Sophie is on a mooring in front of a resort at Aore Island, opposite the city of Santo (Luganville) in Esperitu Santo, Vanuatu. 15.32.262 S 167.10.805 E.

We enjoyed a couple of pleasant days in Wala and Malakula. It was dumping rain on our first morning there, so we were late for our appointment with George for a tour of the village.

That didn’t stop Don from showing up at Sophie at 7:30 with 3 enormous coconut crabs that were still alive, tied up with palm fronds. They were gun metal blue,weighed 1-3 kilos each, and looked like the aliens from the movie Starship Troopers. We had to cook them in 2 batches using our big pot on the stove, and they were delicious. Since the crabs exist mainly on coconut milk, the crabmeat tasted like sweet coconuts. We got 3 meals out this catch. Spectacular.

We eventually dinghied in to the village for a quick tour of some grave sites, the church, and George’s house. George’s main goal was to escort us across the harbor to the opposite village to watch another Smol Nambas dance. I have now learned that “Nambas” is the name for the palm frond penis sheaf they wear here during performances, and the dances are either Smol or Big depending on the amount of costume the dancers wear.

We arrived unannounced in the village and met the young chief while he was out fishing in his dugout canoe. Since they were not expecting us, we had to wait for almost an hour under the roof of a building that served as a factory for making concrete blocks and also as their church. The chief had to go up into the bush to find people to do the dance. We were joined during our wait by some local kids who made mud pies on the concrete floor. Hazel played with them and got a little messy. The local kids usually walk 30 minutes down a trail to a big catholic school overlooking the bay, but school is canceled on days with heavy rains due to the mud.

Our wait was definitely worth it, because this village’s Smol Nambas featured men and women, boys and girls. It was clearly a traditional part of their lives and not a learned tourist thing like the dance we saw in the Maskeylines. The women did a taro root smashing song, and the men did a traditional dance, a rowing dance, a bird dance, and a dance involving feathered hats that were much larger than the fascinators we saw at the horse track in Auckland. For the bird dance, there was a teenaged boy painted like a bird, with black wings painted on his arms and chest, all covered with stars. The villagers also showed us how they make fire by rubbing wood, and how they use magic to carry someone who gets injured in the bush back to the village. (Hint: the leaves are sticky). Afterwards they posed for photos and even let us try on their hats.

We spent the afternoon doing Sophie School (Jenna and the kids) and taking naps (me) before returning to George’s village at 5:00 PM. Jenna went off with the kids to see how George’s daughter Ley does sand drawing, a traditional art form in Vanuatu. Wait until you see the pictures. I went off with the guy named David to help him fix things. Our first stop was his buddy’s fiberglass fishing boat, which had 2 small dings on the gelcoat. I said they were above the water line and too small to be worth fixing, but he insisted and claimed that one of the holes caused a leak. So I went back to Sophie, got some 3M sealing compound, and put a dab on each hole. For this, David’s buddy later gave us 8 large grapefruits and 6 drinking coconuts! Nice guy. I then went to David’s house to help with his electronics. We started with a small generator, which he said wouldn’t start because of a bad spark plug. He flooded it (which I now realize he did deliberately) and said it wouldn’t start. I played with the gas and it started and ran just fine. I had brought an extra Honda outboard sparkplug, but it was the wrong size. There was nothing wrong with his generator. We then went into his hut to look at his broken inverter. It was a little 500 watt box connected on one end to a both a solar panel and a car battery. The other end was connected to a multi component stereo system with a wall of speakers that belonged on stage at a Cheap Trick concert. We opened up the inverter, and on the circuit board where there was supposed to be a fuse was a bridge wire. There was no AC load on the box. I put in a 10 amp fuse I had brought with me, and it immediately blew. The same with a 15 amp fuse. It was clear that he had fried his circuit board. George told me later that David (his uncle) would disrespect the Sabbath by playing his stereo loud during church services and was not liked in the village because of it. God invented fuses for a reason, people!

After David, I walked over to George’s house for dinner. Ley and George’s wife had cooked dinner for us. But first I mentioned something about kava, and they insisted that George and I go to the kava bar for a pre-dinner cocktail. It was my first time at a kava bar, which in this case was a small hut and some benches on the beach. They poured kava from the bucket into beer bottles and sold it to you for $1. David was there, but George wouldn’t let me buy him a drink. Jenna has been told that kava in Vanuatu is 10 times stronger than kava in Fiji. George chugged his bottle, but I paced myself with just one but was definitely feeling its narcotic affect as we joined the ladies back in George’s hut.

Dinner consisted of grapefruit, rice, pumpkin, island cabbage in coconut milk, tuna, yams, and local fish cooked with bananas. We sat on woven mats on the floor. 2 children also joined us. We have heard from multiple people throughout Vanuatu that they preferred to live in their village over living in Port Vila because village food was so much better than food in the city. You also didn’t have to pay money for it. You just walked out into the bush and collected what you needed. That night we understood why.

The next morning the rain had cleared and George joined us on Sophie for the 20 mile trip around the top of Malakula to Benenaveth village to explore some historic caves with ancient drawing on their walls. We anchored off the beach, and immediately 5 young men paddled out and climbed on to Sophie. They wanted to check out the boat and were not in school because they were all playing in a soccer tournament that afternoon. The couldn’t speak much english, but they knew their positions: striker, right stopper, center midfield, and right midfield. The keeper was out in the bush.

We dinghied into shore and waited for the chief at his house, but he was up at the soccer field for the tournament. His son Aime had seen us anchor and had come down to show us the nearby caves. One was nearly 50 meters long, and the local belief was that they were the first places inhabited by people in Vanuatu over 2,000 years ago. There were carvings and handprints on the wall, and scientists had apparently come and carbon dated them to help prove their authenticity. Jenna has the photos.

After the caves, we returned to Sophie and motored George 10 miles up the to the top of Malakula where he would spend the night at his uncle’s house. He left Sophie with some frozen marlin for his uncle, 50 feet of old rope for his cousin’s cows, one of my sunhats to shelter his bald head, and some memories of new friends he had made. He kept inviting us to come back and build a vacation house on his family’s land. It’s a tempting idea.

Sophie then turned north to cover the remaining 20 miles to Santo. There was supposed to be lots of tuna in the area, and we had 4 lines in he water. Soon the reel started whizzing with a hit, and I stopped the boat, pointed into the wind, and started to bring the fish in. A lot of line had run out, and the fish never surfaced so I didn’t think it was mahi mahi. While it was still 100 meters away, I saw something move under the boat and thought there may have been another fish on a meat line down there. But we ignored that and reeled in the smiling head of a wahoo (and nothing else.) Its body had been bitten off by a shark, marlin, or another wahoo. I never felt a change on the line and assume it happened close to the boat, probably by the fish I saw lurking beneath us.

We threw the lines back in and enjoyed a quiet afternoon sail into Luganville Harbor. We had dinner at the resort (Cold beer! Coconut Prawns in Curry!), and then later in the evening Jenna and Leo went on shore with the big gun camera and tripod and took photos of the moon.

It was a good couple of days.

Sophie is starting her day nestled behind Wala Island, gently rocking as a rain shower passes overhead. 1558’632 S, 16722’437 E. Please note how our lattitude keeps getting smaller as we continue to journey north.

We woke up yesterday at Awei Island hearing a snort outside the boat. A dugong cow and her big baby were swimming around 10 meters behind Sophie. The dugong looked like a big brown hippo in the water, except for when it dived and showed off its dolphin tail. Her baby stayed right by her side the whole time. They hung around Sophie for 2 minutes, then went away. I never had “See a dugong cow and her enormous baby” on my bucket list, but it felt like a bucket list moment.

Actually, I don’t have a bucket list. My life is a bucket list.

It was 7:00 AM and sunny, the forecast was for ~19 knots of wind from the SE, and Jenna and I decided to take off for an anchorage on the north tip of Ambrym Island, 30 miles away. If it was too rough, we could always turn and sail with the wind back to Malakula. As we turned the corner and began to motor up the Northwest Channel away from our anchorage, the wind picked up to 25 knots apparent on the nose, and we were riding a 2 knot ebb tide that helped push us along. When the wind blows against a fast current, it makes the waves become tall and steep, and at the entrance to the channel we were motoring through 10 foot standing waves at 7+ knots. From the wheel we could see how the waves ended once we got through the entrance to the reef, but it made for an interesting 10 minute roller coaster ride. Once we cleared the channel the waves calmed down, we put 2 reefs in the main and pulled out a full jib, and enjoyed a fun sunshine sail for 15 miles up to the western tip of Ambryn. Our cellphones started working again, and we even posted some pictures to Facebook and Instagram.

As we rounded Ambrym, the wind swung around to the north. This created a bit of a problem for us, because our intended anchorage was 15 miles away and looked like it was exposed to the north. Given the wind, we reluctantly turned and set course for Wala and Rano islands, another 35 miles away on the north side of Malakula. Jenna was bummed because she had hoped to spend 2 days learning more about the mountain culture on the island. They have a large and active volcano there, they also do some unique dances involving giant masks in the shape of cones that go all the way down to the dancers’ shoulders.

But at least we were sailing downwind on our warmest and sunniest day in a couple of weeks. We lost 2 fish on this leg. The first was a 4-5 kilo mahi mahi that we caught on a Riebling via a long meat line. We got it onto the deck, and I tried a new technique that David on Flour Girl told me: if you grab a mahi mahi’s tail and bend it up towards its head, the fish completely stops flapping around. It worked! We then removed the hook and looped the red rope that Melissa Ahlers gave us around the fish’s tail. We have started bleeding our fish by dragging them in the water behind the boat. This makes for better tasting meat. (And yes, Melissa, we are using your rope to do so. But we haven’t reached the point where we say “OK, it’s time to Melissa that fish”.)

Anyway, as we were about to Melissa that fish, but its tail slipped out of the loop and the fish drifted away from the boat. Goodbye mahi mahi, hello shark snack.

The second fish we lost was a flying fish. There are tens of thousands of them around here, easily the most we have seen in the Pacific. I was up at the wheel and one caught the corner of my eye. He picked the wrong moment to launch off a wave and arced high and long directly onto Sophie’ trampoline. I yelled and started running for it, because fresh flying fish make the best bait in the Pacific. He saw me coming, rolled three times, found the edge of the trampoline net, and then fell back into the water. Oh well.

By the time we rounded Wala Island, it was 4:30 in the afternoon and we had sailed almost 60 miles. But it was still warm and sunny, and the island’s village was bathed in golden light as we dropped anchor next to the beach. Soon a fellow named George paddled out in his dugout and invited us to dinner at his house. I was pretty tired after a long day of sailing and asked if we could do so tonight instead. This was most likely a social faux pas on my part in this culture, but he said tonight would be fine. He also offered to walk us around the village and arrange tours or another Nambas dance for us. Thirty minutes later a fellow named Donny and his 2 buddies paddled up and asked if we wanted any coconut crabs. These are apparently the largest crabs in the world. He said he would climb some trees at night and bring us 2 or 3 this morning. He said he would charge only ~$7 for a 2 kilo crab. We said YES! 30 minutes later a fellow named David paddled up and asked if we knew anything about inverters. The inverter for his solar panel was showing a red and a green light, and it was supposed to show only a green light. It might need a fuse. He also asked if we had any spark plugs, because his generator won’t start and he thinks it is the spark plug. He offered us grapefruit in return. We said YES!

I would have helped him without the offer of grapefruit, you know.

We’ve spent our second night anchored behind Awei Island in the Maskeylines. According to the grib weather files, the wind has shifted up to the east, which for us now means that there is no wind in the harbor. Two other boats — Flour Girl and Octurus II — joined us and Firefly in the anchorage yesterday. This morning the boats are lazily swinging around at anchor in little wind under a leaden sky. Firefly just left 30 minutes ago and reported from the entrance of the channel that it was blowing 25 knots from the southeast. We are quite happy to sit tight here for another day or so.

Flour Girl and Octurus are both boats cruising with kids, and it is quite nice for Leo and Hazel to have playmates in the harbor again. We assumed when we took off from the States two years ago that we would encounter lots of other children on boats, but outside of Opua and Musket Cove it hasn’t happened that much.

We started our day yesterday with Jenna leading Sophie school and me doing chores. Our water maker had shut down the other day due to a low pressure sensor reading. This usually happens when the filters get clogged and is not that big of a deal. So I cleaned out all the filters, which were quite icky, and ran the system again. I kept getting a low pressure fault accompanied with an automatic system shutdown. I flushed the system multiple times with no luck. Same error. I finally disconnected the hose that leads into the fitting that houses the low pressure sensor, and was proud to see an enormous amount of water gushing through the hose at high pressure. I reconnected everything and opened up my beloved Sea Recovery watermaker control panel. Much to my surprise, I saw that the wire leading from the low pressure sensor was not even connected to the system’s circuit board. Some other sensor wire — most likely the lead from either the old or the new high pressure sensor — was plugged in there instead and it was telling the system to shut down. Since we weren’t having a high pressure problem — I could tell by reading the gauges — I bypassed the low pressure sensor leads on the circuit board, started the system up, and it ran just fine. I’ll spend some time debugging the new pressure sensors, but many of my friends out here in watermaker survival land have ditched electronic sensors altogether. We still have one that checks for salinity in the water, which is important. But simple is better.

Meanwhile, while all of this was going on, the other boats in the anchorage were preparing for the 2:00 PM dance performance the local village on Avokh Island had scheduled for us. It was a big village with 2,000 people, but they didn’t have as much money as the village in Lameh and were still learning how to work with tourists. The crews from the four boats piled into 3 dinghies and motored for over a mile through some sloppy waves and around a mangrove island to get Avokh. As we stepped ashore, a group greeted us with necklaces made from palm fronds ad a flower. We were then led by Kaiser, our guide, on a path along the shore to the performance area. At one point, he asked us to duck as we walked under a tree branch that was well above my head, because Michael Jordan had bumped his head there last year. He has visited this village twice in the last three years and has promised to return. He must be very tall.

The most visually significant aspect of the native Vanuatu dances are the costumes the men wear as they perform. It consists of a palm frond tied around their waist like a belt, a palm frond wrapped around their penis like a sock, with enough extra frond at the end to pull the sock up and attach it to the belt. Everything else on them was left to freely swing in the wind. They used mud to draw shapes all over their skin. Some of them had another leaf hanging from the belt over their butt crack. A few were adorned with feathers. One had some leaves braided into his beard. They all had bracelets on their ankles that made a maracca noise as they danced.

Needless to say, Jenna was impressed and took many photos. And I now know what I am going to wear as my Halloween costume this year!

They called the dance they performed for us “Nambas”, and I believe it is a variant of the Vanuatu dance unique to their area and dialect. We were arranged in a clearing away from the village, and 4 older men plus a drummer, all in costume, marched down a path and started singing in front of us. Soon they were followed by 18 young men carrying sticks. They stamped, chanted, and marched around for 15 minutes. They performed 2 songs and then they were done. Afterward, we posed for photos with some of the performers. Hazel refused.

We then walked back to the village, ducking under the Michael Jordan branch, and gathered in their community center hall where they served us a snack of nuts, baked cassava wrapped in island cabbage, smashed breadfruit covered in coconut milk, and kava. Vanuatu kava is much stronger than Fiji kava, and just one cup gave me a bit of a buzz.

We then had a very wet dinghy ride back to the boats and invited the three kids — Zach, Khan, and Jarah — over to Sophie for a play date. We told their parents that their presence was optional, and all 4 parents chose the “we will enjoy a kid-free boat for a while” option. Our guests brought over a couple of bags of popcorn, and Jenna made 2 batches of kumara fries. The kids had a great time, playing with Lego around the salon table and then watching The Lego Movie.

It was after 8:00 when the movie ended and the kids returned to their boats. Jenna and I were ready for bed, and Hazel asked us “Mom, what are we going to eat for real dinner tonight?” We gave her a snack and all tucked into bed after a busy and memorable day.

Sophie is currently anchored at Awei Island, which is part of the Maskelyne Islands on the southeast corner of Malakula Island in Vanuatu. 16.32.055S 168.01.112E for all you geography buffs. (Which mainly means my father.) We crossed over here yesterday afternoon from Epi Island and plan to sit here for a couple of days as another low pressure system passes over the area. The forecast is for 20-25 knots of wind and lots of rain. The anchorage seems nice and protected here, and we are surrounded by 2 islands, a reef, and a mangrove. There is another boat (Firefly) in the harbor with us, and we have invited them over for coffee later this morning.

Once again we are in an anchorage with no Internet coverage. Our cell phones can pick up a data signal when we are on passages between islands but the signal seems to get blocked as soon as we drop the hook. We can use our single side band radio to receive detailed weather forecasts and update the blog, so we haven’t completely cut the cord with the outside world.

Lameh Bay in Epi was a wonderful place to visit. It is shallow bay with sea grass on the floor and hosts a colony of sea turtles and a dugong, the South Pacific cousin of the manatee. Yesterday morning we started the day with a visit to the village. The chief, a guy named Willy, greeted us on the beach and helped us haul our dinghy up the sand.

Another guy walked over and asked if he could give us a little tour. 200 people lived in the village, spread out over an area of 200+ acres in clusters of huts organized by family. We agreed! He started by taking Leo and Hazel into a kitchen hut and explained how people in the village had to prepare every meal over a fire, and because it sometimes got very smoky they needed a separate place for cooking. Our tour guide had lived in Australia for 2 years and said it was so much easier there to turn on a machine that instantly cooked your food. Here, they had to use fire.

He showed how they had toilets (outhouses) 100 meters away from the sleeping huts. I told him how clean I thought everything here was compared to villages in Fiji and Tonga. There was not a scrap of garbage to be seen anywhere, and people raked the yards and roads every day. He laughed and said he thought the village looked really dirty right now, a thought shared by all compulsively neat people throughout the world. He also said they needed to keep the ground clear of leaves and garbage in order to keep the mosquitos at bay when it rains. This is malaria country.

He took us to the local primary school, and we got to see all of the little kids running around in their uniforms. About half of the village was school-aged. Like most of the schools here, it consisted of a cluster of buildings arranged around a grass field large enough for a full-squad soccer game. This school also had a playground and a basketball court. One of the buildings was made from concrete and contained 6 classrooms. It was built by a Rotary club from Japan and was another example of how small, locally-funded foreign aid projects from the first world can have a massive impact on the lives of people in villages out here.

He said the village couldn’t survive without the skim from New Zealand and Australia. This was the word he used to describe the money sent back home from locals who go abroad to work. For example, his brother went to New Zealand to pick kiwis (fruit from trees, that it) and came back with enough money to build a couple of concrete houses, a stone well that captured rain water from a roof (and featured small fresh water fish swimming around, eating the mosquito eggs), and a store equipped with solar panels to power a refrigerator.

Given there lack of money, they have to be as self-reliant as possible. He showed us the food his family grew: coconuts, bananas, mangoes, papayas, avacados, grapefruit, cassava, kava, “island cabbage” (a type of kale they eat every day), green beans, cucumbers, squash, and herbs. He took us to the local fish market, where they sell fresh yellowfin tuna to the yachties for ~$3/kilo. (Unfortunately they were out.) He showed us a couple of women who were weaving room-sized straw mats from dried grass, using die to color some of the straws to create geometric patterns. He showed us his family’s bread oven. Everyone in the town worked. Everyone in the town seemed happy even though they possessed very little. Our guide wanted no money or food or gifts in return for the tour. He was just happy to share with us. The walk through town took less than an hour, but we’ll all remember it for a long time.

So we then went back to Sophie, donned our snorkel gear, and swam with turtles. We dinghied around a bit to find them, but over the next hour Jenna and I spotted about 20 of them underwater. She took photos with her Go Pro, and at one point I went down 20 feet and touched the back of one. She didn’t seem to mind.

Soon it was noontime, and we decided to leave Epi for the 20 mile sail west over to the Maskelynes. There is some more culture to explore over here, and Lameh Bay can get rolly if the wind picks up. Our sail started in very light air, and we were making 4-5 knots with just the code zero up and 4 lines in the water. There were tuna jumping in schools all around the harbor entrance, including a group that looked like they were attacking a large floating tree branch. I had even seen a yellowfin while swimming with the turtles, but I didn’t have my speargun on me at the time. Didn’t think it was a good idea.

No luck with the tuna, and we were soon out of the lee of Epi and the wind picked up to 20 knots with steep 10 foot waves. It was more from the beam than from the stern, and the motion was uncomfortable. Our initial plan was to visit Uliveo Island, but this would involve riding the surf through a 30 foot wide opening in a reef to get there. Plan B was to turn north and enter through the East Channel where we could have a protected approach to our anchorage.

While executing Plan B, a mahi mahi hit the Riebling lure trolling off our fishing pole. We were still in the steep waves, Jenna furled in the jib, but Sophie continued surfing at 4 knots under bare poles and no engine. The fish fought hard but spat out the Riebling while airborn on the top of the wave just 10 feet from our stern.

That was it for adventure yesterday. We motored to our anchorage, dropped a hook, and were greeted by a local chief and some other fishermen in their dugout canoes. They invited us and Firefly to attend a performance of a local dance ritual that will take place this afternoon in a nearby village. I think this is the dance where 20 men stomp around wearing nothing but some dried grass tied around their privates. I am sure Jenna will bring her camera.

Dinner was pasta bolognese. The Friday Family Movie was the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman. We slept soundly, the wind howled, and the anchor didn’t budge. It’s early morning now, and it is starting to rain. The luck continues.

Sophie is currently underway in Vanuatu from Port Vila, Efate to Lameh Bay, Epi. It’s about an 80 mile run, and we left the dock at 5:00 this morning. The boat is happy, sailing north at 9 knots under full main and jib in a 15 knot easterly with 1 meter seas and sunny skies. 2 lines are in the water, and I saw a marlin go vertical about 100 meters from our starboard side.

We had a very successful visit to Port Vila over the last few days. We reconnected with our travel companions Colin and Mercedes on Segue and spent a day with them in a rental car doing a lap of Efate. Efate is beautiful, clean, and friendly — the Segue crew are seriously considering buying property here. We did our “booze, eggs, and cash” provisioning and also loaded another wheelbarrow full of produce onto Sophie.

Most importantly, we talked with a lot of people here with extensive cruising experience in Southeast Asia, and this helped us firm up our cruising plans for the next couple of months. There was a cruisers potluck at the Internet Cafe here on Monday night, and most of the boats were either heading to Indonesia or had been there multiple times.

We are now planning to explore Vanuatu for another 3 weeks, slowly making our way north. Jenna could spend another 2 months here, but we have cyclone season here and a northwest monsoon up there to deal with, so we can’t stay here as long as we would like. (Note to cruisers following us across the Pacific: please plan to spend 2 days in Vanuatu for every day you spend in Fiji. It’s that much better here, and Fiji is very nice.)

We will leave Vanuatu from the Torres Islands and make a straight run of ~670 miles to Gizo in the Solomon Islands. We’ll clear customs there and hang out at Liapari Island, which is 13 miles away from Gizo and has a secure marina where we will feel safe on the boat. We’re torn about our visit to the Solomons. It’s supposed to be beautiful with incredible diving of sunken WWII wrecks. It also has many dangerous areas, and we’re simply not interested in being in harbors where guys with machetes can climb onto the boat at 4:00 AM. Liapari is right where John F. Kennedy lost his PT boat, and we do plan to do some local touring and diving there.

After a few days in Liapari, we will make another 500 mile passage to Kavieng, Papua New Guinea, sailing to the east of Bougainville and New Ireland islands. We’ll clear customs there and then hang out nearby at Nusa Island Retreat (www.nusaislandretreat.com.pg), which is a secure anchorage across the harbor from the government wharf. It’s a situation similar to Gizo, where we have decided to sacrifice some local connection in order to reduce the risk of being boarded by “raskols”.

At this point, we will be at 2 degrees south latitude, the weather will be hot and sticky, and Sophie will be doing a lot of motoring. After a week or so in Kavieng, we’ll make a 600 mile run west to Jayapura, Indonesia, hopefully getting there around November 15. (We WILL be flexible in our schedule when it comes to weather, though.) We also will most likely use our air conditioners more here than we did in Seattle.

We don’t plan to do much in Jayapura other than clear customs and refuel, because there is some political unrest there. We’ll make another 300 mile jump west to the Padaido Islands, which is supposed to be lovely and tropical. We’ll then do another 300 mile jump west to Raja Ampat, a natural park and world heritage site. We could easily envision spending a month there before crossing the Flores Sea and hitting Flores, Lombok, and Bali.

The best thing about this increasingly clear itinerary? We’ve found yet another boat who plan to follow the same basic route that we will follow, and they have kids the same ages as Leo and Hazel! “Per Ardua” is a cutter from New Zealand with a 9 year old boy and girls aged 6 and 7. They will do the same Vanuatu->Gizo->Kavieng->Jayapura route that we will do, with the same shared goal of reaching the Indonesia border around November 15. We’ve hung out with them for the last couple of days, including a 4 hour play date yesterday on Sophie followed by an evening concert in the park featuring local string bands and an MC discussing the benefits of combining kava with marijuana. We all got along great are quite happy to now have a 3 boat flotilla doing this 2,000 mile passage into Southeast Asia.

We seem to be getting luckier and luckier.