the refit is finally done!!! everyone jump for joy! after 5 weeks of grinding, scraping, painting, welding, more grinding, more painting... etc... (you get the point), we are now ready to sail! we leave monday. and no more delays, because we have already cleared customs. so today is our last day in town to provision ourselves for the trip, the ship provides the basic 3 meals a day plus snacks, but as we have no refrigeration on board, it is mostly rice, beans, potatoes and bread that will make up our diets. today we are all buying our secret stashes of food to keep in our bunks. mine consists of:

12 avocadoes
3 bunches bananas
1 crate apples
24 mandarin oranges
4 honeydew melons
1 kilo walnuts
12 kiwi fruits
2 bags fresh garlic
4 bottles red wine
2 cases (x15) Speights beer
1 bottle rum
1 box instant coffee mix
1 box instant noodle mix
1 tub peanut butter
1 whole salami

hopefully that will be enough to keep me going for the 3 week passage to fiji! maybe i need more liquor...

sea trials tomorrow, just testing out the engine and steering and working out any kinks. then we leave first thing monday morning with the tide to fuel up and then north up the west coast of NZ for 1 week passage to cape reinga, then 2 weeks of open sea crossing to fiji!

i'm on watch from 8-12 (am and pm) every day with Kat (our uber-engineer) and tom, new crew from aus. we have been dubbed the "rigging monkeys" because we all love working aloft so much. i wear a safety harness when i'm aloft, but forget to clip in unless i'm on the t'gallant yard (the highest yard on the ship). kat is teaching me about the engine and also how to make bread, and evan (the skipper) is going to teach us all celestial navigation! this is the reward for so much hard work the last month.

my biggest contributions to the refit:

grinding the entire port side hull
scraping the hull of the ship underwater in scuba gear
tarring the rigging (the dirtiest job on the ship - at the end of the day i had more tar on me than on the ship, i looked like i had leprosy)

oh and no more pink hair - after attempts by various members of the crew to cut my hair (and make it look decent), at the end of which i looked like i had mange, jared shaved my head with his beard trimmer. and NO, i am not posting pics. i look like a fuzzy egg. i have to remember to wear a hat when it's cold because my head freezes, and also to sunscreen my entire noggin during the day so that my scalp doesn't burn.

okay, i will post pics of me bald eventually, once we get to fiji as it is my cook day and i have to feed 12 hungry sailors or there will be hell to pay!

(ps if any of my friends want to send me mail you an post stuff to the Royal Suva Yacht Club and they will hold it for me. address it like so:

Lisa Larsen
c/o Schooner Alvei
Royal Suva Yacht Club
Suva, Fiji

and it will be held there until we arrive. my mama sent me some mail and said it was 3.50 CAD to send an envelope.)

ta for now! will post again in 3 weeks from suva, fiji!