Leaving Fakarava, June 5, 7:00AM

Thursday evening, the day we arrived at Rotoava, the town on Fakarava, a supply ship pulled in and we were able to get some diesel from them. They also delivered veggies to the store and we were fortunate to get some cabbage, carrots, celery and broccoli. Katie Lee arrived just after sun set so we visited and explored the island with them for a couple of days. Our only failure here for resupply was butane. We don't have the fitting for the local bottles and we couldn't transfer fuel from one
of Larry's bottles on Katie Lee. So, cooking fuel is our achilles heel here and our time in the Tuamotus has come to an end. Happily, we understand in Papeete we have a choice of butane or propane. We were the only boat in the anchorage when we arrived but within a few days there were 9 boats at anchor from all over the world; France, Italy, Chile, Australia and the US . We had a great time meeting people from the other boats. There is so much to talk about with each crew, last night we saw
a fantastic photo show of Chile and we can hardly wait to go there. The wind picked up while we were here and we had several days with winds over 20 knots. When palm trees are the only wind break there's no hiding from that much wind even at anchor. Fortunately it seems we found a fine sandy spot and we were comfortable here. We took the pixies ashore and biked 20k each day for the last 3 days. The road heading south has pavement farther than 10k out of town but that direction was up wind and
the pearl farm we visited was at 10k so we turned around there. The road heading the other way out of town has pavement 3k to the airport and the rest of the ride was on sand and coral to the end of the island overlooking the pass. We haven't done much swimming here as the water isn't very clear and there's no great snorkeling spot near by. We cooked spaghetti and Katie Lee boiled some eggs for us so we have plenty of cold food for the passage. It's 250nm to Papeete and hopefully the propane
will hold out for Peter to have a couple of cups of coffee along the way.