So we’ve torn ourselves away, now what? We wait. We can’t go out this pass nor get into another island without three things: favorable wind, good visibility and tidal timing.

We were going to leave today, but this morning was squally and cloudy. That means wind and poor visibility. You can’t see the coral reefs. Also since it’s a full moon, the tides are really strong. We have to time the pass to slack water and this morning it seemed high tide was much earlier than the tide predictions. So we wait. Maybe tomorrow morning. We have a better take on the tide. High tide will be around 0730, so we have an hour after to make our exit.

In the meantime, we did some beachcombing. Found some nice shells and while we were walking on the beach we saw a boat load of Fijians in a little 18 foot “fiber” slip up next to Charisma. They saw no one home, since we were on the beach. Then they saw us on the beach and made a bee-line over. There were about a dozen people on board about half were adults and half younger children. We wondered who it could be. When they got to the beach one of the adults got out with a big lobster in his hand and walked over and handed it to us. It was Johnny from Maunaira village! His boat was the first one I fixed several weeks ago (it had a big hole and he had no fiberglass resin to repair it) and he was finally able to get out fishing to this side of the lagoon with the newly repaired boat. The lobster was our gift for fixing his boat! Nice.

Beach delivery!

Even better was seeing that they had a boat load of fish. A couple dozen large parrot fish So, our dinner (fresh lobster) tonight was twice as sweet. Delicious and so good to know that in fixing his boat we were able to help them get out and catch good quality food.

PS – Happy, happy birthday to Ann’s son Andy! It is very frustrating to not have internet nor phone access to wish a special guy happy birthday! Love you lots!