We realised on our 3,000 miles trip to the Marquesas, that we were carriers of three house flies, who in spite of all our efforts eluded death for most of the trip! Eventually I think dying of� natural causes, for at the end of three weeks they troubled us no more.
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Our moth problem however, is of an altogether different scale. Moths on boats you may ask, with no woollen goodies to be eaten, but they arrived uninvited in either our rice or flour, and in spite of these being wrapped in plastic, just like the Very Hungry Caterpillar, the grubs must have chomped their way through it, all in the dark of buried lockers. Insiduously moths began to emerge.
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While Flora, Ned and Hammy were on board teacher Flo instituted a 'moth tally', rewards for slaughter and public acclaim! This seemed to work, and we thought we'd solved the problem. But the life cycle of moths dictates that ever more began to appear �from �unspecified hidden places.
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Giles nobly emptied lockers hoovered up maggots and moths by the hundred, while I removed any trace of cardboard wrapping and repacked everything. Sorted!
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Well no, every evening Giles and I are to be seen in some grotesque ritual of moth slaughter, hands clap furiously bodies gyrate in the quest for more prey, and supper is not served until we have clocked at least twenty! So for those of you who imagined us quietly sipping wine in a tropical paradise, get real!
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Conclusions: we have been fastidious about not allowing cardboard boxes on board, said to harbour cockroaches, we have had and conquered a cockroach invasion, but have been neglectful of thin cardboard packaging, evidently� enough for grubs to survive on, and rice which we have bought in sacks we now buy in small plastic sealed bags, when you buy the rice you are also buying the bugs! By the time we get home we'll know all the answers!
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Our plans in the last few months have slowly evolved, and we realise that our original programme of� a twenty month circumnavigation, though do-able is far too speedy, we have already rushed past far too much in order to fit in with flights etc, but as we are unlikely to ever come this way again, we feel we must give it more time.
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So we have opted for heading south to New Zealand where we will spend the cyclone season, November to April, from where we will head over to Sydney, and up the east coast of Australia reaching Darwin in July when the winds should be most favourable for crossing to Indonesia. Christmas 2007 will be in Thailand.

We still plan to come home via the Red Sea, but depending on the political situation, we are open minded, South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope are an option.
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But the good news is that WE WILL BE HOME FOR A MONTH OVER CHRISTMAS.