WE'RE HERE! We actually arrived Saturday morning into the large bay on the NE side, Indispensible Strait, and when everyone was up and had breakfasted, we dropped the sails (which were flogging anyways) and we all jumped overboard! We swam and swam until we were tired, then motored off to explore the shoreline of the Florida Islands. We didn't plan on going that way, but didn't want to arrive at Guadalcanal in the dark, so we chose to amble along and try going through a couple of passes like a shortcut through the small Florida Is. group. A local man came out to greet us in his dugout canoe, very friendly and invited us to his village where there is a mooring ball, however it didn't work out to go through the pass there because there was a giant current ripping and we didn't want to loose steerage. Through the turbulent water where we wanted to go was a giant ship lying on its side along shore...so we moved on. We said goodbye to the friendly man and motored into another cove, with an entire dozen elevated grass huts and several people that lined the beach to watch us. Another local in a dugout (there were several fishing from the dugouts along the shorelines)came to tell us that this place was not for safety. He mentioned this several times so this time we abandoned anchoring and decided to drift for the night. We motored out to the middle of the bay and drifted south 10 miles between the Florida Is. and Malaita Is. and each of us stood our watch.

Today was an incredible day in the bay, with whales spouting off our port side after breakfast, a giant bull dorado striking fish off our starboard side shortly after and unfortunately turning his nose up at our lures! He was so close to the surface we could see his marvelous purple fins, yellow tail, and rainbow body as he repeatedly passed around the boat. Spectacular! After that we started motoring to our destination and encountered several pods of lounging around dolphins, who turned to swim in our bow and one show off blasted THREE times into the air higher than the bow and boggled our minds! It was AWESOME!

Now we are anchored in front of two churches on the other side of the pier, next to a giant fuel tanker. There was singing wafting down to us from the Sunday night services, and we've got the dogs tied up on the cabin tops to keep watch tonight. We are counting on them to do their guard dog duties! Tomorrow we will check in and do a little exploring. Looks like a slice of paradise...and lots of WWII leftovers to check out as well.

Thanks for your prayers and support! Kathy, Allen, Morgan, Wyatt, Sylvia and Noortje, D&D