Day 106 Motu Toopua

Happy winter
Mark and JIm met to decide if we wanted to stay in the windy anchorage in front of Bloody Mary's or move to a more protected location. Liahona was very concerned about the security of our present anchorage and after some discussion we decided to move behind the shelter of Motu Toopua where we thought we could find a calmer spot.
Our expectations turned out to be true as the space between the motu and the reef was very protected. We dropped anchor and enjoyed the calm.
We were near the reef so Mark and Kurt accompanied Liahona on an exploratory mission to evaluate the snorkeling. After a while they came back to report that this was not a very interesting spot for viewing marine life and coral. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful swimming location with a beach several hundred yards away. As a result, 10 year old Kai and 6 year old Kira spent all day in the water attempting to win the prune-lookalike contest. I applied a supposedly waterproof bandage as I could not resist the crystal clear warm water any longer. The adults swam for over an hour and played a bit of water football for exercise. If there was a prize for "doing very little and enjoying it a lot" we would have applied. Probably my most significant achievement today is writing this blog.
We may have had one thing against us in the competition. Yesterday in town, Mark bought a New York Times and today he tortured us with the cross word puzzle. To our credit, we were terrible at it.
The other distraction is that yesterday we met Far Niente. A week ago they had visitors from the U.S. who brought them some magazines. They were now finished and they passed them on to us. Somehow reading Time and National Geographic would probably disqualify us from the "goofing off" competition.