August 27

Today is Wednesday the 27th here. End of August already. We are having a wonderful week here in the Maskelynes. The place is simply magical with beautiful colored reefs and pale blue and green water over them visible in the bright sunlight. The wind has been very calm, this morning almost nothing. The three boats here at anchor are pointed in all different directions.

We had a lovely time on Kate's birthday, scuba diving in the morning, relaxing in the afternoon and a small birthday party with not one but two birthday girls (Heidi from Chewink). Dinner went well. I prepared a very nice pan seared lamb coated with Dukha (a spice mixture we discovered in New Zealand comprised of roasted sesame seeds, coriander seeds, cumin seeds hazelnuts and peppercorns) which was accompanied by string beans in garlic and lemon and a simple risotto. Heidi baked the birthday cake and brought the wine.

Yesterday was uneventful. It was fairly cloudy and calm for most of the day with a breeze from the SE in the afternoon. We worked on the dive compressor, changing the compressor oil and filter, which turned out to be both quite overdue and quite difficult as the filter cartridge was well stuck due to the fact that the glue on the labels affixed to the cartridge had melted and the entire thing was a sticky mess. Finally having removed the filter we realized the new filter would not slide in cleanly because the labels were stuck to the walls of the filter housing! Problem solved, all is well now.

We had Craig and Carol (and Moorea) over for drinks in the early evening and dinner was just the three of us. Today my task de jour is to replace the zinc anodes on the hull. One large one is mounted on the side of the hull near the stern, two others are on each prop of the bow thrusters (propellers which are embedded in the bow and thrust outward on either side to assist with docking and maneuvers in close quarters). This is not a difficult operation but does require scuba gear and some preparation in terms of getting all the tools and new parts organized. It should take less then an hour. Jonah is going to "help" - he'll just float on the surface above me while I work. I may give him the bag of tools on a rope which he can lower down to me. I also told him I would let him breath from the tank underwater so he will probably surface dive to where I am and I will "buddy breathe" with him a bit.

We may leave tomorrow to another anchorage nearby, an island called Uliveo about 5 miles from here. Or we may wait another day or three. We are in no rush having just gone over our plans we find we will be able to move slowly North between now and mid October when we will set off for Kiribati (Gilbert Islands). There are about 6 or 8 stops we want to make between now and then, two of which we visited last year and will be as brief as possible. Luganville on Espirito Santo is one of them, we spent about 6 weeks there last year across the channel off the Aore Island Resort on the island of the same name. It is a lovely place and they are very friendly. The swimming pool is open to cruisers and has a lovely view of the anchorage.

We plan to do some provisioning in Luganville, our meat is running low and Santo is the beef steer capital of the South Pacific. I don't know how many steer they run there but it is a fairly large island. The beef is Port Vila all comes from Santo and is of excellent quality and very inexpensive (most cuts are about US$2/lb, veal selling for only slightly more then beef). One guide book says that 85% of the meat produced on Santo is shipped to Japan, and they are quite finicky about the quality of their food.

That's it for now, Kate is almost done with writing which is the last subject in school before science, which is my job. We do about 20-30 minutes of science which Jonah just loves. I have no idea what the lesson plan is for today so I'd better go have a look before they are done.