Day 97, Year 2: Happy Birthday to Marie
Date: Monday, July 30, 2007
Weather: Another Beautiful Day
Latitude: S 17 degrees 40.848 minutes
Longitude: E 177 degrees 06.701 minutes
Location: Mana Island, Mamanuca Group, Fiji
I was up early this morning in hopes of getting in one more Malolo LaiLai snorkel before moving back to Mana Island, but lucky for us, Joe on Maggie Drum came over with tools for measuring the output of our batteries. We are not getting the charge that we once did, and Joe was willing to look at our system this morning and give us his opinion. So snorkeling was put on the back burner. We found out that the alternator is putting out more amps than we are reading on our display. We’re not sure
why, but at least we are getting the power. That is a good thing, but something is still not quite right, so after Joe left, Mark wanted to do some more checking on the system. We decided to wait and snorkel when we arrived at Mana so he could work on the battery system. I took advantage of the time to work on organizing pictures. One thing led to another, and it was 11:30 AM before we were ready to leave Musket Cove. Paul and Marie on Ranger left at the same time as we did, and we arrived inside
the reef at Mana at 1:30 PM. Shortly afterward we were in the water snorkeling near that anchorage. There were lots of fish, but it was certainly not a 5-star snorkel site. Tomorrow we will to outside the reef to a place where Paul and Marie dived last week. They think it will make a phenomenal snorkeling site, so I can’t wait for that.
Paul and Marie invited us to Ranger for a birthday dinner celebration. We had burritos with New Zealand pork which were fantastic. Tomorrow we will snorkel outside the reef and then make a decision about when we will head back to the mainland. White Swan and Maggie Drum headed to the mainland today and will be leaving for Vanuatu by week’s end if all goes well. Scot Free II is already on their way to Vanuatu, and Safina should have arrived there today or tomorrow. It is time to get moving.
