Overcast this morning, and even a little rain. We are technically banned from Alfonse Island because we have checked out of the Seychelles, so we don't try to go ashore. We want to explore the reefs and hope there is something worth seeing, but the cloudy skies dampened our enthusiasm for the moment, so we had a very quiet morning reading, doing Sudoku and eating whatever we could find. (The overcast skies seemed to make us all hungry!) Mary Margaret, however, was busy preparing beef stew for dinner. After chopping and sautéing the ingredients she put them all into the Quarter Acre Pot to cook for the rest of the day. This pot is a wonderful device that they picked up from New Zealand. It is so well insulated that without any additional heat it slow cooks the stew.

By mid-day the sun had returned, and we were all ready to take the dinghy and look for snorkeling sites. Portia wanted to have a look at the area around a buoy which was near the boat. We decided to have a look on our way to the reef at the corner of the island. It looked promising enough for a quick dip which turned into more as we found nice coral and lots of fish. David and Mary Margaret later said that this was the nicest reef they had seen in the Seychelles. The coral was mostly healthy, there was an abundance of giant clams, fish both large and small, live cowries, a few barracudas, and even a turtle. There were no sharks which is good, but also bad as they are very interesting. We were heartened to see that the tsunami that destroyed most of the reefs in the Seychelles some years back left this one untouched; we guessed that it is probably because it is surrounded by fringing reefs in a protected lagoon.

When we all had had enough, we returned to Leu Cat for lunch. Portia, Mary Margaret and Steve had quesadillas with cheese, onions, peppers and bacon; and David had rice and chicken floss, a spicy dried chicken concoction that he found in Malaysia.

A quiet afternoon of reading, games and puttering prepared us for Mary Margaret's terrific beef stew dinner. We all ate with gusto and great enjoyment. Well done MM!

After sunset, we watched hundreds of frigate birds that circled high above the island for an hour before finally landing in a cacophonous frenzy that we could hear but not see, because they landed after dark. It was curious bird behavior.