April 21, 2008 - Opua

Could we be anchored any further away from everyone else?

We spent a windy, overcast day at anchor off of Tapu Point on Sunday. Sten worked his way through some post-refit and pre-departure items on his checklist, such as recommissioning the watermaker, hanking on the staysail, and changing the filters in the Racor. I tried to ward off the chill by baking some cookies. Isn't it amazing how quickly we revert to our pink and blue roles onboard?

Our friends on Phoenix left Sunday morning for New Caledonia. Last night, we received an email from them telling us that around 4pm, they were knocked down by a big swell. They are fine, but their EPIRB went overboard. They didn't realize it was gone until Maritime Radio contacted them asking if they were all right. In true Phoenix fashion, they'd quickly recovered from the knockdown and were flying along again at 10-12kts. So they responded by saying something to the effect of, "yeah, why?" It was then that they figured out that their EPIRB had gone overboard, and was activated when it hit the water. We offered to bring an extra up to the islands with us for them, but they are hoping that theirs will be recovered and returned to them.

This morning's excuse to run the oven and warm up the boat was a Dutch Baby - a baked puffed pancake. After breakfast and trying to raise Phoenix on the SSB, we headed ashore. It was a relief that our outboard engine still worked after 5 months of sitting in Charlie's shed at Dockland 5.

We took the 10am shuttle into Paihia to run some errands and do some fresh provisioning. It looks like we're going to be here for a few more days, so we picked up the makings for some more passage meals. After lunch, we did some laundry and walked the docks at the marina, visiting with folks we haven't seen in months, such as Stephan on Muline and Nat and Betsy on Bahati, and others that we've seem much more recently, such as Ann and Lew from Serannity, with whom we spent a lot of time at Dockland 5.

"Well, since you made the effort to swim all the way out to us here
in the hinterland, I guess we could find a stale cookie for you."