Sharlene’s Birthday–Mac

Note: Here’s another post that was originally made to our tracking page. Here it is with some photos.

---

Sharlene has celebrated another lap around the sun. Technically, it is still her birthday back home but here in Tonga it is the day after. A lot has happened since her last birthday. Last year we celebrated her birthday in San Diego with our good friends Chris and Linda. It seems like a long time ago. We hadn’t even entered Mexico at that point. Since then we have sailed through four countries and made multiple offshore passages. It’s been a great year.

For this birthday we are anchored off Uoleva Island in Tonga. The girls on Renard slept over on the eve of Sharlene’s birthday. They had just finished reading the fifth Harry Potter book with their parents. I have been reading (re-reading) them also, so we celebrated with a movie night. The next morning when I went out into the salon I saw the girls had left two birthday cards they had made for Sharlene on the table. They heard me rustling about and were soon up, dressed and waiting at the table for Sharlene to emerge from the aft cabin. We enjoyed having the girls for several hours that morning. We had a big birthday breakfast and played hide and seek. Who knew there were so many places to hide on a 43′ boat?! It does help to be small I guess. Later in the day, we walked over to the far side of the island to snorkel and explore that side of the island.

The plan for that evening had been to have Sharlene’s birthday dinner on board Cambria with our friends from Renard but when other people in the anchorage learned that it was Sharlene’s birthday, plans were changed. We celebrated with a potluck dinner on the beach. The other boats in the anchorage are also waiting for a weather window for the passage to New Zealand so everyone was ready for a party. A good time was had by all.