Jerri:
We made it! Never a doubt. We arrived to Vava’u late Saturday afternoon after losing a day crossing the international date line.
We picked up a mooring ball near our friends on Speakeasy and sat down for an Anchor Juice (Agility’s signature cocktail) and a game of cards. It had been 30 minutes max since we quit sailing and Alex said, “that wasn’t so bad.” Ha. She will fit into the family perfectly! Her introduction to sailing has been tough. The first time she joined us we sailed from Colon, Panama to the San Blas islands. I think it’s about 15 hours of beating into it and quite unpleasant, especially to someone prone to seasickness. This trip she has joined us for 5 weeks in the S Pacific, not exactly bath tub sailing, and 9 days at passage. It was tough for all of us. Saying it wasn’t that bad so quickly was classic. I loved it.
After a few games of cards we went out to dinner with Mark and Deanna from Speakeasy. It’s great to have friends to share the lowdown when arriving to a new island or country. They gave us a quick debriefing of the rules and customs, some snorkeling and anchorage tips, and expressed disappointment with the weather over the past week. Unfortunately, it looks like the rainy pattern may continue through this week. The guy on the cruising net gave a long winded and very scientific analysis on the weather yesterday morning (we have as good if not better weather info) with the conclusion that it may get better or it may stay the same. Not terribly satisfying after listening to him for 10 minutes, but at least there was no mention of it getting worse.
Yesterday morning we managed to pull it together in time to get to a church service, the scoop being that the singing is beautiful. We got there early enough to admire the clothing the locals were wearing. Lots of beautiful, colorful fabrics, many with a satin sheen, worn with a woven cloth (probably from palm fronds) either wrapped around waist and tied on with rope sashes or worn as belts with woven strips spaced about an inch apart and dangling halfway down the thigh. Most of the weaving was a natural color, but a few people wore some with lots of color. We learned that they wear the woven cloths in respect for the king. They were quite lovely and I wish I had a photo to share.
When the service began, we all had a difficult time keeping a straight face because, yes the singing was wonderful, but the kid behind us could really project and lacked the natural ability that the rest of the congregation had. He was so loud that it almost hurt.
Not much is open on Sunday except a few restaurants. We walked around, looked in windows, and lo and behold, the first thing we see is a display of electric tea kettles! There was an abundance of them. We had some coffee, talked about NZ with the proprietor, discovered they do laundry and rent mountain bikes and then headed out to lunch where we were able to use the restaurants wifi. We had a quiet afternoon and went back for dinner at a restaurant that broadcast the Olympics. We will most likely return for movie night tonight.
The provisioning looks somewhat bleak. Apparently the supply ship broke down and they are not getting the normal amount of supplies brought in. We saw frozen chicken, but most of the chicken here has soy protein added which Elizabeth is allergic to. Our plan is to dine out a lot and save the last 3 steaks for Elizabeth when we’re at anchorage. Tim and I love chicken so we will go deep on chicken over the next few weeks. Chicken and marlin. My gut feeling is that we may end up heading over to Fiji sooner than later.
More to come after we check in this morning, hit the market, talk to the dive shop, and figure out our plan for the week.
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