Tridecagonathlon

The problem with skipping a day is trying to remember what we did. Sunday seems a long time ago now. What I do remember is despite the mid-afternoon heat, we got round to putting the main sail back on the boat and retying all the reefing lines. The patching looks pretty good so we’re pleased about it.

Later in the afternoon I had a few of the net controllers over to discuss our last week of running the net. The net we started heading down from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus has had a good run and has been pretty successful in terms of the numbers of vessels checking in from time to time and certainly those listening. Now that the NZ bound boats are congregating in and around Tonga and the Australia bound boats have headed off west we’re beginning to find ourselves pulled in different directions. We’ve decided to call it a day but not without gathering some information together about other nets and weather sources and offering that out. Getting a few folks together we were able to get some ideas going about how we will communicate the information we have over this last week.

No partying for Sunday evening. We watched a movie and slept early.

Around 6:30am Monday morning we were off, heading back to Neiafu for the fun contest they’d named the ‘tridecagonathlon’. The contest comprised 13 separate events all of which had opportunities to get dirty and messy. It started with an egg tossing / spoon race and ended up with a pie eating contest. The point scoring was somewhat arbitrary and totally up to the judges with points being gained and lost for various things including flattery, complaining, bribery (drinks), etc. So many points were given out on the pie eating event that it largely determined the final result. We had been split into six teams which separated the three of us into different teams. For the last event one person had to represent each team and had to eat as much banana custard out of pies in six minutes without using their hands. Helen and Ben both represented their teams. Ben managed eight pies and Helen ten – sealing and overall win for her team. Needless to say, both of them lost their ‘lunch’ later on. It was all tremendous fun and once I have secured some pictures I’ll post them. (I have managed to upload some pics from the pub crawl and full moon party which I’ll add to previous blogs).

In the afternoon we had a nice surprise. Jamie and Lucy offered to lend us their electric piano so Ben could get his fix in. We found compatible power sources so were able to take them up on their offer. Ben is now very happy.

We ended the day with Jack from Anthem aboard for dinner, chat and beers. Somehow this lasted some time and we weren’t asleep until late.

Today (Tuesday) is the last day of the regatta. There is a prize-giving ceremony for all the things we collected points for over the last week and no doubt a little partying after.

We’re looking forward to slowing down and that we’ll do once we get out of here and out to some of the anchorages around here.

What’s a bit frustrating is that we still haven’t been given the tracking reference for our allegedly shipped charger by CatCo. Without this we won’t be able to appoint an agent to clear it through the capital and get it here. Furthermore we have no idea about how much time we have to wait and how to plan our time in the anchorages. Seems just stupid to me.

One other annoyance is one of my email services has been hijacked and a bunch of our contacts emailed/spammed. Sorry if you’ve received some unwanted email from us. I am doing what I can to track this one down.