Robbed in Tarawa

It's true. We've been robbed.

After spending most of the day ashore on the Battle of Tarawa Tour, we
returned to the boat to find we'd been robbed.

We'd heard that there have been thefts here. ICE lost their dinghy oars and
a fuel can. CELSIUS had been boarded, broken into, and a few items were
taken from their boat - hair clippers, palm pilot, etc.

Knowing this, we'd been careful. We always lock the boat when we leave,
including the cockpit lockers. On shore, we lock up the outboard and spare
oars to the dinghy. But, these guys were clever. They just broke the locks
on our cockpit lockers and got access to these big storage lockers.
Surprisingly, they didn't take much. They looked through John's tackle box,
but didn't see anything they liked. They didn't take any of the zillions of
coils of rope we have, nor the dinghy fuel, the tools, or speargun. Odd.
Instead, they took some snorkelling gear. They left behind the broken mask
and the old black snorkel, and took our two remaining masks and snorkels.
But left our fins. They also took a dive knife, and a pair of neoprene
booties.

It's all a terrible shame. A bad memory in a country that has become our
favourite destination of our past two years of cruising. And...the worst
part is that the cockpit locks are now broken, and will be expensive to
replace - more so than the lost gear. Not to mention that we have to always
have one person on the boat.

So, it's with a bitter taste in our mouth that we prepare to leave Tarawa.
Earlier than planned. But, if we can't both leave the boat, we may as well
move on.

Now we'll get busy with a few remaining internet jobs, and wait for a
weather window to take us to Majuro in the Marshall Islands - our home for
the next several months. According to the weather forecasts, I don't think
we'll be waiting long. It looks like the wind will pick up by the end of the
week!