Macy

Had our friends Dave and Julia, from the boat Macy, on board Pelagic for a few days' visit last week. They sailed to New Zealand for the cyclone season, but were in Oz to visit her uncle for Christmas. We met these guys in Nuku Hiva, when I rowed over to say hello at an anchorage we shared. I've rowed over to say hi to a lot of different boats, and this was the best outcome yet - they've become good friends. Good for Elias to see them again, too - there was a time, somewhere between French Polynesia and Tonga, when he used to pretend to call Macy on the radio every day.

We got out the sailing rig for the dinghy and held time trials around a set course. Dave and Julia are both one-design racers, and they had the poor grace to clean our clocks. We noticed the difference in posture between us and them when we looked at our pictures of the event - notice how Alisa is just sitting on the seat, while Dave and Julia are crouching or kneeling in the center of the boat, optimizing the dinger's balance.

***

Meanwhile, we've been discovering Iluka, piece by piece, and settling into a travel-free life here. We've been doing yoga on the beach at the end of the day, and going for long walks in the rainforest, and generally becoming more and more impressed with this place. Alisa has swimming lessons lined out for Elias, and we're waiting for the weekly story hour at the library to resume in February - the sorts of things we were looking forward to when we imagined finding some nice place to take a break from traveling for a few months...