5:32 pm
here are our typical eating habits:
- breakfast: some of our bread with jam (we don't usually have butter) and an egg. we have some oat meal. but no cereals other than that (too expensive to buy here). and if needed we use powdered milk
- lunch: we try to make a salad (cucumber tomato maybe w/ tuna but the Tuamotus are notorious for not much vegies/fruits to be found)
- dinner: some carb (rice pasta mashed potatoes) with meat balls or canned fish or canned chicken or some corned beef (we haven't gotten steak because too expensive; we got chicken once)

6:30 pm
Thanks for your long email.
Evan in his was telling us about the fifa scandal.
The "Back at the Helm" book is good because their path was close to what I wanted to do initially (patagonia to south pacific) and that maybe we'll do in reverse. They are very rich people with a humongous boat with lots of expensive systems, so very different from us.
At the end of the afternoon we'll motor over to Atiheu which is the next bay where Yvonne restaurant is, and we'll anchor there for a day. The reason is that there is wifi. I don't think the pork feast is going to happen because the french guy has not been able to get a cell phone signal to call yvonne and it's already sunday.

...

Our hike was wonderful yesterday: the beach on the next bay is facing east and so is exposed to the swells and the wind. We saw hundreds of sand crabs running in toward the incoming and burying themselves in the sand as the shore wave goes over them. At the same time small (1.5-2ft) sand sharks swim in that same area in just a few inches of a mixture of sand and water presumably to eat these sand crabs? I don't know, but I am really surprised that they can "swim" there since there is more sand than water (actually you know they're there because you see some of their bodies sticking out of the water because it's so shallow. We only saw 2 yesterday but Nathaniel saw a whole bunch the day before. The bay has sand dunes at its end, but its sides are boxed by high peaks. I took a bunch of pictures because it was so dramatic. Behind the sand dunes somebody has planted a wonderful garden with tomatoes, eggplants, various tropical fruits etc...; there was also a hut but nobody was there. It's a long way from anywhere and the vegies harvested must be transported on horseback which is the only way in/out of that bay (other than on foot). There is a school of fish (maybe 30) about 12" long and red (snappers?) hanging out under the boat and anytime time we throw any leftovers overboard, they rush instantaneously to catch them: it's quite a blast to watch. The french guy went diving yesterday off his boat and said it was quite amazing by the small headland a couple hundred yards from us: the coral reef and the fish; he also touched a manta ray. There are quite a lot of rays here; yesterday pulling the dinghy over the reef, to deeper water, at low tide, we scared away several sting rays over the course of 50 yards or so.

Yesterdays I ended up re-organizing the spares rather than working on the fresh water pump. So i'll do that now.
Hi to Barb, tom, graeme and emily.