Savannah – Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Vaitape, Bora Bora

KC2RIY — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 16:04:00 +0000

John from Sea Mist stopped by early in the morning and offered us a couple of baguettes. He’d dinghied round to town to pick them up exploring the cut in the reef that we’d taken on the way south. We accepted them gratefully. This was while Ben and I were boiling up our evening’s catch for breakfast. It turned out they were slipper lobsters and they had a surprising amount of meat in their tails for their size. Lobster followed by brie on fresh bread – a tasty breakfast.

Just as we were ready to set off for town Sea Mist passed us by. We agreed to make some copies of their paperwork so they could obtain duty free fuel. Ian passed it over to Ben as they maneuvered close by. The we were off. Once we were clear of the shallow I handed the helm over to Ben and went below to make copies. We were soon approaching town. As I’d let Sea Mist know the copies were ready, Ian rendezvoused in their dinghy. To keep it interesting we didn’t slow down for the hand over.

We anchored in 88ft outside of the town ate lunch then rested. We all felt really tired – probably not yet catching up from the late evening two days ago. Mike and Jodie from Savannah popped by while we were resting and we got chatting. As a result they may be joining us today for our hike up the mountain.

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In the afternoon we wandered around town. The main drag is all tourist/pearl shops aimed at the cruise ships that come by. Beyond this there was not much else. We did find a couple of places we may possibly eat at this evening for Ben’s birthday.

We did have plans to join the pot luck at the nearby yacht club but as we were feeling tired and wanted our energies for today we passed on this.

Today is Ben’s birthday. We are planning on hiking up the mountain here. The skies are clear right now so the hike is definitely on. We may be joined by John from Sea Mist, Hannah from Wonderland and Mike/Jodie from Savannah. The plan is to meet at the dock at 7am and head on up. It’s 3 hours each way so we should be back by 1pm.

Bastille Day

KC2RIY — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:56:00 +0000

We woke up to an exceedingly clear day. For Ben this meant he saw his first glimpse of Moorea in the distance with great clarity – a taste of things to come.

Ben and I did the baguette run for breakfast after which the two of us headed over to the Intercontinental Hotel to have a look around and possibly go in the pool. We decided in the end not to swim there but to go swimming on the nearby reef which we did after lunch. The swim on the reef was fair but was all worth it in the end as we spotted an eagle ray casually gliding along nearby.

In the afternoon Ben and I spent some time preparing lures. He asked if that meant we’d be “catching fish” when we next sailed. He has much to learn.

In the evening we met up with David and Danielle from Leu Cat for Happy Hour before we headed back to Dignity for something quick to eat. We then headed back to the hotel, collecting Mike and Jody from Savannah then David, Danielle and Shirleen from Leu Cat to all convoy over to the hotel to watch the dancing.

We arrived seconds before the dancing started and had a treat watching the professional dancers do their thing. They had a good show but it was fairly short. The setting was pretty cool and they did include a short version of the Marquesan Pig Dance which was a lot of fun.

This morning we’re off to Pape’ete and then we’ll sail over to Moorea to get away from the crowds and busyness off Tahiti.

Back in Marina Taina

KC2RIY — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:49:00 +0000

The trip back up north from the eclipse was a little quicker than we anticipated so we changed our plans and headed for Marina Taina. On the one hand it would have been nice to spend another evening on our own on the south side but there were also benefits for getting settled in.

The main activity for the day yesterday was shopping. We provisioned sufficiently so we have most of the main items aboard to get us to Rarotonga in the Southern Cooks. We will no doubt be picking bits and pieces up along the way, such as fresh veg, but the bulk of it is now in. In the evening we went ashore for happy hour at the Casa Blanco with the Leu Cats (and guests) and the Savannahs who we recently met. We all ended up staying for a meal there.

Today we’ll top up with fuel as the duty free fuel here is not a bad price. We haven’t used a great deal but we want to have enough aboard to get us to New Zealand and if the weather is kind to us this should do it.

Ben should be already on his way to us but won’t arrive until 6:20pm this evening. We’ll walk to the airport from here and then return via taxi. Tomorrow is Bastille Day. There doesn’t seem to be much happening here that day. We had hoped there would be fireworks and/or public celebrations or something. Sounds like we’ll have a quiet day aboard.

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