11/15/2008, Minerva Reef
After motoring for, like, forever we're safely anchored at Minerva reef. This may be the first place we've anchored that a cruise ship doesn't visit. There are 10 other boats anchored here currently.
The motor is still knocking a bit and the rudder still makes some bumping noises. Adventure seems to be doing well otherwise.
As we arrived Casey screamed, "Hey! Where are the trees?!" Minerva is just a big truck stop on the way to New Zealand. I wish there were a couple of more spots. It's 800 miles to New Zealand after this. The weather is going wrong and we suspect that we'll be here until Tuesday.
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11/14/2008, 120 miles to Minerva reef
We were 8 hours from Nuku'alofa in route to Minerva reef. Our water tanks were near empty. There was an algae bloom in the water so we hadn't been excited about making water earlier in the day. The bloom does a number on our pre-filters and causes the system to have to work a lot harder than it normally does. But after 8 hours of seeing bloom in the water, it was clear that it was an ocean-wide problem. I decided that we needed some water.
I went below and opened our water maker valve and turned on the switch. The switch then automatically turned off. I took my hat off and scratched my head. "Oh! A wise guy!" I said in my best Curly, from the Three Stooges, imitation. I turned the switch back on and it turned off. This went back and forth for longer that I care to admit.
There are two switches on Adventure that turn the water maker on. One is on the AC panel and the other is on the water maker. I wondered if the switch was shorting out, so I turned off the the AC panel switch. I then turned on the water maker switch. It turned off.
I started doing some calculations. We have 12 gallons of water and 1000+ miles until we reach New Zealand. After the mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Bligh did 3500 miles on 120 liters (approximately 30 gallons) of water and he had 18 men aboard in an open boat. Hmm... I thought, but he didn't have 3 girls. We'll never make it. I turned the switch on again. It turned off.
A friend once told me that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing and expecting different results. I tried again. Same result.
Kathy came down. "Are you making water?" she asked in passing. "Yes." I replied as I tried to turn the switch on again. Kathy wasn't paying attention and went back into the cockpit. I wasn't quite ready to tell everyone that we were going to die a slow death of dehydration. I preferred that to motoring all the way back to Nuku'alofa.
Tara came over, "Hey Dad! Since you're making water can I take a shower?" "Uh...Could you wait a few minutes?" "Come on Dad! I'm hot and I don't feel good." "Uh... Okay." Captain Bligh would have never made it.
I stood there looking at the switch. It was, so, obvious that the switch was bad. The switch still tripped even when AC panel switch was off. There was no power coming to the water maker switch. There was no reason that it should trip. I looked through my arsenal of spare parts for a new switch. Nothing. I made a mental note that I need to have a spare AC switch. I tried the switch again - nothing.
I was out of ideas. I tapped the screwdriver against the switch. It was a sad moment. And then I heard it - the little voice in my head. It was Scottie from Star Trek. "You just need to bypass the main circuit," he said in his Scottish accent.
"That's it!" I yelled aloud. I ran to my junk drawer and retrieved some wire. I bypassed the water maker switch and turned on the water maker from the AC panel. It worked!
We have 102 gallons of water now and I'm starting to believe that we'll make it. I told Kathy how we almost died and she downplayed the whole thing. "You know, we're traveling with 6 other boats. There are 12 boats already at Minerva. I'm sure someone would have given us some water." It's hard to be a hero on our boat... Hum.
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11/11/2008, Tonga
Wed. Nov 5 Ha'ano Island, Ha'apai Group, Kingdom of Tonga and Day 1 to Minerva Reef
Sean went to Kaama to help James lift a 15hp motor from Julia's sailboat so he could store it on Kaama. Julia couldn't start the engine, so they put a smaller engine from her dinghy on her sail boat so she could motor while anchoring.
Sean, Casey, and I went snorkeling at the reef near our boat. The coral was beautiful and extended from the sandy sea floor to about 5 feet below the surface. The coral had built up over thousands of years and had deep valleys and wholes through it where the bright-colored reef fish swam in and out. We saw some new fish we'd not seen before. There were clown fish hiding in orange annenomies like in the movie Nemo. The cliff effect of swimming past the reef to see the sea floor 40 feet below was dramatic. Large schooling fish filled the waters below us.
I made my first batch of flour tortillas and they turned out too thick, but they were still good. I think I need a tortilla press. We pulled anchor at noon and motored for two hours before we got in range of Kairos. They pulled their anchor and followed behind. The wind is too light to sail in, but we need to charge batteries and make water anyway. Unfortunately, there is a huge algae bloom in the water and it has what looks like pollen coating the surface and I can see a thick soup of particles that extends well below it. Since we are completely out of water, Sean decided to sacrifice our pre-filters and make water. We will be passing Nuku'alofa, the capital city of Tonga, in the morning, so Sean wants to be sure our water tanks are full by then. We can divert to Nuku'alofa if something happens to our water maker and we need to fill up with dock water.
The seas were calm as we motored all night, with Sean and me alternating two-hour watches. Kairos was about 5 miles to the side of us, so we didn't have to worry about running into them during the night.
Sean had gone down to watch a movie with Casey and Tara was on watch with me. It was dark, probably around 9pm. Tara yelled, "Oh my gosh! What's THAT!" I looked behind Adventure and there was a very bright red light shining off our port side. It much, much brighter than any boat navigation light and looked like it was about to hit our boat. I looked on the radar and only saw an island in the distance behind in. Kairos was in the vicinity, about 5 miles away from us, but I couldn't see them on my radar either. It was on for about 30 seconds and then turned off. I waited for it to come back on, as I sent Tara below to get Sean. It was very disconcerting to know there was something out there that could run into us that we couldn't see. Sean came up and didn't see anything that concerned him, so he went back to his movie. The light did not reappear. We decided it was a UFO and kept a lookout. Kairos told us later that the red spot light lit up a few boat lengths away from them. They saw it on their radar, but could not identify the source of the light. It must have been super bright for them, because it looked like it was a right behind Adventure and we were 5 miles away from Kairos, and thus the source do the light. None of us know what the light was, but it really freaked us all out.
On one of Sean's night watches, Clint called and said their engine stopped. It turned out to be a clogged fuel filter, so they replaced it and got it going again.
Thu. Nov 6 Day 2 to Minerva Reef, diverting to Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu Island, Kingdom of Tonga
I was on watch as the sun rose. I saw lots of birds circling the sea, indicating that the big fish were feeding. Sean doesn't really want us to catch fish because he has to kill and clean them, but he was asleep. I thought that it might be a good time for fishing, so I threw in our line. A few minutes later I saw the pole bend. I looked behind Adventure and saw a black bird being dragged through the water. I knew this was not what Sean wanted to be woken up for, so I said a quick prayer, pulled on some gloves, and reeled in the bird. I saw that it hadn't taken the bait, but had gotten tangled in the fishing line. I pulled it out of the water, unwrapped the line, and set it free. It squawked a lot as I did it, but was able to fly away. I was glad I hadn't woken Sean up or I would have never heard the end of it.
I went below to make some coffee and heard our VHF making a crackled squelch sound. I thought that maybe it was Kairos trying to reach us because we were the only boats in the area. "Kairos, Kairos, Adventure." The squelch noise started again and then stopped. "I don't copy you on this frequency, try 68," I said in case it was them. I switched to 68, but got the same squelch noise as. It was strange because we were less than 6 miles from Kairos and should have excellent reception. I woke Sean up and asked which channel on the SSB radio I should tell them to go to and then told Kairos (if it was them) to switch to the SSB and go to channel 4B. I turned on my SSB radio and switched to 4B and there was Clint on the radio. He said that the VHF must not be working right because of the cloud cover and lots of lightning in the distance. They had decided to divert to Nuku'alofa, the capitol of Tonga on Tangaatapu Island, so they could get more fuel and fuel filters. It was miraculous that we were able to communicate at that critical time. God is good.
Sean got up from his sleep cycle and rerouted us to Nuku'alofa, 30 miles away. He's inner voice had been telling him that we should go to Nuku'alofa, see if someone can look at our engine, and wait for a bit of wind. Also, there is a low pressure coming on Wednesday, bringing heavy seas and winds. We'd be a Minerva Reef by then and in protected waters, but there's no way to know how long we'd be stuck there waiting for a good weather window to proceed to New Zealand. So Sean was happy to divert to Nuku'alofa.
Sean and I sat in the cockpit and sipped on coffee while we watched a distant storm flash lightning down to the water. Sean sped up the engine a bit in case it was coming our way. A large manta ray jumped out of the water four times near Adventure. It was beautiful. We hadn't seen rays jumping out of the water since we had been in the Sea of Cortez and it brought back fond memories of our time there. We're all going through a whole range of feelings about stopping in New Zealand for the girls to go to school. This trip has been full of inconveniences, difficulties, sheer terror, confusion, arguments, bonding, joy, delight, and other character-changing events. We're hoping that in New Zealand we can straddle the line of living a "normal" life and still challenging and improving ourselves.
We had light sprinkles in the morning and a bit after they stopped, a twin-engine New Zealand Air Force plane zoomed around Adventure. It was really cool. I heard the radio come to live, "Adventure, Adventure, this is the New Zealand Air Force." I said, "This is sailing vessel Adventure, let's go to 68." "Zero six," was his reply. I thought he'd not heard me correctly, so I said, "Six eight, six eight." The air force guy said, "Negative, Negative, go to zero six, zero six." Clint teased me later, saying that I was challenging the guy and trying to make him go to my preferred channel. The air force guy said they were on a routine patrol and asked a bunch of questions. We told him we were diverting to Tangatapu Island. He said he'd relay the info to New Zealand. A few minutes later, he called Kairos and asked the same questions.
As we approached Tangatapu we were headed to an anchorage at a small motu called Pangaimotu, 1.2 miles from Nuku'alofa. Clint called and said they were in the Nuku'alofa harbor and had checked back into the country. The customs officer wanted us to do the same. Unfortunately, we'd have to bow anchor and stern tie to the breakwater. We've only done this once before and Sean started freaking out about having to do it again. The girls respond to Sean's sense of fear by fueling his fire with defiance and unbridled questioning. It wasn't a pretty sight. Since we were rapidly approaching the harbor entrance, I slowed the boat to a crawl while they worked through their issues.
We entered the harbor and saw about 10 sail boats bow and stern tied to the inside of the rock breakwater. I backed in next to Kairos so Clint and Janet could help us with our stern lines. Marnix from Ino drove over with his dinghy to help too. Sean dropped the anchor while Tara handed our stern lines to Marnix to dinghy to Clint and Janet on shore. It all worked out just fine.
We walked to the customs office and they took our zarpe (clearance papers) and said to go to immigration and the port authority on the day we were leaving and then come back and get our zarpe from him. It seemed easy enough.
Marnix had had some engine work done and was going to settle his bill with the mechanic, so he sent the mechanic to talk to Sean when he was done. They guy said he could work on our boat on Monday. We were hoping he could do it sooner, but we'll have to wait.
While Sean waited for the mechanic, the rest of us rented a van taxi to take us to the public market. It was huge and full of fresh fruits, veggies, and lots of handcrafts. The girls were in heaven, looking at all the shell and bone carved jewelry. Janet and I bought some avocados and green beans. We saw an ice cream place across the street and went there for lunch and dessert.
We asked a taxi driver to take us to the large super market and we ended up at a dumpy store.
We went back to our boats and debated going out to the motu to anchor rather than spend the night in the harbor, which had a bunch of commercial boats in it and it smelled bad. But Sean was frazzled from the events of the day and wanted to stay. Janet made pizza for us and I made salad and drinks. Since our boats were about 15 feet apart, we could throw the cheese, ground beef, and cookie sheet to them from our deck. The girls ate dinner on Adventure and watched a movie and Sean and I ate on Kairos.
Marnix had warned us about mosquitoes at night, so we put up our screens (aka: wind-blockers) and began to melt in the heat. We decided we'd rather be hot than get bit by bugs.
Fri. Nov 7 Nuku'alofa and Pangaimotu Island, Kingdom of Tonga
We looked in our guide book and saw where there were a couple of large grocery stores, so we decided to all walk to them. The ended up being duds in the end and we only bought a few items. We ended up at the public market again and Casey bought a bone-carved necklace and Tara bought some sunglasses. Sean did some internet stuff and we all ate at a coffee shop called Friends Cafe. We were excited because it looked a bit like Starbucks, but the food was lousy. We walked the mile back to the harbor. Sean and Clint were walking slow and falling behind. Suddenly, a van pulled up next to us girls and the guys were inside. We started calling them wimps. It turned out to be the van of a guy trying to sell hand-crafted jewelry. He gave us a ride while we looked through his case of bone and shell carvings. Clint and I ended up buying a few things from him. His small carved necklaces were $5TP.
We dinghied back to our boats and, while Clint and Janet went to the port authority to see what they needed to do because their visa had expired, we pulled anchor and left for the motu.
There were about 25 boats in the anchorage and we anchored closest in to shore. The first try, we got too close to Ogopogo. I motored around and it got deep real fast, so we went back to the closest to shore spot and tried again. This time, we looked a little close to Summer Wine, but Sean was happy. We grabbed the depth sounder and jumped in our dinghy to see ho much dept we had on the shore side. We had less than 100 feet before we'd hit the bottom on the shore side, but it was sand and sea grass. We'd also need a strong west wind to blow us onto it, which is not an every-day occurrence in this season.
We motored to Sleipnir to greet our friends, Wolfgang and Eva. They said that there were 50 boats anchored here a week ago. Kairos came in and anchored behind us. They didn't have their dinghy engine on, so we took them to the dock with us. Pangaimotu Island is owned by the royal family. The motu is home to a low-end resort that caters mostly to cruisers during this season, but also has some few bungalows to rent to travelers. On Sundays, some locals come here to hang out because it is allowed to operate on Sundays, whereas the town shuts down completely. Earle and "Big Mama" Emberson run the restaurant, bar, and 6 beach fales (huts). No one calls the resort by its printed name (Pangaimotu Island Resort), but by its real name - Big Mama's. We giggle each time we hear the name on the VHF radio. The resort operates a ferry launch to the main town harbor (called Faua Harbor) for $10TP each way, and runs on a regular schedule.
Earle greeted us as we walked into the restaurant/bar, a large room that extends from a kitchen and bar on one side, a deck that goes into the sea on the opposite side, and walls with windows and doors that open to the white sand beach on the other two sides. Just off the beach, 28 sail boats were anchored to the north and the partially-sunken wreck of the My Lady Latta II, a large metal ship that sunk in the 1982 hurricane, was to the south.
Earl explained that the white board always had the latest news on what was happening at the resort. Tonight there was a BBQ buffet for $20TP each. "Just write your boat name on the board if you plan to attend," he said. We saw a lot of friends tonight and socialized until we were exhausted. I think that Sean has had enough to last him a few days.
Sat. Nov 8 Pangaimotu Island, Kingdom of Tonga
It rained all morning and I set to work to collect some rain water to help fill our tanks. I unbuckled part of our bemini shade so the water flowed down it and into a bucket. I poured the captured water into our 6-gallon jerry can and ended up filling it. Tara started a double-batch of chocolate chip cookies and made me bake them (the hard part!) while she did school work. After lunch we were all going stir-crazy, so I told the girls they should swim to shore and play on the beach. At first, they didn't want to go out in the rain, but realized it was a bit silly because they were going to go in the water anyway. They called Abbey and said they'd meet her in the middle and they'd swim to shore together. They also called Jarred, a 12-year-old from Tin Soldier and he said he'd meet them on the beach. Sean and I were excited to be rid of them for a while. Abbey called on the VHF and said that Tara and Casey swam straight to the swim platform by the beach and she didn't want to swim without them coming closer to her boat. I went up on deck and yelled to the girls to swim to Kairos to get Abbey. A few minutes later I heard them screaming by Adventure's swim step and them scrambling aboard. They said they'd seen a remora and it freaked them out. They swam as fast as they could to Adventure to get out of the water. Just then Jarred and his dad, Glen, came in their dinghy. It was still raining, but Glen said he'd give the girls and Abbey a ride to shore.
Sean was adamant about not going anywhere tonight or having anyone over. He was in a somber mood and needed some "cave time." But the kids ended up coming back to Adventure and wanted to watch a movie. So Sean went to shore while I cooked corn dogs and macaroni and cheese for the kids before going to shore.
Tonight was "bring your own meat to BBQ and Big Mama will provide several salads for just $10TP per person" night. Sean didn't have his own meat, so they charged him $20TP and provided him with two steaks from their kitchen. I'd had a corn dog, so just had a glass of wine and chatted with everyone.
Sun. Nov 9 Pangaimotu Island, Kingdom of Tonga
We had a leisurely morning as it rained outside. Casey decided to deep-clean her room, cleaning and oiling her bookshelves, cleaning her cabin walls with bleach and soap water, and even removing her curtain rods and cleaning under them. I sprayed her shelves with roach spray because we're trying to get rid of the last few remaining pests that we've been fighting since the Marquesas. I've tried all the non-toxic ways (boric acid, sticky-paper roach motels, etc.), but now use the toxic bug spray freely on our boat. It's either going to be them or us, but we both can't like on this boat...
I was determined to snorkel the wreck near the beach today and all the kids wanted to go with me. Sean said he'd rather work on our broken wind generator. The clouds parted slightly, so we jumped in the dinghy and went to Kairos and Tin Soldier to pick up kids before heading to Big Mama's dock. It started raining as we put on our snorkel gear, but once we were in the water it didn't matter. We swam a short distance to the wreck and looked around. It was fun to watch the kids swim sideways when they got to a part of the wreck that was open to a lower deck of the ship. Visibility in these parts turned to blackness and they were places our senses screamed for us to avoid. There were lots of reef fish living in the wreck and a newer boat that had sunk was next to it. Tara and Abbey swam into the cabin of the new wreck and popped their heads up out of the top that had washed way to get a breath of air. I was concerned for their safety, so I stayed close so I could pull them out if I needed to.
The rain stopped as we exited the water and we rinsed off with fresh water from the barrel that one of the roof gutters poured into. I told the kids I was going to walk around the island and they could come if they wanted to. Two little girls (10 and 12) from Meridian asked if they could come too. They ran to get permission from their parents. I set off with 6 kids, but it started to sprinkle and some saw a few pieces of glass, so I ended up with just Casey and Maddie (12 years old). About 1/3rd of the way around, Maddie started indicating her desire to turn back. She was sure we were lost. I reassured her that we couldn't get lost walking around the beach of a small island. We collected shells as we walked. About 1/2 way around, it started to rain hard. Maddie really wanted to turn back, but two ladies carrying a child walked by us from the opposite direction and said we shouldn't turn back because it was faster to keep walking the direction we were going. Maddie felt better knowing that we weren't lost. We found hundreds of operculum, a round shell-material that plugs the hole of some shells. We decided to lie in the smooth surf and gather as many of these as we could. The rain stopped and we continued to walk until we saw our anchored boats. Maddie was so excited. We all talked as if we'd been lost of weeks and had just found civilization. Maddie took our bag of shells to her sister and parents to tell them about our brave journey around the island. It was a lot of fun for all of us.
While Casey, Maddie, and I were walking around the island, Tara and Abbey had been reading old magazines back at Big Mama's. They'd read about how to make face masks with kitchen ingredients and wanted to try it out. They went back to Kairos for a spa party.
Casey and I went back to Adventure and took baths off the swim step. The kids wanted to meet back at Big Mama's to play poker, so we picked up a few kids and headed to shore. Sean had gone in to play pétanque with Wolfgang and was just getting a ride back to Adventure as we left.
Casey set up the poker game and they started to play. After a few minutes of playing Abbey said, "This is no fun. I'm not winning." She put her cards down and quit the game. It was like rats leaving a sinking ship after that, so the game ended abruptly.
Marvin, a 4 year old German boy that we've known since the Marquesas, has been really shy around us. I thought it was because he only spoke German, but recently he began warming up to me. The day before, I was standing on the dock after getting out of the dinghy and he ran up behind me and gave me a playful push on the back before running away. Tonight, he came up to the table full of poker player kids and asked me if he could play. His English was perfect. I said, "You know how to speak English?" and he said, "Yes!" I had him sit at the table across from me and took out a deck of cards to play war with him. He learned very fast how to play the game and said each of his card numbers in English as we played. We ended up playing war much longer than the older kids played poker. It was a lot of fun and Marvin was really really cute.
We spent the evening alone on Adventure, watching a movie and then going to bed early.
Mon. Nov 10 Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu Island, Kingdom of Tonga
We pulled anchor at 7:30am to motor back to Nuku'alofa harbor. We had an 8am appointment with the mechanic to look at our engine problem. Glen and Matthew from Tin Soldier and Fred, Jeff, and Angie from Godspeed came with us to help with our lines and to get a free ride into town. I'd complained to Jeff that Sean doesn't like for us to fish because he has to kill and clean the fish. Jeff said that all I need is a really good recipe and then Sean will start letting us fish. Jeff is a chef, so he brought me some fish recipes. I gave him the Taco Bell meat recipe because Taco Bell is Angie's favorite fast food. Angie spent the 20-minute trip looking through my two Secret Recipes cookbooks and writing down recopies.
When we got to the quay, I backed the boat, Sean dropped the anchor in, Glenn drove the dinghy to get Matthew and Fred to shore to handle the two stern lines, Tara and Jeff tossed the two stern lines off the boat. It was quite an orchestrated event and worked great.
The mechanic was running late, so Sean spent some time working on the wind generator. The girls and I went to town so we wouldn't be in the mechanic's way. We shopped around and ended up at a nice, air conditioned coffee shop called Cafe Escape. It's almost like a Starbucks that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They even had sushi rolls! There were two computers with internet access that cost $6TP per hour. This is twice as expensive as most other places, but the atmosphere is much better and the internet is faster. We spent two hours doing internet stuff, reading magazines, and eating yummy food. We decided we'd come here for internet service from now on. The latte I ordered had a beautiful flower drawn into the foam on the top of the coffee. We spent a few hours walking around town and shopping. The girls both bought cheap plastic watches with cute characters on them for $9.50TP. There were lots of Chinese stores with stuff from China in them. We ended up at Casey's favorite place, the ice cream shop. We called Sean to see if they were done with the engine and we could come back to the boat. The mechanic had come to the boat, taken our engine manual, and then left. He said he'd be back in the morning.
We went back to Adventure and then Sean and I went out on a date. We walked to an internet cafe for Sean to check his email and then he took me to dinner at a seafood restaurant. We ordered the largest lobster on the menu, poisson crux (only they call it something different here, it's raw fish, veggies, and coconut milk), garlic bread, and drinks. The total bill was $72TP ($36USD). The lobster was the largest we'd ever had and was excellent. We didn't even crack the legs to get the additional meat out because we were too full. The girls stayed on Adventure and watched a movie.
Tue. Nov 11 Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu Island, Kingdom of Tonga
We woke up this morning to a cloudy, drizzly day. The mechanic was supposed to show up at 8am, but the rain started coming down hard. I put out two bowls to catch the rain water to put into our jerry jugs. The wind picked up and started blowing 30 knots. Adventure lurched sideways and was pulling hard on our anchor and stern lines. It was blowing our stern dangerously close to the quay. Our rudder, which extends the length of our keel, would be the first to hit the rock jetty if we got any closer. Sean went forward and pulled the anchor chain in a bit. We were afraid that the anchor would come loose if we shortened the scope too much. I yelled for him to take a long line from mid-ship to the shore in case our anchor dragged. He jumped in the dinghy and pulled the line around a cleat on the windward side. We were both soaked to the bone. We sat inside Adventure and prayed for the wind to stop before we were blown into the quay or the boat to the side of us. The squall lasted for about one hour. I actually would have preferred to face the squall out in the open ocean, rather here at the quay, where it was much more dangerous for our boat.
The mechanic showed up as the winds started to die down. He loosened each of our injectors as the motor ran and a bit of fuel spurted out. He said this would clean any clogs in the injector line. It worked! The clinking sound in the motor stopped. I heard something that the mechanic said was the fan belt. He sprayed silicon on the fan belt and the sound stopped. Sean asked him to check our impeller and, when he pulled it out, three of the arms on it were torn off. He replaced the impeller with a spare we had on board and then checked a few other things. Our final bill was $65TP ($32.50USD). What a bargain! While the mechanic worked and it rained outside, Casey and Tara decided to deep-clean my bedroom. They took all our books off our shelves and cleaned them and then dusted the TV.
Sean and I had to go to get our paperwork done to check out of country and Tara and Casey wanted to go to town. Tara wanted to do internet and Casey wanted to shop. As we walked toward town, Casey realized that she'd probably be stuck in the internet cafe with Tara for longer than she wanted to be and that she really didn't want to go shopping that bad. She ended up going back to Adventure to watch a movie and relax. When we called her later, she said that she was continuing my room cleaning.
Sean, Tara, and I walked to the immigration office and it was closed for lunch. We waited for 15 minutes and were the first in line for service. Tara got tired of waiting and walked the rest of the way into town by herself to get internet access. We were concerned about the fact that our visas expired today, but the immigration guy was o.k. with us leaving tomorrow.
After getting out passports stamped, we picked up 12 baguettes and then took a taxi to pick up the laundry I'd dropped off the day prior. The taxi took us to Adventure, where we dropped the laundry and baguettes off with Casey. We walked to the Port Authority office and paid $42TP for harbor dues. This office also provided our duty-free fuel letter. We walked to the BP oil terminal and ordered a barrel of diesel to be delivered to the marina in the morning. A 55-gallon (200 liter) barrel of diesel cost $442.98TP ($222USD). I dug in my purse and Sean's wallet for enough money to pay our bill. I came up $2.60TP short. I searched my purse and found a side-zipper pocket that I hadn't looked in. It contained $3TP! We had .40TP left. We looked for a taxi to take us back to town and one of our cruiser-friends, Hans-Jirk, came by in a taxi and picked us up. We stopped at the ATM and got more money and then found Tara at an internet cafe. Her eyes were glazed over from the 3-solid hours of staring at the computer screen. I took her to Cafe Escape to share a sushi roll with me. After having a soda with Hans-Jirk, Sean joined us at the cafe and did internet while Tara helped me open a My Space account. I am now officially a cool person because I have a My Space page.
Casey called on the radio and said she had finished cleaning our room and was board, so Sean took a taxi back to pick her up and take her to pizza for dinner. Tara and I stayed at the cafe and worked on our My Space pages and I uploaded photos to our sailblogs web page. Tara and I decided to walk the mile back to Adventure.
We all watched Driving Miss Daisy.
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Mine is the same as my e-mail before the @.
