Pacific Odyssey - Leg 2

A  restful day, well needed.  There´s a flu bug making its way through the boat so some of us welcomed a slower pace I realized during the night that I had forgotten a few important details of the day due to how late it was when I wrote and more importantly, how tired I was.  Sorry.  Most important were the birthdays of Jeremy and Tristan.  They both wore their ´birthday boy´ buttons proudly and enjoyed our wonderful morning voices singing ´Happy Birthday.  The day had been so full that we are having chocolate cake, baked by Arwen and James,  tonight. At the moment, Mug Up is going on in the stern around the helmsman, with Jeremy and Jose playing guitar, Antony playing mandolin and Noah on the drum. It´s great how this group loves to sing.  Yesterday 5 or so people went for a tank drift dive through the pass, with the zodiac staying alongside. They went down 80ft with the video camera and saw some black-tipped reef sharks, lion fish, as well as hundreds of other very colourful fish. Snorkellers in the morning also saw sharks and sting rays.  Those of us who snorkelled just off the end of the coral shelf to the side of the pass, also saw sting rays 60cm. across with a 1m tail. Jacob pointed out a moray eel, a blue mouthed clam and the many other beautiful fish.  We have been sailing all day with the trysail, foresail and starboard course.  Last night Antony spent some time in the pouring rain; a very strong squall with a slight increase in wind blew over us. During
Jose´s watch, the bow went right under the water so violently that the anchor jumped from its tied position on the rail, sounding to Skipper, sleeping in the stern, like a log hitting the hull hard.  The girls sleeping below the deck thought we´d hit something.  The motion is smooth but rocky-rolly, very much side-to-side.  We forget the motion so quickly once we are on land, but are forced to remember and secure everything and wedge ourselves and our cups,plates etc. in.  Our E.T.A. is early tomorrow morning; Tahiti has just begun to show up on the radar, though we still can´t see it ahead. It´s exciting to be so close, although it means the imminent ending of the leg.  We feel fortunate to sail without the engine on our final passage; the air is soft and cool and the night is clear for some final stargazing. Today the entire group came together to discuss which aspects of this leg, of our community, we´d like to capture on video for the documentary about the trip. Two important aspects that came up were:  1)  a new look at
hospitality, how we host our friends or visitors compared to how open-armed, people have treated us, and 2)  how we are forced to live in community with people we otherwise may not interact with and how we have become so close in such a short time.  We spend all our time with each other, everything we do is done with the same group of people, very different from home where we have different groups of people we share different parts of our life with.  Here there is nowhere to hide one´s self and it´s difficult to keep anything about ourselves hidden as long as the 37 days we are so intensely together.  It was a good discussion, reinforcing again how much we´ve become a group, a community belonging to each other, working together and truly enjoying each others company.  It will be sad to say good bye to this group but we are planning on a full and very fun week in Papeete.  Our great friend Stephen Duff will be there, joining us as volunteer for the end of leg 2 and leg 3.  Jenna G´s mom is having a birthday today and Jenna G. wishes her a wonderful day.  Happy Birthday mom!  This is it for now, until tomorrow, good night, Bonice.