We, or rather Mike, has been in Papeete for four weeks while Carol went home for three.  Apologies for the long silence and for not explaining that at the beginning of July.  Thank you to those of you who have got in touch to check all is well because the blog has been left unattended for so long! 

All is very well but we are looking forward to leaving.  Tahiti is a good place to do some maintenance and some serious food shopping but it is not the romantic Pacific Island we had pictured.  Rather urban and rather scruffy with a traffic problem. 

Mike has done a huge amount of work while Carol has been away.  Engine maintenance, fitting additional strong points to the deck (which will make positioning the sails easier), de-rusting the cockpit table fixings, polishing the topside of the boat (involves hours with very fine sandpaper before you even think of applying polish), lifting and cleaning the underside of all the floorboards, getting the headsail re-stitched and more and more.  Tashi Delek looks terrific and ready for the rest of the Pacific.

We will island hop to Bora Bora starting with a day sail to Moorea tomorrow and hopefully some great snorkelling and swimming with the Manta Rays.