What a long and fun week this has been. The last day of the regatta finished with a prize giving party at the wharfside hotel in the evening. Before that we did have an interesting day. I spent 4 hours wrestling with the internet at the Aquarium Café. It is a favourite spot, it seems, for cruisers to buy a coffee and collectively wrestle with slow internet connections. It’s quite social as we each wait several minutes for each page to load. I managed to upload a bunch of pictures from the previous day’s events. I also managed to book a flight for Sam to join us in New Zealand. While I was ashore, Ben hosted a chemistry lesson for nine of the kids from Tyee, Kamaya, Stray Kitty & Mojo. Not all his experiments went as planned but from what I heard later it went over well.
Back to the party. At the beginning of the week we had to option to purchase passports which encouraged us to visit places around town and the island gaining points for each visit and even more if we bought things. We gained points for the events we joined in and more if we won any of them. The party included a prize-giving ceremony for the top 11 scorers. As we had stuck together most of the week (and we got Ben’s passport stamped while he was working on the Full Moon Party) we had similar points. Not only did we all make the top 11 we placed near the top gaining a good selection of prizes. Ben and Helen each won two tank dives. I won a 45km 2 person kart ride around the island which I’ll do with Ben. We each earned secondary prizes amounting to a free pizza, a map and a desert for 2 people. All in all this was quite a valuable haul – but very much the icing on the cake for a fun filled week.
The party had some local dancing and a live band. We stayed on till nearly midnight when Helen felt too tired to continue. On the way back to the dinghy it seemed she had a new burst of energy causing her to invite Brian, Brady & Erin from Delos, Jenny from Callisto and Steven and Dorusha back to the boat to carry on the festivities. We didn’t get to sleep until 1:30 – normally (but not recently) quite late for us.
We had planned on scooting out of Neiafu today and seeing some of the outer anchorages. We still don’t have the tracking number for our charger which is getting comical. The Delos crew have invited us to dive on a wreck in the bay here today and we have to sort out and book our prizes so maybe we won’t be out of here after all.