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[status] Hello everyone, well it has been an eventful couple of days. We dropped MALibu off on Saturday, well actually Matt and Jodie from Ha’apai Beach Resort dropped him at the airport (thanks again M & J). We all had lunch at Ha’apai Beach Resort’s beautiful beachfront bar and café, this time Sasha and Mike had the Breadfruit Crabcakes (YUM!), Lanye had the Pumpkin and Pele (island spinach) ravioli and Warwick and MALibu had pizza (which I reckon is some of the best pizza I have ever had!!) Thanks for lunch MALibu! You were very sneaky getting that all paid for without any of us realising!! Maybe that was due to all the IKALE lagers eh? We went to pay after you had left with Matt for the airport and were told there was only one outstanding IKALE to pay for… it took us a few seconds to realise what you had done! Naughty MALibu, that was suppose to be a lunch on us! You won’t be surprised that the next day we were all nursing fuzzy heads, as we’d all had quite a
few drinks.
That night Layne from FUSIO made us all dinner, it’s pure magic how Layne still has fresh vegetables on board!! She dished up boiled eggs, tuna and a delicious green salad. Sasha is still in awe of her provisioning prowess.
Yesterday we started getting into some routine. Sasha cleaned the galley top to bottom, and plans to do the floors in the port hull today. She also did the first load of laundry in paradise. It was mostly all our warm merino stuff from the passage – it dried almost instantly hanging on our new dyneema lifelines.
We’ve been for two, big, morning Stand-Up-Paddle (SUP henceforth) Board adventures, one from Pangai, all the way north, past the Ha’apai Beach Resort where we saw Jodie going for her morning run, up to the Lifuka Airport – just before the Lifuka island ends, and Foa the next northern island begins. The other SUP was from our favourite anchorage in the middle of picture-perfect Uoleva, all the way around the southern tip, and half way up the eastern side. We saw a couple of turtles taking a breather, and Mike and Warwick were game enough to have a play in the little waves rolling over the reef. It was too shallow with too much sharp coral around for Sasha or Layne to play that game.
Yesterday afternoon Craig at TaliTali’anga Resort called up Fusio and informed them the kiting crowd from further up the island had dropped in for a cold beer, so we all bundled into FUSIO’s tender and met ‘Glen’ (or Glan as the locals call him) his lovely lady who’s name escapes me, and their two recent recruits (unfortunately I can’t remember their names either – I was rather tired yesterday afternoon). They were all very excited about the 30knot wind forecasted for next Tuesday onwards – keen kiters! Hilariously I remember the names of both their puppies, ‘Lucky’ was saved by ‘Glan’ from some locals that were using him as a football (a horrible story, but a very happy ending for ‘Lucky’) and Jenga a big pawed black dog. Both of them were very cute, and they could not wish for better owners. We left Craig’s with a bunch of his homegrown island Bok-Choy (thank’s Craig!), which Mike and Sasha had for dinner with garlic, chilli and sesame oil, just
as one of the Kiters had advised - it was delicious!
Oh! Sasha forgot to relay that Moonfish finally caught a fish, but in a very unorthodox way!! For you non-boaties you may not be aware that many ‘heads’ or toilets on boats, pump saltwater into the bowl for the flush. As Sasha flushed the ‘head’ the other day, a little black and white striped fish was pumped into the bowl. Needless to say Sasha was super excited and came running up to tell Mike and MALibu what she had caught! MALibu pointed out that the only way out for poor Mr Fish was via the Macerator – a set of sharp blades.
Magic-Mikey has been on form and this morning solved our solar panel mystery. We had been told that up in the islands our solar panels would not work as efficiently as in NZ – but Mike thought something else was up… he found a loose wire and all of a sudden our panels were putting twice as much into the batteries – WHEW!! As we were a little worried we would be struggling for power for months to come.
Just as I type this Mike has been playing with the squid hanging about underneath our port hull. It’s so cool all the marine life around here.

[speed] 0knots

[heading] 90M

[weather] Sunny, warm, 50% cloud cover. Barometer 1011. Easterly less than 10knots.

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