Pacific Odyssey - Leg 1

It was good and hot today and a number of us visited the beach for a few hours staying cool in the water.  Karen is nearing the end of her two days off and spent all of yesterday basking in the sun on the beach on the North Shore of the island, reading a book, being anonymous.  Antony, Jordan and Tavish rented a car and went scuba diving at Shark´s Spit, also on the North Shore.  They dove through lava tubes with turtles swimming alongside them and also had a great day exploring, stopping at whatever caught their interest.  Most people returned to the boat for a final supper together and remained for the evening.  Jose, Antony, Lindsay and Noah did an ice cream run and this was followed up by Mug-Up on deck; one last chance to sing.  Corbin, Gillian, and Jose played guitar, Antony played mandolin, Dave played ukelele and Tavish, Kiesa, and Noah played the drum, quite the band and great singing too.  At 1730hrs the Grace moved around to the front of the pier, in front of several restaurants.  We are very exposed and people are coming by to look, ask questions and have their picture taken in front of the ship.  There is a lot of interest in the program.  One of the restaurant owners came by immediately and thanked us for being here, we were quite beautiful to look at, he said.  We do need to be somewhat more discreet in our showering though.  Nice, live music was playing from the nearest restaurant until after 1900hrs.  Then we picked up the baton and started Mug-Up.  Kiesa offered to perform as live music with her guitar and her singing, but they haven´t gone for it yet.  She was successful at a place in Maui, I´m sure she´ll keep trying.  She has a beautiful voice and her lyrics are thoughtful.  Nouri and Christina are busy packing their new surfboards in bubble wrap, ready to board the plane and meet family in Kauai for a holiday.  They are pretty excited.  I found a wonderful, new beach with the boys today.  It took us about 30 minutes to walk there but they always find interesting things to look at and ask questions about, the time passed quickly.  It´s often a good time for us to be together. just to talk about whatever they bring up; I enjoy it.  The water seemed cooler and cleaner.  It gets deep quickly and further out there is a reef which at low tide is exposed.  Next time we go we will bring our snorkels and masks.  We saw young kids going out with their harpoons and of course my guys now want to do the same thing.  We´ll start with the masks.  There were less people and the beach was bigger.  The texture of the sand here is incredible and it just goes on and on.  I don´t think sand is brought in here as I would dig down very deep to make turtle holes again, and the consistency of the sand doesn´t change.  It´s slightly courser, very light yellow but soft.  The boys made fantastic castles, then destroyed them.  We discovered that the seed pods on the various trees we pass under are very interesting.  We try to open them, but some are incredibly resilient.  They are often quite big and have very interesting shapes;  large walnut-like. long beans, perfect golfball-like, round-ended ovals with a velvety fuzz covering them . . . the list continues.  Jacob enjoys opening them and seeing what´s inside.  Lindsay completed her Intermediate today; she worked hard, there is a lot of material to cover.  Tomorrow is a big day.  Most of the trainees have made a start at packing though the foc´sle still looks wonderfully lived in.  Once we have said good-bye to them, the crew will spend several hours cleaning the ship, preparing it for Leg 2.  We hope to have a supper together tomorrow night and talk about our time so far, focusing on our amazing first leg and starting to think about Leg 2, being mentally and physically prepared for new trainees and our sail down to French Polynesia.  It will be a difficult day for all of us, it is very sad to say good-bye.  I hope all you parents, siblings, friends etc. have a wonderful homecoming with our trainees.  Enjoy their tales.  Think about us as we get ready to do it all over again.  How fortunate we are.  Good night, Bonice.