[password] pilot25041
[position] 13 26.82s 172 21.89w
[status] Wednesday 5th September late morning and anchored in Matautu Bay on Savai'i ........ we arrived here last evening around 5pm having left Apia just after 10am.

So on Sunday we waited all day on the boat and then some time after 3pm the delegation (6 people) arrived for the formalities, a Customs man went through the boat examining the contents in most of the lockers/cupboards ........ apart from the forepeaks on either side of the boat ........ why ....... because he was too round to fit through the doorway! Anyway having completed several pieces of paper ...... including some wrong ones they provided ...... obviously thought we needed the practice, and also wanting copies of passports, boat registration etc ........ not sure what they do with boats that haven't got a printer/scanner. Anyway they eventually left after 4pm, which we decided was close enough for beer o'clock! After a spot of roast dinner we then dinghied ashore as our visitors had spoken about some church singing competition going on ....... failing to find the "singing" we did find the main arena where they are holding the 28th Annual Teuila Festival celebration ac
tivities all this week and watched a group of youth dancers practising for a competition later in the programme. This was very different to what we have previously witnessed on this trip and very enjoyable.

Monday we went ashore and made contact with the marina manager, no room for us at this stage, so we then went to immigration to retrieve our passports' that had been taken away on Sunday afternoon' and get a 'cruising permit' to allow us to venture from Apia ....... unfortunately they have as recently as 2 weeks ago changed the rules and you now have to go back and clear from Apia after 'cruising' rather than clearing and with your permit, 'cruising' and departing from where you like. This is an inconvenience but we do have enough time, so not a show stopper! After this we sorted 'internet' stuff, watched some of the goings on at the celebration arena, then went to the market for fresh fruit & food etc and booked Ron a taxi to the airport for later on. We went ashore to the marina bar for supper, Ron departed to the airport and we had a pleasant evening with Pzazz crew and Aussie Nick.

After another quiet night at anchor ....... interspersed with heavy rain showers, which seem a regular occurrence in these parts, we weighed anchor just before 10am and set sail for where we are now ....... we had a good breeze (15+kts) most of the way and once tucked in behind the small headland, are now in a nice peaceful and very pretty anchorage. This morning was a very lazy and relaxed start, and we again had numerous very heavy bouts of rain through the night, first off we needed to look at the main batteries as we've been getting a voltage drop despite having plenty of power left. It quickly became apparent that one of the 'old' set of four 6v batteries had failed at 4.3v, fortunately, when Allan bought the new ones in Papeete in early June we still had one old battery that was good and was kept in a locker. So this was dusted down and fitted in place of the failed one and we are now back up and running with a balanced working set of house batteries ........ hopeful
ly these will see us back to NZ without any further hiccups!
We then saw a local dive boat come and anchor about 50m from us and put a group of 'tourists' over the side to go snorkelling ....... once they left, we donned our snorkelling equipment and swam over to where they had been, we saw numerous different types of fish although the visibility was fairly poor, Barry then got some good video of a couple of turtles leisurely swimming along ....... & no we don't know what type they are!

We may move further along the north coast of this island to another sheltered bay a bit later today, but the wind is still gusting 30kts outside of the bay ...... so who knows we may decide to just stay put! Ron is now safely back in Auckland and getting used to the cold again!

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