[password] pilot25041
[position] 13 49.74s 171 45.77w
[status] Sunday 2nd September morning in Apia we are now just 1hr ahead of NZ time ........ we came through the entrance pass around 9am this morning and are now anchored in the main harbour ...... the Port Authority chap came out a while ago and said they would visit to do the formalities around 3pm! So nothing for it apart from a few boat jobs, general tidy and relax ........ this cruising life is so hard!
Anyway 2 days ago (our Thursday) we went ashore, completed our departure paperwork and paid our boat 'dues' for the visit ...... these are just one off arrival and clearance fees, so the longer you stay the cheaper the 'daily rate' costs would be! We then caught a bus to Tafuna (generally there is a flat fee of $US1 per journey, although some of the longer destinations are $US1.50), it took around 45mins to get there as we had a magical mystery tour of the suburbs on the way. We then did our essential 'dry goods' and fresh veg restock and caught another bus back to Pago Pago .... by then it was beer o'clock!
Yesterday, Ron & Allan caught a bus and went in the opposite direction to the day before, Barry & Dirk decided to walk the WWII Heritage Trail, this short hike, turned in to a bit of a marathon; Barry's phone App indicated 5miles, 10,500 steps and 67 floors climbed ......it was a very pretty trail, although very steep, slippery and narrow in many places. There were some good views and seeing the gun emplacements was excellent, however, with the heat & humidity 2 rather tired gents got back to the boat around 2pm!
We then weighed our 2 anchors, refuelled the boat before departing Pago Pago, once out of the harbour we again had 15-20kts wind behind us, and were quickly doing over 8kts ........ this gave us an eta of 1-2am, which was no good as we wanted to enter in daylight hour. So we put a big reef in the main, furled away the genoa and tried our best to slow our boat speed to around 5kts ........ with some deviation and zigzagging we arrived safely this morning at 9am having completely missed out on Saturday 1st September as we crossed the dateline.
Nothing major planned for our stay here, apart from Ron returning to NZ on a flight late tomorrow evening Monday 3rd Sept.
[END]