Day 42

Thursday 11th June 2009
Port Maurelle

Today we got word of a whale in the channel near Mariner�s Cave, so we set off on Avant Garde along with the crew of Red Thread to go and find it. We could see it�s blow from a far and we headed in. Avant Garde have a much better engine than us and so chased it so well that we caught up with the whale. We then spent over an hour just enjoying watching the humpback whale repeatedly surface, blow and dive. We got quite close on a number of occasions, cutting our engine, and just watching the majesty of this beautiful mammal, the only noise being its breath and our whoops and cheers of delight; it even swam under the boat checking us out and we could see its white underside as it breached. What a thrill! This whale is here early in the season, the whales mainly come in during July and August to calve up here and whale watching is a big tourist business. We had thought we might miss out on seeing them, returning home so soon, so this was a real bonus. As it was over lunchtime, I�d taken along some home made bread dough, tuna, cooldrink and papaya and Marion baked the two loaves in her oven while we watched the whale, and then treated us to a lovely lunch on board on our return. They are lovely people, who also have their own island! Oyster Island near Espirito Santo, Vanuatu; the Island Cruising Association are all stopping in there after Fiji on their 6 month Pacific Tour, hopefully we�ll sail there someday too. Rebekah, Abby & Tom spent the rest of the afternoon on Red Thread, cleaning their boat in return for the treat of watching a movie onboard afterwards! Tom�s choice of Star Wars won, not sure that the little girls enjoyed it as much though. Matt and Emma were returned from Kairos in the early evening, we were sad to say our farewells to Kairos as our association with Abbey and her parents has made our holiday. They left for Fiji at midnight, to make the best of the good winds, for their three day trip over. Charles was sorely tempted to take off for Fiji, we have the charts and we had initially planned to go there, however we decided to stick with our current game plan and make the most of Tonga, we�ll just have to do Fiji another time!

Joy