Mom’s Visit

We really enjoyed having mom on board cruising with us. Her two previous visits to see us were at a marina in Mexico as we were preparing for the puddle jump and then more recently in New Zealand where we did land travel and stayed in vacation rentals. So, this was the first time for her to cruise with us on Exodus. And the Mamanucas were a great place to hang out because islands are close together and we had reasonable conditions at both Mana and Navadra.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t so great during her visit, though. It rained some and we had some gusty wind conditions, but mom was coming from hot, hot El Centro, so she didn’t mind the weather too much.

Truth be told, Mom’s about that easiest guest to have on board that you can imagine. And I’m not just saying that because she’s one of the two people who actually read all this stuff. Seriously, she’s relaxed, doesn’t have an agenda, doesn’t mind all of the water and power conserving we have to do, she helps out, and she goes with the flow. For example, she was such a good sport over having to swim ashore since landing the dinghy in the surf was a little challenging. We’d dinghy close in, and then mom would get out with a boogie board and one of the boys would go with her and they’d swim in to shore together while I took the dinghy back to Exodus and then paddled in. The boys liked having grandma around to play games with and share in some of the dishes duties, of course. Alex liked showing off climbing to get her coconuts, and Brenden tried so hard to shoot her a fish.

Speaking of fish, it was pretty funny that after these years of reading about and seeing pictures of all the fish we eat, that we didn’t really get too many fish while she was with us. The spear fishing on this western side of Fiji just wasn’t so great. But Tim did manage to get a couple small coral trout, which luckily are safe to eat in Fiji, so mom was at least able to taste our favorite beer batter recipe!

Mom’s days on board went by fast, and before we knew it we were heading from Navadra back to the mainland of Viti Levu in order for mom to catch her flight home.

Fun with Grandma