We got back into town Saturday afternoon in time to find a slip for the next couple of days. We came back because in the wee hours the Rugby World Cup final was on. 3am to be exact. We weren't going to make that time slot, but luckily one of the Patisseries was going to have the replay on starting at 7am when they opened. We were able to enter a pool to win a free Rugby ball, which with Dave's help, I won! We thought it would make a good present for Dave's brother Greg who has travelled to the World Cup to see it in person, he loves it so much. It was a great match but the Kiwi's held off the Aussies at the end....though they were catching up quickly.

Later in the day we did another shop for fresh stuff and after looking at the weather decided to get ready to leave the next day. That meant another round of visiting the 3 offices to officially leave and by early afternoon we were headed out to another one of the islands to stay for the night....I was torn, as we had good wind at the moment and the wind was due to die off within a couple of days and that would mean more motoring the longer we put off going.

Since Mac and Wendy had skipped coming out to the islands with us, we felt they wanted to stop off and enjoy some small island scenery before heading out to sea. (In a weeks time when we got 70 miles from the Australian coast we would dearly regret this decision! )

At Ilot NGE, the afternoon light was beautiful and I took a bunch of pictures, with the iPhone and iPad, I could see a group of people snorkelling and pausing for great lengths of time watching something. Wendy and I wasted no time and were quickly in the water, cruising around between the boats and the shore. What quickly became evident, was that there were way MORE fish than we'd seen ALL THE WAY across the Pacific and they were way BIGGER!!!! There were dozens of 3 and 4 footers. Many different types. What I at first mistook for the tails of sharks, turned out to be huge fish! I could hardly believe my eyes and when I tried to convince Dave to come in, he was not going for it, no matter how many or how big. His fear of sharks was just too strong. Though we were starting to get cold and Wendy had had enough, I couldn't quite drag myself away from the sights and I continued to swim around, trying to see some new areas. I decided to check out just a bit more and I could make out an odd shape. It seemed like the outline of a turtle, only it was vertical and not moving. Odd. Swimming a bit closer, I could barely make out that it was hanging by it's front flippers, having hooked them on the side of a coral formation, about 4' off the bottom. It looked a bit like a rock climber hanging out off a wall with the back flippers were just hanging in 'midair'. Weird! I got the GoPro going assuming it would quickly bolt, but as I slowly got closer it very slowly allowed itself to gradually slide down off the coral and it turned and swam off. What a fun, slow mo, close up look at a turtle.