Sacrebleu!

0800 position 17-10S 179-01W. At anchor in the Bay of Islands, Vanuabalavu, Lau Group, Fiji

The Van Diemen crew enjoyed a lazy day yesterday of exploring the Bay of Islands, boat projects, and relaxing in paradise. Eric and I took the small rowing dinghy out to find more passages through the maze of islands and found a couple of sea level caves. I got some great photos inside them. One cave was apparently well known to resident islanders as the fifty foot diameter chamber inside the small opening had native names carved into its limestone walls. Meanwhile back aboard Van Diemen, Rob built a new flag pole to replace the one that washed overboard on our rough passage from Bora Bora to Rarotonga.

Rob met the cruisers on the boat that was tucked into the cove next to ours when he was out on his SUP exploring, and they came over to Van Diemen last evening for sunset cocktails. David from Canada and Australian Fiona are three years into a South Pacific cruise on their forty foot sloop "Anahana". David is a professional photographer and has a fancy new drone with a built in camera aboard Anahana. He flew it up over the Bay of Islands yesterday morning and got some stunning pictures of the Bay and boats in it from more than a thousand feet up. He was kind enough to give us copies of the photos he took on a thumb drive.

My computer keyboard is still not working despite being packed in rice and placed in a warm compartment for a few days. Since the keyboard won't work I can't enter my password to get past the login page that comes up when the computer is turned on. I was screwing around with it this morning and found a couple of settings toggles that I can access from the log in page, including an "accessibility" page with settings that allow folks who can't use a keyboard to access the computer. Hmmm. That sounds a lot like me. I discovered I can turn on a virtual keyboard that uses the touch pad in lieu of the keyboard. Sacrebleu! A miracle Messieur! She is working! I am very proud of myself for discovering this workaround. It is not ideal, but I can now get at my navigation software, waypoints, and cruising guides that will allow us to safely explore this cruising paradise.

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