We celebrated our beloved Leo’s tenth birthday in style tonight at anchor in gusty Havannah Bay in Efate, Vanuatu.

Jenna prepared duck confit pasta (his request) along with home baked cherry and apple pies, all washed down with the bottle of red that Hazel won in the speech contest 2 weeks ago.

WE HAVE SO MUCH FOOD ON SOPHIE RIGHT NOW! Jenna and I provisioned at the Supermarche in Port Vila yesterday, and it was our biggest provisioning run since San Diego. The food here is half the price of food in Fiji, with greater variety and a lot more Frenchness.

The day started in Port Vila with Leo waking up at 5:00 in anticipation of the big day. By 7:30 everyone else was up and Leo was hard at work on the Lego sets his brother and sister gave him.

Overall it was kind of a slow, cloudy, showery birthday Sunday. Leo and Hazel hung out in the salon watching movies and playing. Jenna and Lauren stowed our new mountain of food. We did the birthday phone calls back to the states. We even discovered that one of our marina neighbors used to live on Mercer Island and had a son who graduated from Mercer Island High School in Sara’s class.

It is a small world, indeed.

We left Port Vila around noon for the 20 mile trip up to the north side of the island. The wind was blowing 20-30 knots, and Sophie was surfing nicely with just a single reef in the main.

Jenna baked the pies during the run north, I had 4 lines in the water, but we caught no fish. We had the hook down and set by 4:00, relieved to be at anchor while celebrating with some birthday cocktails.

Dinner was a huge success, and Leo had no clue about the surfboard that was stashed on the boat.

It looks pretty good with his hair. He said it was his best birthday ever.

Have we mentioned lately how lucky we are?