Dinner afloat

I love how cruising days unfold!

Max, Nancy, and Johnathan went into Atuona today as a bit of a recce before our official paperwork, etc tomorrow morning (as promised, they were hardly out of the parking lot by the anchorage when someone offered them a ride to town). Victoria and I (and of course Benjamin) stayed behind on Fluenta so that Victoria could decorate the banana cake that she and Nancy had baked yesterday. Victoria has been longing to decorate a "proper" cake for weeks. She was quite put out that we didn't do much baking on the passage, so this was a long-promised event.

On their way back through the anchorage in the dingy, the others stopped at a neighbouring catamaran where we had seen some kids (the only kid boat we have seen so far). Next thing I knew, there was a call on the VHF - did we want to drop over for a bit of a visit? The family was delightful (kids aboard were 10, 11, and 15) and despite the fact that it was coming close to the hour to prepare dinner, we were soon engaged in various lively conversations in a combination of English and French. Victoria whispered in my ear that she would like to share our cake with them, and so I suggested that we could have dinner together if they didn't have other plans.

Since their boat was so much bigger than ours, and it had a lovely open area that easily accommodated everyone, I suggested that we could go back, cook some marlin and potatoes, and we could all eat together on their boat. This was accepted as a good idea all around, so we rowed back to Fluenta and returned an hour later with the food (and with tummies "held over" on our first French baguette of the trip...) and we had a delightful meal and evening with fish (baked in butter and sprinkled with salt & pepper), mashed potatoes, a huge bowl of pamplemousse slices, green papaya salad, coconut pieces, and two kinds of cake - turns out that one of the boys on their boat likes to bake as well. Benjamin sat at my feet and chewed on a piece of green papaya for ages before going back to his stuffed monkey and then falling asleep in my arms.

We hadn't even met these folks this morning, and we had a lovely evening with them tonight. This is definitely one of the things I love about cruising :)

~Liz
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At 5/18/2014 1:57 AM (utc) Fluenta's position was 09°48.00'S 139°02.00'W

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