Last night we eventually had the opportunity to catch up with our friends, Justine and Paul, whom we've been trying to call for ages. Prior to that, Elaine had the pleasure of our grandson, William, who is all of 17 months old, show his grandma his new bedroom and "bed" now that he's sleeping on his own, in preparation for becoming a "big brother" in a few weeks to his twin brothers. He was so proud showing Elaine everything he can now do, including opening and closing doors and cupboards, helping mom and dad tidy up, getting off a bed safely, getting up and down the stairs safely and pointing out various parts of his anatomy and those of anyone around him. It was certainly a wonderful way to end a day half a world away from family and friends.
This morning, with the sea state having calmed down, Roy dived again to finish cleaning the propellers, sail drives, keels and through hulls, following which he also managed to get the starboard waterline and hull completely cleaned. Now it's just the port side left to do. What a job!
He did get a rather unpleasant fright though when he had a close encounter with a sea snake lurking under Paw Paw when he went to clean the one keel. After surfacing in a bit of a flurry, Elaine was able to determine that it was the venomous Fiji Sea Snake which comes to shore to rest. While they are twenty times more venomous than any dangerous land snake, they seldom attack unless severely provoked and, fortunately, are thought to be unable to do any harm, as their mouths are tiny and usually cannot open wider than a small finger. If they do happen to get a nibble though one is in serious trouble. Roy did say it scurried off as soon as it saw him, but has certainly deterred Elaine from thinking of going for a swim.
This afternoon was filled with more errands like laundry, picking up our propane tank and commencing the process of sorting through all our ships stores to determine what we need to keep as emergency food supplies, what we can eat on passage to New Zealand and what we will have to consume now versus having it confiscated in New Zealand as part of their Biosecurity process.
No doubt some of our emergency supplies will be removed, but that'll be after the passage. We're just not prepared to have hundreds of dollars of food destroyed by the authorities, so, this evening we've enjoyed the last of our French brie, accompanied by Danish sausage, grapevines, olives and sundried tomatoes. Since we still have a fair supply of all sorts of "goodies", we're certainly not going to starve over the next few weeks.
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