For those of you reading this in the northern hemisphere, we hope you are enjoying your mid-summer's day. The days will be getting shorter now; but for us it is the other way round as this is our mid-winter's day. We are 16 degrees south in the southern hemisphere. The sun is currently at a declination of 23 degrees north, which puts us 39 degrees south of the sun. Despite being in the ‘tropics' it is quite a bit cooler here than it was in the Galapagos and the northern Marquesas.

We have been experiencing our first bad weather for a long time. We are tucked behind some wooded motus and are very well protected as a strong SE wind blows and the rain washes over the boat. It is forecast to blow for another couple of days. We have been confined below for the day for the first time in months. But no worries - we have been catching up on maintenance and repairs and otherwise just relaxing. We even managed to fit in a matinee film showing of ‘The Hunt for Red October' - Sean Connery needs to work on his Russian accent. Repairs included re-sewing our two club flags, a strip-down of the heads, ditto on the stern shower valve and a service of the engine anti-syphon valve. We have been living on board on this trip now for over six months, so our kit gets well used and needs serviced more frequently.

We are in radio contact with boats around the atoll, including the daily net. People have gone to different spots to sit out the blow. There is lots of room and plenty of protection.

For today's picture we have included a drone shot of the lotus - you can see why we love it here.