HOME STRETCH
20 October 2010 | New Caledonia
Steve
Greetings everyone!
Wow with a capital W.
We are now in New Caledonia after a remarkable adventure.
We will have a full blog post about the story soon, but for now here is a quick update.
We arrived at a small island in Vanuatu right in the middle of a search and rescue mission including planes, a cruise ship, coastguard, and some other cruising yachts.
We were all searching for 7 people who were missing from an overturned speed boat that capsized the day before.
The weather was rough and the search was over a large area. After about 5 hours on the second day, our friends Kent and Jim on Sea Level found the overturned boat with one man still clinging to it. Two hours later we found two other men swimming about 2 miles further to sea.
The survivors had been in the water for over 35 hours!
We, (Kent and Jim, and Manjula and I) were taken from village to village to be honored for our part in the rescue. We were given such gifts as baskets, produce, two chickens, and a small pig!
The whole experience was amazing and of course we all felt so grateful to be part of saving three men.
We leave in the next couple of days for Australia and should arrive there after about 5 days at sea. We will be sharing our full story while underway, as we have found late night watch to be great time to write.
Best to all!!
Steve