We had an interesting last day in the Tuamotus which was also our 24th wedding anniversary. I told a few people that it would have been a special one had we had an extra finger on each hand but only a few (closet mathematicians) got the joke.<\/p>\n

We went ashore just before 10am to attend church. The church was a tiny building just behind the restaurant and the Minister was Valentine, the lady who ran the restaurant. The service didn’t start until after 10:30 – noone was in a rush. The room had about 4 locals and about 10 cruisers in it. The service comprised singing in French and Tahitian followed by some bible reading \/ sermon finishing off with some more singing. I was asked to read a couple of passages in English.<\/p>\n

After church we took a few photos of the tiny settlement and hung around a little. Valentine and her husband Gaston gave us a set of ribs from the previous days pig for an anniversary present. We were very grateful for this.<\/p>\n

Back on the boat we had a rushed lunch and got our dive gear together for a final dive due at 1pm. A flotilla of dinghies went outside the pass to drift dive in. The first half of the dive was pretty good but the visibility then dropped and the interesting features vanished. We ended up back at our boat where John and I cleaned the hull ready for our passage.<\/p>\n

We didn’t get much time off before heading back to shore to drop off our presents for Valentine and Gaston – principally some insanely strong rum from Grenada and some other bits and pieces we could find.<\/p>\n

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Back aboard John cooked us a curry for our anniversary dinner and the evening went well.<\/p>\n

We all had a lousy sleep last night as a result of a supply vessel that came in overnight and anchored nearby running a noisy generator all night. We left the anchorage just before dawn when it was light enough to go. The winds are 8 knots and we’re struggling to make 3. We need the new Code Zero waiting for us in Tahiti. The winds are forecast to improve tomorrow so we should arrive in Pape’ete sometime on Wednesday.<\/p>\n