Last night we began motor sailing at about 9pm when the wind died and we picked up a current running against us. We motor sailed in 8-10k wind from the East in 2-4ft seas making 5.5k over ground at 1500rpm. We altered course a bit to the North to keep the sails full for a more quiet ride. At 6am this morning we are about 20nm NE of Apia on a heading of 247M making 5.5-6k over ground. We are still motor sailing in winds of about 10k and expect to arrive in Apia at app. 9:30am local.

We arrived in Apia at app. 10am local time and tied up at the main wharf to clear customs (which was accomplished with great efficiency). The wharf looked very high, the tide was very low. So we rafted to a tug that was at the wharf, the tug's sides being considerably lower then the wharf itself. As he was securing our lines to the tug he told us about the attack on the Twin Towers. However, his info was sketchy and I walked off feeling confused.

I walked over to the harbormaster and when I first entered the building two old men were preparing to drink some Kava and first handed me a bowl, which I drank of course. Didn't taste bad at all and I had a nice mellow, soothing feeling from it. The harbormaster phoned all the officials for me, and filled me in on the terrorist attack in NYC (see Jordan's Journal entry for this day for more). Then I went back to the boat and met the customs official. I filled out some forms, he told me more about the attack on the Twin Towers and then the quarantine official came followed by the health department guy. More forms. After all that we moved out into the bay and anchored in a nice spot next to a boat we had met briefly in Fr. Pol. that had 2 kids aboard. We still had to go to immigration, so, after cleaning up a bit we put the dinghy in the water and went over to the dinghy dock and caught a taxi to the gov't building. Amazingly, the taxi fare was 2 Tala - a Tala is the Independent Samoan dollar (hmm, Tala sounds like Dollar, weird huh?) - and a US$ gets you 3.4 Tala, so I figure the taxi ride was about 60 cents. It was a distance of about 2 miles. We plan to take a lot of cabs while we are here! Later we took a cab to a sports bar to check out the news on the TV, it was $4Tala, about $1.20US, the distance was about 4 miles.