Last Day in American Samoa! Saturday, Sept. 1, 2018
02 September 2018 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
Helen & Mark
Spent time last evening getting wifi at McDonalds' hot spot. Headed back. Had a late dinner. Watched 2 more episodes of Game of Thrones from Season 7. Then retired by 10 pm. It was again another rainy windy day. Set our alarm for 4:30 a.m.. Dinghied in the dark back to our hot spot (McDonalds) that actually is open 24 hours. Took several attempts before we could get the game on the Houston radio station. The Rice website kept updating the score as the game went by. At half time, we were thrilled as Rice was ahead. Lots of great plays but many missed opportunities to add to their score in the second half resulted in their first loss. Another very rainy day with big winds. We headed back to the boat after making lunch arrangements with three other boats. Took a nap as we got up too early. Then headed to lunch. Had a great time with our cruising neighbors on Southern Comfort, Starlet and Abundance. Afterwards, we took one last bus ride to Cost-U-Less. It was a slow bus that stopped at some places for a long time and then headed off on roads that we have not seen before on the route. We stopped at KSMart first as they have a fresh bakery. Mark found a huge hard drive (2TB) to backup our laptops. Walked the block or so to Cost-U-Less and I shopped while Mark waited outside with our bags. Picked up some things that were still on our list. While Mark waited, a Samoan gentleman kept him entertained with many questions. Where were we staying? Then many questions about our boat and our boat life. He was also waiting while his wife shopped. It's a huge store and I went thru it pretty fast. Had to wait at the checkout as some customers' credit cards wouldn't work. I was thinking that I didn't have enough money on me, if I had to pay in cash, but my Discover Card worked well. We carried our groceries across the street. A bus came by pretty fast, to take us back to the harbor. We got to see some very big waves crashing into shore along the route. The waves were at least 8 feet in height and some were even higher. It was an amazing sight. That is where we will be sailing tomorrow when we leave. It's making us think that we may have to wait another day or so for the seas to settle more. So, at this point, we are not sure if we will venture out or stay another day. We got today's email and wifi updates at our hot spot as we enjoyed an ice cream cone. Thanks for all the emails and updates. Today, was a much cooler day as the sun did not make too many appearances with all the rain. We managed to successfully dodge the rain. The VHF weather channel predicted thunderstorms today, but there was no thunder. Enjoy this long holiday weekend!!