Wednesday 10/05/11

Last Friday was Doug's birthday, so of course we had a little celebration on Moondance. Carla made yummy stuffed cannaloni (sp?) and cake and I brought a big salad. We played dominos - again Doug is the supreme winner of the universe, kicked all of our respective butts. I also brought the second to last bottle of California wine. Yum!! The last bottle is for tomorrow - Our anniversary. I will also break out the last arrechera from Mexico. Saturday morning we decided to go snorkel with the rays again, I needed to use the phone, so we planned to stop at the post office at the little town on the way. Well, sadly if the post office parking lot is locked up (which it was), the phone booths are locked up. Our next stop was the Intercontinental resort - but no public phones there either. We knew there was a phone in Haapiti, so we dinghied onward. Of course it is past the rays, which were jammed with people and tour boats but what do you do. It was a quick call to the internet provider, actually talked to a person and resolved my issue - voila! Decided against snorkeling with the rays, too crowded and would have been a cold ride back to the boat. Saturday, I cleaned the decks and the inside of the dinghy - finally. They needed it, and it is a big improvement. Sunday Dennis and I took Doug and Carla's bikes for a ride on a loop from here (Opunohu bay) to Cook's bay. It was a really nice ride. The ride up through the valley with pineapple plantations was hard, but beautiful. We had lunch at the park at the head of Cook's bay - with the locals. Then headed on back to Opunohu Bay. Sunday night I made lamb for the first time. It turned out good, despite the grill going out halfway through. We may not be catching any fish, but the meat here has been good. Woke up to a major rain storm Monday morning, rushed around closing things up. It pretty much rained all day. Rinsed everything off, and gave the towels hung out a good rinse. We had been talking back and forth with Moondance about the weather window, and finally decided to leave on Tuesday. We made a last minute run to the store and left around 1230 on Tuesday. The carnival cruise ship was back at anchor in the bay, and the little town was filled with tourists. The locals had set up all kinds of booths with jewelry and crafts. I saw some of the nicest jewelry yet - sadly still too expensive, but very beautiful.
Tuesday's sail was good, we had to motor some, but the wind finally filled in and we are still sailing. We can see Moondance off our port side. They passed us while we were motoring, but we caught up and passed them under sail. We have been making good time, so will probably make Tuau (two wow) early tomorrow morning. We have heard lots of good things about Tuau, so are looking forward to our time there.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com