One side effect of paradise is that you lose track of dates and time. In looking back over the sent messages I see that I have the days numbered incorrectly. Brilliant solution; stop numbering the days, and just label the post with the date from now in! It will be weeks before these get posted since the WiFi in Cocos Keeling is so sketchy (not to mention expensive), so posting with the dates is a better way to keep track. The wind is still howling. It worries the boat like a cat playing with a mouse. Poor boat yaws from side to side, always pulling on her chain. Our heavy duty compensators have stretched until they are over four feet long. I’m amazed they haven’t snapped! Of course, the 30 feet of 1&1/2 inch nylon line that runs through each of them also absorbs a lot of the snatch. I’m ever so grateful for the 73 pound ROCNA biting deep into the sand and plenty of room for 8:1 scope of chain! No matter the wind, we have held our place beautifully . We finished oiling the cockpit table today, then went ashore for skipper’s briefing, prize giving, blue jacket passing( onto Footloose for Guy and Nina’s six days of hand steering to Darwin), a wonderful bbq lunch that included choices of kangaroo burger and local fish fillets cooked on the coconut husk and driftwood powered grill. The park system all over Australia is amazing, even here on their most remote island there are grilling facilities, shelters with ingenious roof top rainwater collectors that feed into big tanks with a tap on them, sturdy metal tables, and plenty of trees to string hammocks between. We had a lovely afternoon of food and fellowship, then headed back to the boat at sundown to start getting things ready to go offshore tomorrow in our Sweet Dream.
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