Kia Ora Whanau.
We started the day as we always do, with the shortest swim to hot shower ratio possible in the still mist, while captain Frank fixed a fortifying meal of baked beans on toast on which to break our fast. The morning like the week so far was calm, still, and picturesque which makes for less than premium sailing, so we lobbed the team into the tender and dragged them off to the beach for an annual good deed. Armed with a rubbish bag we set out to clean the beach, all 30 meters of it, after a strenuous 15 minutes we retreated to the ship for a second breakfast. As the mist cleared, we motored to Motoarohia for a snorkel, while under way we had a few simple knot lessons which were surprisingly popular. We arrived at Motoarohia on a high tide, with the lagoon full of clear water, ideal conditions for diving. The author did not participate in the previously mentioned dive and so cannot personally vouch for it, but all participants gave it top marks. Heemi and Mikaira collected kina in a hoodie which proceeded to keep them otherwise engaged from sailing for much of the day. The team was reluctantly extracted from the lagoon for a lunch of macaroni and cheese on the beach. Somewhere between the start and completion of this meal it was noted that the tender of some fellow shore loungers was taking advantage of the new breeze and making a break for the open water, without hesitation Kaia setoff to rescue it only to be given a hand and in turn rescued by Ness in our tender. After lunch a proper sea breeze started, and we introduced the concept of sailing to the team which they picked up quite well. As the afternoon started to wane, we arrived at our day’s final anchorage off Awaawaroa island. Before dinner we had a brief game of soccer and a lengthy game of human knot on a sandbar, suffering surprisingly few casualties we returned for a dinner of hamburgerish things.
Until Tomorrow,
Po Marie
