a pirate attack near Madagascar and of trouble there. There were no specifics, but this set off a series of inquiries. We emailed our son-in-law, he searched the internet and sent specifics, and then we emailed other contacts seeking additional information. Late today we heard back from Captain Tom Hastings, US Coast Guard, in the Maritime Liason Office in Bahrain. I emailed him yesterday outlining our entire sailing plan from here to Madagascar and from there to South Africa. He emailed back today saying that our outlined route is the best way for a sailing yacht to navigate the Indian Ocean at this time and did not warn us not to go that way. Late last year, he was the same person who warned us against going through the Red Sea. He outlined for us the current pirate activity in the Indian Ocean and included an article about Somali pirates hiding out near the coast of Tanzania, but basically his email indicated that we will be fine if we just stay close to the Madagascar coast. The second bit of good news didn’t come from email but by satellite phone. I had contact information on John Sheppard, owner/manager of Sakatia Towers, a small hotel that welcomes yachties on a tiny island near the only town on the northwest coast of Madagascar. We had called him before to see if we could have mail sent there and today Ed and Lynne called him on their satellite phone to ask about the political situation on the northwest coast. Evidently none of the political unrest, looting, and increased theft that is happening in the center of Madagascar is happening in the area where we plan to travel, so based on those two responses our plans to sail to Madagascar are back on. We spent most of the afternoon talking with Ed and Lynne of Constance and John and Sue of Susan Margaret about changing our plans. Susan Margaret made the decision to head to Southeast Asia instead of traveling on this year and Ed and Lynne and ourselves were seriously considering heading to Mauritius, but after our gathering the phone call was made and the email came in and we went back to plan A. So until we get further information that could convince us otherwise, Madagascar, here we come.

Early this morning I was a little down about the possibility of not being able to go to Madagascar and then received our email and I got really sad. Heather sent a photo of Sam and one of Jonah as attachments and they came through on our Winlink. The photos have to be greatly reduced and only one photo to an email, but they do come through. At first I was elated to see the latest photos of these guys, but then I got incredibly sad as Jonah is not a baby anymore. He was standing in the yard with a Boston Red Sox hat looking just as cute as he could be. He was just over three months old and very much a baby the last time we saw him and it will be almost a year from now when we will see him again. Sam looked a little sad in his photo and I decided that is because he misses us. So that made me even sadder. I was still wiping the tears away when we got in the dinghy to go on a low tide reef walk. By the time we got back, I was okay, but it is so hard to be so far away. Justin and Jo, if you are reading this, please send us a photo of Ziggy. Just reduce the photo to less than 50 kb’s.

Tomorrow and Tuesday we will spend getting ready for take-off and then on Wednesday or Thursday, weathering dependent, we will start our 1500 mile trek to Madagascar. It will probably take us two weeks to get there, and “there” is the northern tip. We will then spend time working our way down to Nosy Be where we check-in and where we will meet John Sheppard at Sakatia Towers. He has been so helpful via phone, so we look forward to meeting him in person.

Day 215, Year 5: Ups and Downs of the Cruising Life
Date: Saturday, May 29, 2010
Weather: Beautiful Day, SE Winds 10 (not as high as expected)
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

The “up” today was another early morning snorkel on the bommies between the isles of Takamaka and Fouquet. Ed and Lynne went with us today and it was again just magic. And this time we got to swim with the Eagle Rays. They are so beautiful and graceful. And although the Chagos clownfish do not look just like Nemo, I have fallen in love with them and can’t get enough of hovering over the anemones and watching these little yellowish-orange fish with two bright white bands around them poke their heads out to also look at me. Once the current started running again, we left the cut and went to the south end of Fouquet to snorkel there off the camp area. I saw the world’s tiniest little butterfly fish, the largest giant clam we have seen this year, and a huge group of roving parrotfish that let me snorkel right along with them. The coral was interesting and Ed and Lynne saw some beautiful, large live cowries. So it was a beautiful morning. But before going out to snorkel we checked our email and the news there was not so good. This was the “down” of the day. We received an email yesterday from Jim and Carole of Nepenthe who have been stuck in Mayotte in the Comoros due to boat problems. When they checked out two days ago, they were told by the officials that there had been a pirate attack on a Spanish fishing boat about 70 nautical miles east of Mayotte and 90 nautical miles from Madagascar in the northern part of the Canal of Mozambique. This is further south than other attacks to date and a little too close for comfort. There is no confirmation that this was a Somali pirate attack so we are contacting officials at UKMTO (UK Maritime Trade Organization) in Dubai, MSCHOA (24-hour piracy watch but not sure what the initials stand for), and MARLO, the Maritime Liaison Office in Bahrain for US flagged vessels in this part of the world. Jed sent us all the contact information for these organizations and he also sent an update from the UK Foreign Office about the current state of political instability in Madagascar. Unfortunately the US
State Department doesn’t seem to have such information for public view. Basically, after the coup in Madagascar last year, things have continued to deteriorate and tourists have to be extremely careful. So Madagascar got two strikes this morning. We will gather more information before making a final decision on where we go next, but our hope is still to head to Madagascar. The alternative is to head south to Rodrigues, Mauritius, and Reunion and hang out there until September when we could sail north to Madagascar if things have settled down. This has always been a back-up plan, so we will just keep gathering information and make a decision on direction between now and Wednesday morning. That is our projected departure date. But at this point, everything is flexible. We will weigh the information and make a decision by Tuesday. We’ll keep you posted. And we really want to send a special thanks Jed for all the research he is doing for us. He is our connection to the internet. Thanks, Jed.

Day 214, Year 5: Simply Magic
Date: Friday, May 28, 2010
Weather: Beautiful Day, SE Winds 10-15 Going Higher
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

The last twenty-four hours have been just magical. The Full Moon Party on the beach was spectacular. Everyone brought nibbles-marinated grilled fish, Norwegian fish cakes (outstanding), fish pate (the best I have ever eaten), sushi rolls, and even pizza. We watched the Red-footed Boobies coming in to roost for the evening, vying for the best positions in the trees, gathered wood for the bonfire, talked, ate, drank, and watched the full moon rise behind the island. The nationalities represented were American, Norwegian, German, British, Australian, South African, and French. Wolfgang of Galateia played guitar and sang for us as we sat around the beach bonfire looking at that perfectly round moon rising higher and higher.

Then morning came and we got on our dive skins and headed to Takamaka in the dinghy. A full moon low tide is very low, so when we got close to the island we had to walk the dinghy to shore. Our goal was to snorkel over the coral bommies that sit right between Takamaka and Fouquet islands and our hope was that since we could almost walk out to the bommies that the current would not be so great. As we stood there deciding the best way to approach this, three tiny Fairy Terns came and hovered over us. These birds look like little white angels. I was sure one was going to land on Mark’s head, but they flitted about us and then flew away. I choose to believe that they were blessing our morning snorkel. When they flew away, we started walking out. As the water got deeper and deeper, we changed our plan. We went back and walked the dinghy over the sandbar and then motored in behind the first and second bommie in a sand patch. There was almost no current, so we anchored and went in holding onto the dinghy We could tell immediately that there was no need to hold on so we let go and enjoyed the show. We were immediately met by an Emperor Angelfish leading a parade of big fish. These were the kind of fish that looked like dinner. We then went to the first bommie and concentrated on the anemonefish. The Chagos clownfish is yellowish-orange with two white bands and we immediately found an anemone with one little baby. Then we went next door and watched another, larger one. We did tummy tucks to swim over the coral but the fish were just right there in front of us. It was an interesting mix of reef fish, some small and some very large. In addition to the normal reef fish, we saw a Peacock Hind and a Saddleback Grouper, each about two and half feet long, and schools of Trevally. The Fairy Tern blessing worked. It was the best snorkel we have had in Chagos. We only had one little problem. We were sharing the bommie with a rather large Black-tipped Reef Shark. If he had just gone by and kept going we wouldn’t have worried. But this one kept coming back, so we cut the snorkel short and got out of the water. Shark or no shark, the snorkel was just magical and we will try it again tomorrow morning.

The weather information we got this morning showed that it is going to get windier over the next three to four days, so we made the decision to go to Boddam today. It is a three mile dinghy ride and when the winds are blowing strong, it is a tough ride. We stopped by Constance on our way back to Windbird from the magical snorkel and invited them to come with us. An hour and a half later we were headed to Boddam. We stopped and picked up everyone’s recycling in this anchorage as the recycling bins here are full, we gathered onions for a cruiser in Boddam who is staying another two months and needs them, and we took a package of DVD’s from Susan Margaret to trade with Aires Tor in Boddam. We were so loaded down that we couldn’t plane on the way down, so it took a little longer than expected. We made deliveries to the boats there and Mark tried to help Brumby get their Winlink email working. We then started walking the trails on the island. It was almost five o’clock when we finished and thankfully the dinghy could plane on the way home, but the water is already getting rougher due to higher winds, so it was a bouncy ride. We read in the cockpit until the sun went down and then ate Yellowfin sushi and sashimi for dinner. Another magical experience and the perfect ending to a perfectly beautiful day.

Day 213, Year 5: BFAFM-Big Fish And Full Moon
Date: Thursday, May 27, 2010
Weather: Sunny Day, Cloudy Evening, SE Winds 8-10
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

The fish and the fishermen’s stories just get bigger and bigger. Mark’s lucky lure did it again today. Just after 8 am, Mark looked out and saw the Sooty Terns hovering over the water between us and the bommie to our south. He yelled “bird pile”–and we both jumped in the dinghy and sped over there. The fish that have been coming in here are small Bonito and you have to go fast to catch them. I couldn’t see the bommie because of the early morning lighting, even though it was a very low tide, so I just had to guess at where it was and speed around in circles. On the third pass, we got a hit and it was one of the larger of the small Bonitos. These are a pinker meat than the ones caught outside. I decided to use the whole fish to make marinated fish kabobs for the Full Moon Party tonight. So that was one success.

Closer to noon, Mark and Ed went outside the atoll to try an catch a Yellowfin or Wahoo for dinners for the next few nights. Rachel and Elizabeth of Ventana took their dinghy and followed. They had gone outside fishing the other day and caught nothing, so they wanted to watch Mark and Ed and learn how to do it. All of a sudden, Mark and Ed are the veterans. We are going to have to buy new hats for them in Madagascar as I think their head sizes have grown as a result of this new reputation. This time they returned with the biggest Yellowfin yet. It was a beauty. Wolfgang on Galateia wanted some fish to prepare sushi for tonight’s party, so now he will have Yellowfin from us and Bonito from Kea, and Constance and Windbird will have fish for dinners for the next few days. I can freeze small amounts by wedging it between the cold plate and the basket that holds things in the top of the refrigerator and put the rest in Constance’s freezer.

It is 5 pm and we are getting ready to head in to the full moon party on the beach. I’m sending the log now as I might not get home before 7:30 and that’s about the last time we have radio propagation that allows us to send a log until morning. There have been a couple of nights recently when I waited too late and had to send in the morning. So you’ll have to read about the Full Moon Party in tomorrow night’s log.

Day 212, Year 5: Chasing Chicks and Other Things
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Weather: Sunny Day, Cloudy Evening, SE Winds 12-15
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

Mark has a brother named Steve and a nephew named Jimmy. When Jimmy was about five years old, he had gone out with Steve and when he returned he was asked where they had been. He nonchalantly said, “Chasing chicks and drinking beer.” Well, we weren’t drinking beer this afternoon but I was chasing chickens again . . . and tiny little white moths with black and red dots. When we assessed what needed to be done today, there was a long list of things like polish stainless, put AwlCare on the topsides (like waxing your boat), clean the Raycor fuel filter, finish synchronizing and updating our Outlook contacts on our two computers, and on and on. I added one more thing and that was to go to the north end of Takamaka and sit in a chair and watch for a little white moth. When Mark asked which one I wanted to do, guess which one I chose. But it takes fuel to go down to the end of Takamaka and we are really trying to conserve, so going to look for an obscure moth didn’t quite make it. We compromised and worked for the morning on cleaning the Raycor fuel filter and getting through the letters R and S in the Outlook contacts list. In the afternoon I worked on photos and Mark took a mooring ball that we found on the beach and cut in half to make two hanging pots for growing more arugula and basil. THEN we went to Takamaka to get water and look for moths. I had read that the moths live in the Beach Heliotrope, a shrub, sometimes tree height, that grows abundantly on the north end of Takamaka. While walking slowly looking for the moth, what we heard clearly were chickens on the other side of the Beach Heliotrope. This stuff grows in and amongst the Scavvy or Lettuce Shrub right at the high tide line. Behind this impenetrable shrubbery are a number of different hardwood trees and those chickens were there cackling and crowing away. I am dying to see one of them, so I walked all the way to the end of the beach shrubs and crawled behind. I could hear the chickens but see nothing. I could see lots of boobies roosting above me and worried that I would be their next target. Guano covered every leaf and branch that I was crawling through. I found my way back out to the beach and started back toward the dinghy when the call of chickens got to me. I found a low break in the hedge and crawled through again. On the other side was a lovely little meadow, but again no chickens. Richard on Mr. Curley who has been here year after year says the way to see them is to break open some green coconuts and leave them in the camp in the evening. The next morning the chickens will be there. So I’ll try that next. But I was successful in sighting and photographing the little white moth (less than an inch long and wide) with black and red speckles (Ultethesia pulchelloides), so I’ll consider my day a success.

Dinner tonight is even more of an adventure. I am using most of the little tomatoes we still have from India with a squash that has kept all this time to make a Chagos rendition of ratatouille. The moon is up and almost full. Tomorrow we have our beach Full Moon party in the evening. Life here is just full of interesting things!

Day 211, Year 5: You Can’t Take It With You
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Weather: Another Mostly Sunny Day, Cloudy Evening, SE Winds 10-12
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

One week from tomorrow, give or take a day or two for weather considerations, we will be leaving Chagos and traveling the 1500 miles to Madagascar. Our Chagos permit is up on June 2, so that is our deadline. We paid 100 British pounds or $150 US per month for our permit to stay here and it has been worth every penny. This morning when we checked our email we received a message from our son Justin. He told us about the environmental disaster happening in the Gulf of Mexico. We get no news out here and we had not heard about this. It made us so very sad to think of the damage that much crude oil can do to our oceans and it made me value the pristine nature of Chagos even more. So we rowed our dinghy to the shore closest to Windbird to conserve fuel and Mark carried the bag with our cans and bottles half the length of the island to the Fouquet camp where the recycling bins are located. I followed along slowly doing a tree and shrub “inspection.” I was amazed to find four of the six most prevalent Chagos hardwoods growing right there on the beach. I can’t take them with me, but I took more photos and collected leaves and blossoms to dry and sketch. In those trees we saw lots of Red-footed boobies just hanging out and four beautiful little fairy terns put on a show for me. These small terns are so very white with tiny almond-shaped black eyes. They appear to be mating and while I was taking photos of a tree with orange blossoms, I heard quite a commotion overhead. Two pairs were flying up in the air and coming back down to land on the dead branches of a tree over my head. Every time they went up and down they would chatter and this caused the boobies in the tree I was photographing to fuss. I was in bird heaven. On the end of the island we watched Bridled Terns putting on a different show. We have been here long enough now to recognize most of the birds, trees, and bushes. That is made possible because there are just so many plants and animals here. This would not be possible in New England where the diversity is so much greater. Hopefully the oil spill will be contained soon so that it doesn’t get into the Gulf Stream and head up the East Coast. That would be a disaster beyond comprehension. We have many months before we arrive in the waters off the East Coast of the US but it would be quite sad to return to a less diverse coast than the one we left almost six years ago.

We spent the middle part of our day rearranging things inside the boat to get ready for the Madagascar passage and we got out our Snuba dive compressor and took it apart to clean it. We will need it to clean the bottom of the boat before leaving here and we realized that we have never cleaned it. We then used our dinghy motor to take us to Takamaka island to burn trash, cut Mark’s hair, get water, and do a little island exploring. Tomorrow might end up to be a fishing day if the winds calm back down, and if not we will continue to get Windbird ready for passage and maybe do a little snorkeling in the pass at high tide again.

Day 210, Year 5: Hat Making 101
Date: Monday, May 24, 2010
Weather: Broken Record-Sunny Day, Cloudy Evening, SE Winds 5
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

Today’s endeavor was to try and learn the art of making hats and bowls from coconut fronds. After three hours, Mark and I decided that we flunked Hat Making 101, but we had a good time and we do certainly know more than we did. I have a bowl woven from a coconut frond sitting on the table in the main salon. It has been there since Tonga in 2006 and I never dreamed that I could learn to make one. But I now look at it differently. With time and patience, I think I could make one. The key is finding a frond with long enough leaves (three feet is a good length, not shorter) and with no more than an inch-and-a-half between where the leaves come off the palm frond. You then chop out a section of the frond that has about eighteen sets of leaves. The length depends on what you are making, but for a hat this is about right. You then take a machete and split the stem right down the middle and spend about a half-an-hour trimming this down so that there is just enough stem to hold the leaves on. The stem is now pliable and you can bend it around to fit your head. You overlap the stem, cut off the excess, and then make two sets of notches on each side of where the stem overlaps. You then wrap wire ties or strips of coconut fiber around at both sets of notches. At this point you have a crown of very long palm leaves. Then the fun begins. You begin to weave the leaves together and two hours later you have a hat. Or something like that. Our products from today are pretty rough looking, but we now know how to do this. Now we just need to practice. Kathy of Mr. Curley was our teacher and the students were Mark and I, John and Sue of Susan Margaret, and Wolfgang of Galateia. John was by far the most serious student and his second creation was quite nice. While Mark and I were working on our first, Sue came over and asked if we were making a lamp shade. That’s why I say we flunked the course!

We are also indebted to Kathy and Richard on Mr. Curley for selling us 50 liters of dinghy fuel. They will be here another six weeks, but they have extra and we are so happy to get the fuel. We split the fuel between Constance and ourselves and now we can use the dinghy without worrying about running out of fuel. I traded a couple of cans of butter plus some US money for the fuel. Thank you, Mr. Curley.

Day 209, Year 5: Book Swap in Takamaka Camp
Date: Sunday, May 23, 2010
Weather: Still Beautiful, Still Cloudy Evenings, Still SE Winds 10-15
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

I don’t think you can have a bad day here in Chagos, so I must report another beautiful day. We are anchored here with a really interesting group of boats. There are seven boats now-one French (Kea), one German (Galateia), one out of Dubai with a Brit and a South African aboard (Susan Margaret), one out of Australia with an Aussie and a Brit aboard (Mr. Curley), and three from the USA (Windbird, Constance, and Ventana with a Norwegian crew member aboard). Every person is interesting and together we make a great group. Our book swap in the Takamaka camp was just an excuse for getting together, but we did swap books, eat goodies that everyone brought, and then the nature lovers (me, Sue and John of Susan Margaret, Wolfgang of Galateia, Ed of Constance, and our fearless leader, Kathy of Mr. Curley) took off down a path that follows the shore, just a bit inland. We came to a beautiful little meadow, saw some new (to me) wildflowers, and then went into the area with the well to look for palm fronds that would be just the right size for weaving hats and baskets. We found just the right fronds, sent John up a coconut tree to cut them down, and then carried them back on our heads-one person, one palm frond. I had my bush knife with me and my camera, so carrying a very long palm frond on my head while carrying a bush knife and trying to take photos at the same time was a real trick. It was great fun and I look forward to going back tomorrow to learn how to weave the fronds into hats and baskets.

While in the camp today, a butterfly flew thru and Kathy and I went running into the bush after it. It was the black and white butterfly that Kathy had told me about, the one that the dragonfly that I have a photo of tries to mimic, so I was super excited to get a photo of it. While we were on our palm frond search, I was also able to get a few more photos of blossoms and fruits that have escaped me to date. I could spend at least a year here just identifying plants and fish, but in only nine more days we move on to Madagascar. So I know I will be desperately filling my nine days with forays to shore to get just one more photo.

Ed and Lynne invited us over for sundowners this evening. Somehow it seems like ages since we have been together to catch up on family news and talk about plans for leaving for Madagascar. So it was a great evening of catch-up. We both bemoaned the fact that we have very little fuel left for our dinghies, so we really have to limit our trips. Mark and Ed will go out fishing tomorrow for probably the last time. Mark and I really want to go down to Boddam again to walk the trails, but we might have to move the big boat instead of taking the dinghy.

One last note . . . about food. It has been about two and a half months since we last visited a real supermarket (in India). We did buy limes, a few banana peppers, and eggs in Gan in the Maldives, but I’m not counting that. And even without a freezer, we are still having delicious meals. We have to be inventive, but it works. Tonight we had grilled Yellowfin tuna with a mix of pasta shells, feta cheese (preserved in olive oil), and dried green peas bought in India that you boil and simmer for ten minutes to bring them back to life. It was a gourmet meal.

Day 208, Year 5: Fantastic Drift Snorkel and Camp Clean-up
Date: Saturday, May 22, 2010
Weather: Repeat–Beautiful Day, Cloudy Evening; SE Winds 15
Location: Ile Fouquet, Salomon Atoll, Chagos

What a great way to start a day. High Tide was at 9 am, so we picked up Ed and Lynne and headed into the pass between Takamaka and Fouquet. This is a narrow pass with sandbars on both sides, and you can only go so far in even at high tide as it gets very shallow, but we went as far as we could and jumped in the water to drift with the dinghy. The current is somewhere between one to two knots 24 hours a day. It never reverses and never slows down, so the only way to see the fish and coral is to drift with the current. I took Mark’s video camera and tried to capture some of the beauty. Most of the footage is unusable as I was moving too fast, but once in a while I could grab on to a piece of coral and hold fast for a few seconds. I got so-so footage of a large and beautiful Emperor Angelfish, good footage of the little Nemos, and a short, but great clip of a turtle that was right under in front of me. He was swimming against the current, so it seemed he was not moving and that allowed me to get the video of him. We went in and out three times and just had a fabulous time. We will definitely do this a few more times before leaving here.

The good news of the day is that Ed and Lynne’s refrigerator compressor is magically working again, so they are VERY happy cruisers. But their almost new AGM batteries just don’t seem to be holding a charge like they should, so today’s project was to take one of their batteries and connect it directly to our wind generator to charge it. In order to do that we had to get under the bed in the aft cabin and that meant moving all the stuff on top that used to be stored in the v-berth. So we decided to move everything back to the v-berth and sleep once again in the aft cabin. It is cooler now, so that should be fine, and we have discovered that it is a much better mattress. All of that moving happened before the drift snorkel and then in the afternoon, Mark, Ed, and I went to the camp on Takamaka and did a major clean-up to get ready for tomorrow morning’s book exchange. Sweeping debris from a large area with a palm fond is a back breaking job, but the camp looks great now and it will be fun to get together with everyone tomorrow. We have a new boat in the anchorage, Galateia, a German boat with a young single-hander named Wolfgang. We haven’t met him yet, but hopefully we will meet him tomorrow.

The bad news of the day is that our friend Robert of Shirena has more serious heart problems than expected. He arrived in Vienna, went immediately into the hospital, and the test results are showing that part of his heart is simply not working due to a lack of blood flow over a period of time. The doctors there tell him his sailing days are over and that he needs a pacemaker and a defribulator with him all the time. So now he and Tina are flying back to their home in Sydney, Australia, to get a second opinion. Shirena seems safely tucked into the marina in Ashkelon, Israel, and they will leave it for the next six months while they are deciding what to do. Right now friends Tom and Nicolette of Katanne are in the marina with Shirena and watching over things. So our thoughts are with Robert and we are hoping that when he arrives in Australia, the doctors there might be more hopeful.