Kia orana tatau
Departure day today from Palmerston to Rarotonga.
We have spent a couple of days/nights on the vaka outside of palmerstons reef waiting for the weather to calm down. I personally thought I would struggle being stuck on board with 16 other people. But surprisingly times gone relatively fast and the vakas proved to be quite spacey in what I thought would be trying times. Had probly my best midnight watch with kelvin last night. The 12am till 3am shift. We counted the shooting stars, watched the southern cross drop below the horizon, and ate the last of our small packets of doretos and twisties whilst everyone was asleep. We figured the goodies weren’t enough for everyone so made sence we had a nice treat before setting sail today. (thank you aunty Anna and Talisa for the treats).
This morning Zeb Revake and Jerimaiah Samuela went for a last spare fish to catch some goodies before heading back to raro. The boys said the reef was one of the best they had seen. Such great variety and the fish were so big including the papera. Given we had just come from our national park and for the boys to be pretty impressed with Palmerston’s lagoon ecosystem, must have been pretty darn good.
Received an amazing farewell kaikai from the people of Palmerston, Juliana, Caroline et al, thank you all for the yummy French toast and nu we had that for lunch as we looked back and saw Palmerston get smaller.
En route to Raro now. Have the motors going but still sailing at a nice pace of around 5 knots.
Happy 21st birthday for tomorrow Juliana Masters. No doubt this will be the party of the year on Pamati.
Don’t worry mom we all safe, happy and sound. Marummaru Atua is looking after us well as always.
Alanna Smith
