Several weeks have slipped by for us - filled with mix of sight seeing, re-provisioning, and an exciting maritime rescue. We are still anchored in windy rainy Pago Pago waiting for the rest of the shipment of school books. It is looking more and more likely that Timothy will be the happiest sixth-grader in the world. We splurged on a rental car and explored the island from end to end soaking in the rugged mountains dropping to spectacular coastlines, impossibly steep and lush valleys with extended families living in tiny villages. Soaking in experiences here is rather literal - it is reported that Pago Pago receives more rainfall than any other port in the world. The pace is slow, people are friendly, and fortunately the rain is warm.


Everyone hum along to the Gilligan's Isl tune... "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip... hmm hmm... A three hour tour, A three hour tour." I make light of it now that everyone is safe, but a boat left Bora Bora a few days behind us, lost their rudder and drifted for 35 days with no steering. One day out of French Polynesia, their rudder sheared off and despite repeated attempts to jury rig steering in very rough conditions they drifted nearly 1000 miles, eventually arriving near American Samoa. Several boats diverted to offer assistance, but there was nothing that could be done until they were closer to land. We had a very interesting experience coordinating with the local authorities and helping to arrange assistance as they approached. The short story is that after many days of discussion (fortunately this was the slowest moving emergency in the world) the local coast guard eventually admitted that they would not help until the boat was within 3 miles of the coast and had issued a mayday call, but even then they had no working boat. Sorry for the confusion, New Zealand Coast guard will have to cover this one. We scrambled around and convinced the local fish and wildlife department that assisting would be a really good deed, keep the boat from piling up in their marine sanctuary, and was the perfect opportunity to justify having just bought a very expensive state of the art 30 foot aluminum inflatable boat. When the day came Fish and Wildlife headed out into 12 foot seas and spent a very difficult day towing Avatar into the harbor where we were able to use dinghies to push them to a slip. You can imagine how happy they were to step off onto the dock. "The Rescue" made front page news and the kids were delighted to have their picture in the paper as part of the rescue team. It was also covered on local TV news, but in Samoan so we have no idea what they were saying.

Now that the excitement is over, we are looking forward to resolving our mail issue and moving on to Tonga.