We are at Fakarava

well we made it to the atoll Fakarava. had quite the sail, between 18-25 knots of wind with the odd gust of 28. wE sailed between 7.5-8.5 knots.!! 6ft seas and we took alot of green water on the deck as well as getting soaked quite a few times in the cockpit. the trip was about 7 hours . we came with Malachi and O'Vive. got lots of pictures of the boats sailing! wait til you see some of them , looks like we are sinking!!
Thanks Ron for getting our package to Lindsey, it has arrived . We will be getting it in the next couple of weeks when we meet up with Tin Soldier. It will be like having Christmas !! yeah.
We came here to do the drift dive/snorkle through the pass. It is absolutely beautiful, even had a bunch of black tipped reef sharks swim by us. we did the drift 2 days in a row. we have a new time here. " SHARK- Thirty" that means no swimming at all after 4:30, that is when they are most active - guess that is their dinner time. but the water is beautiful blue and clear, . There is a restaurant and we are going !! You have no idea how excited we main cooks are about that! We will be here for a
few days. We will be in Papeete in about 2 weeks. give or take a day as the wind has been blowing!! and the seas getting big!
We are down to having to bake and figure out snacky foods . no chips ( for about 10 days now), no nuts,just a few packages of crackers left, no fresh fruit ( 2 apples left only) . I have 4 fresh carrots, 1/2 cabbage , some potatoes , onions and garlic. the rest we have is frozen and canned. can not even get fresh fruit or veggies now until hopefully Papeete. but we can get all the coconuts we want! We are getting very creative! but it requires cooking and baking. so the restaurant is very exciting
to us. ( I do have 2 pkgs of beef jerky, being saved for the crossing to Tahiti, shhhhh don't tell my crew, its a surprise cause you can not get that stuff here!!!)

I have just hand washed a bunch more laundry with 2 other buckets soaking, its so windy here that the first bunch should be dry soon ( its 8:45am Tuamotu time) sure am looking forward to a laundry mat!
Steve , with the help of another cruiser, has made our sail cover so it never comes of the boom, and the sail stacks itself in the cover like a bag. looks really good and now it fits properly. that took a few days, pulling the mail sail on and off the boom a few times to fit it. required the help of Jay and Dave, and Chris on another steel boat did the sewing as he has the industrial sewing machine, mine just couldn't handle the thickness or the thick thread. Steve traded his thread and some
of our bar rust 235 epoxy for the sewing job.( yeah more stuff off the boat,) This works well, this trading thing! Having those 3 men on board doing the sail reminded me of when Ron, Brian, and others were on our boat helping. Thanks to all of you who helped us get of the dock!! and that includes all the meals, and help with the kids, and picking up stuff!! couldn't have done it without all of you!! Even got the new battons in the sail and also gave one of the old ones to Chris.
Well that's enough typing and power consumption for now, the computer just sucks the power!! thank god for our wind generator and solar panels , we have had lots of wind almost 24 hrs straight for a week !! this sure helps us . thats the big topic around the cruising world. trying to keep the power consumption down. not an easy task!! so enjoy your computer, tv, fridge/freezers,lights, and whatever else you turn on and take for granted ( this is from Steve by the way) for example in order to
maintain your lights in your house we would have to run our main engine 48hrs a day!!!!!!!!! (that's a lot of diesel to burn), not including the dishwasher.
next time we will talk about water conservation.....................
Enjoy!! be thankful that BC gets lots of rain, cause you have no idea what its like to have a very limited water supply, but that's for next time.

Love ya!!
Dionne and Steve , Kyle, Maya and Emma