We are awaiting the VHF radio call to release our mooring and motor to the slip so that Wings can be pulled from the water and placed on in a cradle for the season. We're rapidly moving toward not having a boat anymore. Conni's been aboard for 30 days and I've been aboard for 3 months, not an insignia ant amount of time. It's become our home.

After waiting until 0800, we just dropped the mooring pendant, motored around the many shallows around us, and motored carefully into the concrete slip, ready for the lift.

In an hour, Wings was hanging in slings above the water and we were landlubbers once again. What a change!

They moved Wings to her cradle and pressure washed the mung from her hull. I've never seen her with so much growth. The many, many miles we sailed her had almost washed away the last coat of bottom paint. She's two-toned, with a blue outer coat and red inner coat. She been in this warm water so long that there was green growth above her waterline, and those odd critters, the long-necked clams, growing on her. How odd that they choose a moving boat hull as home.

I had to splice together some power cords to get a "French Connection" that fit our American shore power inlet, but we're powered with 240VAC again. Luckily, all of our stuff, with very few exceptions, can run on it.

We got the water maker operating yesterday! Hurray! I worked several hours on circuit diagnosis and finally found a bad breaker (I didn't know that they went bad.) and some loose connections, so with the changes made, we were up and running again. We had one last task with the watermaker: we had to "pickle" it, or fill the entire device with a sterilizing agent to prevent microbial growth. We tried for an hour, but didn't complete the very important task until we determined a workaround. The pickling system failed, so I made some alternate hose connections and we were able to pickle the device.

We have already done 95% of the packing and our two blue boxes are now sitting on the floor of our little bungalow at Pension Tiare Nui where we're resting and enjoying reasonably fast Internet

We stayed here two years ago and it's a good deal for us. The bungalow is primitive, but there's a stand up shower and hot water, a small kitchen, and it's cool. It also comes with a rental car so we can transport our gear and get whatever supplies we need, as well as arrange for services such as laundry washing since laundromats don't exist here. Many would turn up noses at the bungalow, but after so long on the boat, it's luxurious to have a stand up,shower with hot water, lots of light, and it's not moving!

Many tasks remain but we've made a start and completed some difficult jobs. The jib is stowed, watermaker pickled, and our wonderful boat watch lady, Cathy, has visited and knows what's to be done.

We leave on Thursday afternoon, so we'll be busy folks!