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Samoa: "Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea"

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“No part of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor [as the Samoan Islands].” -Robert Louis Stevenson Talofa lava, dear friends and family, We’re so excited to share with you the joy and respite we experienced in Samoa. Thank you for your patience.  Other sailors said the first South Pacific island we reach after a long voyage will always hold a special place in our hearts. They said we would remember the smells, the colors, the music, the gratitude that we survived, and the surreal feeling of stepping off the boat onto solid land for the first time for the rest of our lives. For most heading west, that’s somewhere in the Marquesas. For us, it will always be Samoa.  To truly explain what Samoa means to us, we have to go back a few years. Samoa, 2016     When Dave and I were Lake Union liveaboards, our neighbor had sailed his boat from there to Fiji with his family; as his wife and daughter returned to work and school, respectively, he needed ...
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Eight Days in Suwarrow, Cook Islands

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"Prevention is, as in other aspects of seamanship, better than cure." --Sir Robin Knox Johnston Kia Orana , dear friends and family, We’re sorry for the long wait between blog posts. We’ve been distracted by the responsibilities of land life and the horrors unfolding here in the United States. But since we’ll return to lovely Tonga soon, we realized we needed to catch up. We still have so much to share. And even during political dumpster fires, people need stories! The Best Laid Plans… At 1400 on July 20th, we pulled anchor in Tapu’amu, Taha’a, and headed south for the pass. It would be 8-10 days to Independent Samoa. We heard about customs issues there, so we ensured all our paperwork was in order. Our lavalavas (Samoan sarongs) were clean and ready to wear for our clearance formalities. I even downloaded basic phrases and numbers in Samoan to study during the passage.     With a low-pressure system forecast to form south of our route a week later, it wasn’t ideal w...
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