Then it was time for lunch. Olive laid on an absolute feast of a lunch. All delicious with lots of locally grown veg - something we were very pleased to see as we'd run out of fresh veg a long time back. The corn-on-the-cob was delicious as was the salad. It was all lovely!
After lunch, Olive dropped two of us off at Highest Point for some stunning views of Bounty Bay and Adamstown. You can just see Duplicat and Aldebaran in the building swell... The walk down from there was very pleasant but I'm very glad we didn't have to walk up!
Time was running out. We had another wander around "town", read the local newsletters but then it was time to go. The swell had been building all day and we were not looking forward to this bit.
So it was down the Hill of Difficulty to the landing place. Brenda Christian was taking us back in her boat, so we loaded our provisions, the two huge boxes of fruit and veg ($40 and worth every cent) and 60l of diesel into her dory which was then launched using their lift. Anthony and I jumped in and with the onshore spotters giving us the thumbs up, Brenda went for it out through the surf. We stayed surprisingly dry, but coming alongside Duplicat was very difficult. I managed to get on at the stern, and we then brought the dory alongside the midpoint and handed the stores up. Anthony dived into the deck from there and Brenda returned for the most important item - the chef!
Between the two of us we managed to get Mandy on at the stern, and waved goodbye to Brenda. But Pitcairn wasn't about to let go of us easily.
Due to the conditions we wanted to get underway as soon as possible, but as we lifted the chain, we quickly realised it was under a coral bommie. I donned my scuba mask and dived in to see how badly we were wrapped. Fortunately not too badly, and with Anthony on the helm, Mandy on the anchor controls and me in the water, we managed to unthread the chain and get free. The swell was very large which made things "interestin ". Not something we would like to repeat in such conditions, but it's inevitable we will have to do similar in the Tuamotus at somepoint. Hopefully in calmer weather! Valuable lessons learnt...
And with that, we were gone. We spoke to Charlene the harbourmaster on VHF again to express our thanks for such a wonderful and all-too-short stop. I hope we can go back sometime!