Day 128 Last clean-up

Waiting for the weather
We washed the inside of the boat and took on 100 liters of drinking water. The boat is now clean and completely ready to go.
Michael, Julie, Frank and Debbie stopped by the boat to say goodby as they fly back to New Zealand. They wished us a safe journey and they look forward to seeing us again when we get to Auckland. They also gave us some food they did not consume during their vacation. We should not only be ready to go but also fully provisioned.
Two new boats came into the harbor today. Selena is from Vancouver, Canada and Salicorn is a US boat we last saw in Bora Bora. They had a much easier time getting to Rarotonga than we did as they came on the North wind.
I bought one more WiFi card as I wanted to load all the photos onto the blog before I leave Rarotonga. Check out the photo pages if you have not looked at them in a while. There are a lot more pictures in the albums. Previously, I had put up one picture in each album as a place marker until I had more Internet time to populate the rest of the album.
Weather permitting, we should now be off to Suwarrow Island tomorrow morning. The distance is about 550 nautical miles and if we have favorable winds we should make it in about 4 ½ days. I'm ready to go.
I visited with Reinhart and Madelin on Adio for a while this afternoon. They are from Bad Reichenwald near Salzburg and now live in Munich. Reinhart built the boat and it is his second one. They have been sailing for several years and this is their second circle around the South Pacific having completed a trip to NZ, Australia, Japan, Alaska and the West coast of the U.S and South America. Now they are returning to the places they missed and the ones they enjoyed the most the first time. Fascinating.
Ben, Rob and Brian from Salicorn invited us to dinner but we have more room on Southern Star so they brought over wahoo that they had caught and a salad and we made the rice. Fish that is freshly caught then marinated and grilled is hard to beat. Andy played grill master and got it seared on the outside and just warm on the inside. You could pay a lot of money in a fancy restaurant but you could not get a better meal.