Day 173 Lunar eclipse

We have decided to leave tomorrow so there are the usual things to do in preparation. There is a dock where we can park the boat and get a fresh water hose for a thorough cleaning. While Mark, Kurt and Andy work with the sponges and brushes, I get us checked out with Customs and do all the grocery shopping. The stores have most of what we need but the items are often in unfamiliar packaging and store locations so it takes much longer than I anticipated. The only thing I cannot find is ham as they are all operated by Indo-Fijians and, as I recall, HIndus do not eat pork.
After the chores are done it is time for haircuts so we rig an extension cord to the dock, sit on an overturned bucket and all get a #2 buzz cut. This is the shortest my hair has been since I was in high school. I will have to be careful in the sun as I have nothing to shade my scalp.
The boat is clean, we are clean and everyone is hungry so we head for a restaurant that has WiFi so we can get one more round on the Internet before we leave. We may be out of touch for a week or more so everyone wants to get up to date with their e-mails and their banks and post the newest pictures on their Internet sites.
At 1600, the marina has a free talk on sailing in Fiji so Mark, Andy and I sit in as a bearded Englishman who has lived in Fiji since forever takes us through his favorite spots and his opinions on what to avoid. Several places we have considered are on his no list, mostly because of the chance of possible unexpected bad weather near the extensive reefs. One island is off limits because the locals do not want visitors who might influence their culture. This is a big contrast from the fairly up-to-date Savusavu. At the end of the lecture, we get some maps and more detailed instructions for our intended route.
After a quick dinner, the crew adjourns to the yacht club for a dart competition and I hitch a dinghy ride to the Top-to-Top boat for a talk with Dario and Sabina. When they give talks in the schools, they discuss CO2 emissions and global warming and they wanted the benefit of a chemist who can edit their talk for scientific accuracy. We sat on the deck under the moonlight and talked while we watched a total eclipse of the moon that started at about 2000 and was still in progress when I finally went back to Southern Star at 2300. The moon was slowly obscured and never completely went dark but instead turned a very dark reddish color. I suspect this has something to do with the umbra and penumbra (our view was of the penumbra shadow) but I am not sure. In any case, it was very interesting to see and our view from the boat was perfect.