Checking out...heading to Majuro

Andy and Jake with one of the Japanese WWII guns in
Tarawa

As I'm writing this, Andy is checking out with Immigration and Customs and with any luck, we'll be underway in a few hours.  I won't be able to post from sea this time as I wasn't able to reload the sailmail software to our backup computer.  It needs a special program to load onto the MAC and I don't have that (and I'm not quite ready to pay $90 for it yet).  So we won't be updating for at least another 4 days or so.

After all the commotion the past few days, I forgot to assure you that we are looking on the bright side. I know my post was pretty negative, but we do realize it could have been a lot worse.  They could have taken ALL of our electronics and stripped the boat clean.  Worse yet, we could have been here.  So, we do realize that we're very blessed to have only lost a few things (a few important things).

Andy has spent hours trying to reload our charts to this computer but the connection is so slow it keeps crapping out on the last chart.  Guess what chart that is?  Yep, the one to Majuro.  It looks like we'll be brushing up on our manual navigation skills - paper charts, that is. Luckily, we still have all of our GPS's!!!

I was finally able to get the rest of our pictures to load, so hopefully that will tide everyone over until we reach Majuro.

Our Equator, Dateline, Prime Meridian crossing party

This is what you do when you get bored on a boat...
test out the expired flares. 

They've attempted sidewalks here.  Jake fell through one
of those holes.  oops.

Flat calm...

Two men on a styrofoam float...Andy offered them $200
to find our stuff....no luck yet.

We bought 5 lobsters off of some local kids....yummy.

This is the big boats we parked behind when we first came in...
no lights at night.  There's lots of these littering the bay...
some of them run aground.