We've been busy, but have socialized a few times, too. For our last days here, it's a good mix.

Saturday, the main task was to find, label, and prepare all of the wiring in the mast in preparation for removing the mast later. When the mast is lifted from the hull, the wiring goes with it, so when the boat was rigged, the wiring that led to mast equipment was constructed to be disconnected. We had the mast pulled back in 2011 while we were refitting in Alameda, CA. I had forgotten that we had done a good job of identifying the wiring that we needed. For example, we have a bow/spreader light: one fixture with two lights, one focusing downward to the foredeck, one focusing forward to be seen by other vessels. When we rewired it in 2011,we used 10/3 cable. That's a single sheath of cable with three wires in it. Two are for carrying current to the light, one for a common ground. Finding that triplex was a good reminder and made it easy to get it pulled to the base of the mast. The other wire is for the anchor light, and it's a duplex wire: two wires within an outer case.

The radar cable was a bit more complicated since it leads from the radome to the helm in the cockpit and is much more delicate. Finally, we have a VHF coax. We got the job done.

We got the last section of the boat cover erected and attached. We've both begun to strip batteries from our various mobile devices. Conni has cleaned, AGAIN, everything in the cabin. I got the Honda generator prepped for the layover, draining gas, changing oil, re-gapping the spark plug, and squirting Corrosion Block into the cylinder.

Sunday, we also re-caulked three chain plates on port side. Keeping water out of the boat is an ongoing task.

Saturday night, we had dinner with some Australian friends who bought a Passport at our instigation. It had been for sale for a bit, and they asked me to go aboard to check her. I snapped photos and gave a good report, and they bought the boat! They are interesting people, both from South Africa. Riaana, the woman, said such interesting things! She said, "Elephants are the most silent animals. They can walk past you and you'll never hear them." What a personal tale that is. She and Reinhardt have become good friends.

Sunday night, we had dinner with our German friends on Vera. We met them in the rain where we had planned to meet, and they found us. Michael and Britta are great folks and we both hope to keep in touch with them. With both couples, actually.

Monday night, we had "Sundowner" about Turtle Blues, a Passport 42 owned by Reinhardt and Riaana. They are very interesting people and, from our point of view, have lived a very exotic and interesting life. Americans can be fairly boring since most of us are born and live our lives in the same place. Not these two!

Our flight to Papeete departs today, Tuesday, at 1600 local time, so we have come to the end of this season. It's hard to imagine. We'll fly to Seattle, then own the coast to Oakland to see Conni's dad for a few days, the continue on to Anchorage.