So far, Samoa seems very pleasant. Everyone is very friendly and the officialdom was not at all onerous. We’ve opted to come into the marina - the appeal of 240v (and even better, 50hz!) shore power is pretty strong! We’re making good use of the air-conditioning :) As we came into the marina, the officials for Health, Quarantine and Customs were already on the dock and they jumped on almost before we’d finished tying up. In fact, Anthony did sterling work finishing off the mooring whilst I dived into the paperwork.

Once that was done, shore power connected and AC on - things were already feeling great. Next up was immigration - a short taxi ride (or a very long, hot, humid walk). Sharing with Tom from Running Tide, we grabbed a taxi to do the “essentials” - ATM for some Samoan Tala, Immigration to finish the legals and then the ubiquitous long wait at the mobile phone store for a data sim (or 3 in our case). We found a good offer which gave us 1.5GB of data for ST$20 (about £6) plus a bonus 1GB - including the price of the sim. I went for a bit more as I knew I had some large downloads to do whilst here. 5.5GB for £13 - can’t really complain, especially as its very fast! Mind you, EE still does not work here - they really do have incredibly poor roaming arrangements.

Today we have some boat jobs. One blocked toilet (our first ever!) which being a yucky job will inevitably fall on the skipper. We want to look over the gennaker and see if we can understand the issue with furling. Some shopping needs to be done - but we plan to hire a car for a few days tomorrow to allow us to do some sight-seeing and large-scale provisioning. We think the provisioning here may be better and easier than Tonga - but that remains to be seen.