Shake and Bake

October 24, 2008--We have been very busy the past few days working on our chore list, and the boat is looking pretty good.

The "shake" part of my subject is that two nights ago at 2 o'clock in the morning, Steve and I both woke up when we felt an earthquake. My first thought was that we were dragging the anchor because of the sound, but then I remembered that we were on a mooring ball. Steve said, "What was that?" We both decided that it felt like an earthquake. We found out later that the week before, Tonga had experienced a 7.1 earthquake, but we didn't hear about it until after our experience. We assume that it was an aftershock. Anyway, we both had trouble getting back to sleep after that.

The "bake" part of my subject is that I have been baking and cooking things for the crossing to New Zealand. I plan to do quite a bit more baking on Sunday so that everything will be as fresh as possible for the crossing. There is no flour in Neiafu so I will be making my own bread, which we have decided is as good or better than the store bought. I also plan to bake some breakfasts for the first few days, which usually tend to be a bit difficult. I have made and frozen some spaghetti sauce, and we were able to buy the meat that we needed a few days ago. It is all now frozen and ready to go.

The weather has been interesting. One of the weather routers here said that there would be a good window for the 24th, but then saw that the low around New Zealand had deepened so he told the boats that had left port to return to port and wait for the next window. That would be a bummer! Right now the weather looks pretty good for us to depart Tonga on Tuesday, October 28. We will keep monitoring the weather until Gary gets here, and then we can make a decision. Scarlette O'Hara and Tracen J plan to leave at the same time, so we will hold a radio net twice a day to keep in touch and discuss the weather information and our current conditions. We know of other boats that plan to leave Nuku'alofa on Tuesday, so they may be one day ahead of us, which means that they will be a good source of information for us.

That's all for now. I plan to post another blog on Sunday, and, hopefully, get some pictures posted as well.

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