We are well here. Learning to work with our modified system with one rudder. Courage jury-rigged the mainsail - removed the "strong track" which turned out to be "not so strong" and just put the cars from the mainsail directly into the mast. Cassidy and Carolyn (14 year old girl on a boat named Hotspur) helped him the whole morning. The kids and I did school, explored the beach, met a local woman and bought some fresh eggs from her, then went snorkeling and returned for lunch. I think our morning went better than theirs.
There is a boat yard onshore here, during hurricane season, November to February, they hold 40 boats on the hard. They have 3 catamarans and 6-7 mono-hulls there right now. It is a rather strange place. Totally protected, but far from an airport and I wonder how many supplies they have for repairs and maintenance. The grandmother on the family raises chickens and sells fresh eggs. She uses the chicken poop to fertilize the ground and has bananas and papayas growing. Not enough for sale I'm sure, but something!! We were told you really couldn't grow anything in this ground with the coral and salt. Their land is definitely coral, but is about 10 feet above sea level, which is higher than other land we've seen here. I don't think that's the difference though, I think they just are using composting and fertilizing. Most of the other people burn the husks of the coconuts, therefore limited compost. Either way, we ultimately bought 3 dozen fresh eggs since we only had 4 left from the Galapagos (where I bought 150, which was almost 3 months ago). They were about $0.60 per egg, but that's the price in the grocery stores and here we're helping a woman with initiative and it all goes to her, not taxes, so in general, we're happier with this plan than grocery stores.
Again, these people were impressively generous and hospitable, they said we could go anywhere on their land, including the ocean side where there's a rock table, a good place to get lobster. We took the dinghy into a lagoon, which is almost surrounded by land on both the ocean side and the lagoon side. They are working on making this into a marina. It's got coral heads and a tricky entrance even for a dinghy, but you can see where they've dug out, built up, and even have a small dock back there. Definitely some industrious people are here.
We found many wonderful shells, saw a sea urchin with scales rather than spiky posts, but did not find lobster. The seas were too rough out on the ledge where they'd hang out. Made for good exploring though. Valiant periodically stops and picks up whatever coral or rock he sees. I think he sees me walking along then randomly stop and pick things up, so he's doing it. Then I don't have pockets, so I put them into Courage's side pocket. He's a quick learner; he grabbed a huge piece or coral and tried to load it into Courage's pocket also. It got kicked out shortly after he forgot about it, but I can see he's learning well.
We are going to further check out this atoll, then either move to one with a manta cleaning station or aim to Tahiti to address repairs. The manta cleaning station sounds very interesting to me. And the kids love cleaning stations having seen them on nature shows. Our sail up here today was good, mainsail held in up to 20 knots of wind, but steering wasn't perfect, probably due to the jammed rudder not being perfectly straight. We had to weave and bob through Japanese fishing balls to get to shore. Usually that means an oyster farm. Since this area is less touristy and visited, we are hoping to get a locals tour there tomorrow if we can find anyone to ask about it. That's sounds very interesting; not sure if it's a possibility or not.
Still enjoying exploring the Tuamotus, new things to see or try to find (oyster farm, manta cleaning station), and we have about 2 weeks until we need to be in to Tahiti, so we shall see what comes next. We certainly could entertain ourselves doing repairs for those 2 weeks, but that doesn't sound as interesting as exploring. Life is a balance.
Shannon
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