The quilted wall hanging Ann made for Ma and George. (It's embroidered with "Vinaka Vaka Levu" which means Thank you very much.)

OK, Ann keeps saying; “They’re NOT magic beans, they are Surprise Beans”.

In any case, they are dried beans that you boil to reconstitute. (Thank you Unilever, for making beans that are marked as good until sometime in 2014). I guess the surprise is that they are better than canned. Not as good as fresh. BUT…mix them with lobster, and pasta in a parmesan garlic cream sauce and who the hell cares what they are. The results were heavenly.

So, today we pretty much chilled. Another windy day. Our sum total energy expenditure was snorkeling a bit, taking a saltwater bath (you jump in the water, get out, soap up then jump back in to rinse, then you get a teapot of fresh water to rinse in the cockpit). Oh and Ann’s been making a little wall hanging for “Ma” (short for something like Makareeta) since she’s been so nice to us. And she polished the starboard stainless just to keep Charisma looking her best!

I spent a fair amount of time getting weather faxes to try and figure out where the low that’s somewhere near us is, and where it’s heading. The grib files are not accurate right now which generally means there’s a low sneaking around somewhere ready to pounce. I think it’s currently south of us and heading east. The wind has shifted into the NNE, so we’re almost parallel to the beach right now. Four out of five of our neighbors left for another spot. We are hanging here with the cat, Lady Nada. One reason folks left was that it’s full moon high tide and that means our nice sand spit that’s been blocking north wind waves disappeared under water. That means we were getting some bigger waves over the sand in our little paradise. But, the tide’s gone down and now we’re settled back into our nice calm anchorage, but with four fewer boats who went ½ mile across the lagoon. We might have gone as well, but we’re planning to leave tomorrow anyway, so thought we’d just stay the night. It’s always a bit of a gamble in changing weather to decide whether to stay or move. The wind is forecast to go north-which is fine for us-but then shift around to the west before going back to SE. West is the problem. If it goes west in the middle of the night and blows hard, we’ll swing right over to the sandy beach. We’ll literally be 20 meters off the beach given how close we have anchored to get out of the wind and how much anchor chain we have out. We’re betting the swing won’t happen until tomorrow in the daytime when we’re ready to either move to the village anchorage where we’re picking up a carving that they are working on for us or can just leave if the weather cooperates (and tides, but that’s another story). Then it’s either off to Savusavu or stay here one more night for better weather and then off. In either case, we should see some favorable winds by Monday at the latest (knocking wood). We’ll see. In any case, guess what? As I’m writing this there’s lightning and thunder somewhere to the north of us. OH, my favorite! It’s looking to be an interesting night.