Friday, June 03, 2005

anchored in an aquarium

It's quite beautiful here, and the anchorage is fairly calm. We moved to the south side of the lagoon to get some protection from the trades and then the next day it blew 15 from the north. The waves stayed under 18" though and we had a nice day anyways. There are battalions of mosquitos here in certain places at certain times. We had just gotten rid of all our itches on the passage and are now covered in bites again. Today we'll go to a different beach and look for shells on the ocean side. The shelling is not very good so far. Mostly small cowries and we already have at least 100. Yesterday I collected a large handful of a pretty snail shells and then when we got back to the boat and laid them out, they all walked away. I couldn't see the hermit crabs when I collected them, but I have to take them all back to the beach today. So much for shelling. I'm determined to get a spider conch before we go, so I might have to buy one from someone who ate the snail. We saw lots of broken ones in Ua Pu, since they bust open the shell to harvest the animal.

We're not in any hurry to move on. We've had way too much sailing in the last 2 months. Wyndeavor and us are just going to hang out and enjoy the fruits of our hard work for a while. We will try to visit at least 2 other atolls and need to be in Tahiti by the 30th to meet a friend. Luckily it's not far from here to there, so it's not a big passage. Supposedly there are 3 more kid boats on their way here now, so it might get more fun soon.

The visibility is great here, about 60-100 feet unless it's rough. We snorkeled with parrot fish, butterfly fish, and misc various creatures. Carter spotted a dinner plate sized octopus from the beach. He was very matter a fact about it, apparently not realizing how special a find it was. It's uninhabited here and quite peaceful.

Kelly and I are getting quite creative on our meal options, after not having much shopping in 2 months. We're making stove top bread in our pressure cookers, so we don't have to heat up the oven. It's working fairly well. We're out of all frozen meat, and are now strictly on cans. I've been making fish cakes, spaghetti, teriyaki etc. I really miss tortillas. There is a small village here, with nothing much to buy apparently. We might try to trade for pearls there before we leave.

All for now, school time. kelie

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