Arrival at Kosrae

We arrived in Kosrae yesterday after eight days at sea, our longest passage for a while. The first couple of days were spent either motoring or drifting in a glassy calm. Then we got some wind of 10-20 knots from the eastern sector, set jib, staysail and main and settled down for 5 and a half days hard on the wind. For non sailors, this means living at an angle of 25 degrees with the hatches all shut to stop salt spray coming down below. At temperatures up to 35 degrees this does not make life very comfortable! For our last day the wind moved more into the SE and we were flying along at 6-7 knots with the green mountains of Kosrae getting closer and closer. We saw a few sights on passage, I saw dolphins, a big school of pilot whales and some other whales which we think may have been sperm whales, Jim saw a couple of plastic bottles and one glass bottle. We also saw quite a few fishing boats, some just visible as a loom of light, others quite close. We arrived in Kosrae on a Saturday so we are relaxing on board until Monday when we can clear in etc. It is nice to be clean and enjoy proper meals and a cold beer. We had some rain overnight (some squalls with quite strong gusts so we are glad we are not at sea) and today so we have used some of the water to do some washing and have also cleaned the inside of the boat (well some bits that really needed doing anyway). We also cut each others hair - Jim has just shaved his all off again so that was easy but so far he hasn't made a bad job of mine (professional hairdressers may disagree) or maybe it is due to having only one small badly lit mirror on board!

At first impressions, Kosrae, or Lelu to be specific, is a collection of ramshackle buildings at risk of being inundated at high tide. There is an old white church with flaking paint which has held at least 2 packed services today and what was possibly choir practise last night. We are guessing at the packed status due to the number of cars (all very modern looking) parked outside. We are looking forward to stretching our legs in the short term and doing some diving later on. Micronesia is supposed to have some great diving but the Solomons may have raised our expectations so we will see...

We had hoped to post some more photos in Noro but the internet connection was too slow. Not sure now where our next chance will be but we will post some when we can.