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American Spirit II - Day 190 ; Angie Makes it Home, Germany Wins World Soccer Cup & Jeanine Miami Joins Crew; Monday, July 14, 2014



Up at 6:23 AM. When I got up I saw that Angela had sent me a text stating that she traveled 44 hours on Saturday to get home to Charlotte, North Carolina. You may think that that's not possible, but because she gained a day crossing back across the International Date Line, it is possible.

From 6:40 AM to 8:30 AM I went to a room off the marina where one of the tenants had set up a TV set for us to watch the World Cup Soccer final between Germany and Argentina. In a closely contested game Germany won in the extra time (over time) 1-0. The German crew members of the rally were thrilled; and the members of NDS Darwin from Argentina were not. For the rest of the morning we kept hearing car horns honking as they drove on the street by the marina flying German flags out of their car windows. Who would have thought that Vanuatu had so many German soccer fans?

Breakfast was late due to my watching the game, at 9:30 AM. Scrambled eggs, chilled pear halves and bread.

At 9:45 AM a rain shower happened by and after shutting all of our hatches we shut the hatches of the boat next to us, Boingo Alive. No matter how sunny it is during the day, if you're leaving your boat for more than a few minutes you have to keep the hatches closed, no matter how hot out it is. Otherwise you could return to your boat with soaked bed sheets and mattresses, which is an inconvenience; or a soaked navigation and communication's computer, which is a disaster.

My most important task today was to contact the MacKay, Australia Marina & Shipyard to arrange for work to be done on the boat. The biggest problem I foresee is that in order to get a new AIS (Automatic Identification System) installed on the boat, the Ray Marine warehouse has to program the unit before shipping it. That will take a few days. If I can have the unit programmed and sent to a repair facility before I get to Australia, then it can be installed immediately. Meaning I won't get left behind the fleet due to a more lengthy repair period than I want. I emailed the shipyard, and got a return email right away stating that they didn't do the type of electronic work I wanted done. However, they gave me a name and email address of someone who would do the work. I finally sent that person/company an email, and talked to them. I should have a plan of action to get the work done by the close of business Wednesday.

My driver Wesley picked me up at 1:30 PM for a ride to the airport to meet Jeanine Miami from Florida. She will be joining the crew for the passage from Vanuatu to MacKay, Australia. Her latest flight/connection was from Nadi, Fiji. However, a wide body from Australia landed before her small plane and a couple of hundred passengers made it thru customs and immigration before she did. Finally at about 3:00 PM Jeanine showed up. I was starting to worry that maybe her flight had been delayed or even cancelled. I knew she had made it from LA to Fiji because she had emailed us along the way.

We were back at the boat by 3:15 PM, and after unpacking Joel, Jeanine and I celebrated her arrival with a, you guessed it, cocktail hour.

At 6:00 PM we headed to Brewster's restaurant again. It was pizza night. (Glad I had pizza there the night before). We had dinner with crew from the following boats: Folie a Deux, Merlyn of Poole, Adela and II Audeacious. Before paying our bill, Paul from the World Cruising Club was kind enough to advise us that we would receive a 10% discount from the restaurant due to an arrangement that the WCC had with the restaurant. That saved us in aggregate a little over 3,000 Vatu dollars (about $30.00). After we left, we somehow drifted over to the outdoor but covered restaurant/bar at our marina and spent the 10% savings on a night cap.

Back at the boat at 10:00 PM. Within 10 minutes Joel and Jeanine were in bed. I followed a couple hours later at around midnight after reading some more from my Tom Clancy novel, Without Remorse. Just think Charles Bronson Death Wish on steroids.

Brian Fox


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