Today was my day to finally repair the damned injector leak in injectors one and two. As you might know, the diesel fuel is under considerable pressure in the feed tubes: up to 2400 psi. Bending or breaking a tube will take a diesel engine offline until a replacement can be fabricated, not a likely prospect out here. I've had sleepless nights worrying about the job. Today, with less fanfare than I dreamed, I got the leaks stopped and didn't break anything! Hurray! One fewer problems to solve.

Conni wanted to use the dinghy to motor on a sightseeing trip along the single long motu, so we motored for an hour or so and got to see a lot of the inhabited part of the island. There were several small resorts and several small and one large pearl farms. Altogether, an enlightening and interesting journey. Conni helmed the dinghy on the trip back and is now much more expert. Since the dinghy is our "car" (the boat being our house), she needs to be able to do whatever she wishes in the dinghy. She's well on her way.

We posted two pages on our site today, after a maddening delay because of the S-L-O-W speeds out here. The photos were mine but the captions were all hers.

We leave for Rangiroa tomorrow night, after our dinner with the mayor, we hope. We'll sail for 36 hours, arriving in mid-morning in Rangiroa to run the current into the lagoon. Since Rangiroa is the largest atoll in French Polynesia and one of the largest in the world, when it fills or empties, it creates currents that simply must be dealt with. Entering last time almost killed us all, so we'll play it a bit smarter this time.

I did accomplish my dive, but the starting depth was 100 feet and the 3-knot current made it a difficult dive for me. At those depths, I was given my first Nitrox, a nitrogen/oxygen mix of 32% oxygen rather than 16%, which means less nitrogen to cause trouble.

The current was dramatic and I didn't have enough weight, but the fish and coral were more than enough to compensate. Wow! I've never seen so much living coral and such untouched, or apparently untouched, sea bottom in any dive that I've ever made. It was beautiful and the Nitrox did eliminate some of the usual time constraints.

We're sitting in the cockpit tonight, watching Venus and Jupiter as they verticality align, as they won't be again for 20,000 years. It really does look like the scene from 2001, A Space Odyssey.

The winds are light and soft and we can hear the surf break on the ocean side of the motu since it's so close. Now and again a dog will bark somewhere, but the surf is the predominant sound. The surface is very calm tonight and that means good sleeping.