Which hand do you use to wipe your bottom?

Its Alive.....

When your bottom is covered with barnacles, its not which hand, but how many. All three of us had a go at it. Finally we've a clean bottom. Its wonderful. The boat feels like its sailing on butter. The ride is so fast and smooth.

The picture right gives you an idea of how thick they were. For your information the anti fouling is the black. Not that you can see any of it.

The job wasn't too bad, I got nearly half of it done in Hiva Oa, the rest was done in Huka Hiva. We were told that sharks come into the harbour at Hiva Oa. But decided "what the hell" I want those barnacles gone.

In Nuku Hiva, all three of us were in the drink for ages. Scrubbing scratching our selves. Blood, dead barnacles in the water. Fortunately we saw our first shark the following morning instead. Would have ruined the fun if we'd know there were sharks about.

I didn't get scratched, I've got nice dinghy sailing gloves, to stop the scrapper (formally a family circle biscuit tin) digging into me. I was also wearing a rash vest.

Well it was a rash vest, now its more a sort of T-Shirt. I've lost a lot of weight.

We're no longer at Hiky Naky, I mean Nuka Hiva, we're off to the Tuamotus. A series of atolls. between us a Papette.

The Tuamotus are rings of coral with a lagoon in the middle, often 20 miles across. With no actual island. The highest point in the archipelago is a palm tree + a beach. See my trip one section for the Apataki video.

We've made some friends out of Tiger. A South African family, who very kindly (given is £50 a bottle hear) brought some scotch over, which we helped them remove from their customs declaration. We fed 'em steak as compensation. I do feel sorry for them though, Al and I offloaded junk on them. My inflatable baseball bat now belongs to their kids.

Whould you want so share a small boat with 2 small kids and one infaltable baseball bat?