Ahhh....so that's why they call it viral...

It's been a while since I checked out the blog stats...how many people check out the blog, where they come from, what they look at, etc. An unexpected surprise. Lots of visitors have been coming to the site, thanks to links from fellow cruisers' blogs...especially our friends on Totem, Ceilydh, and Pisces. Thanks guys!! I've now put a list of friends blogs on the side of the page, so that while we're sitting at home with very little sailing news to report, our readers can check out the lives of our friends who have continued on their journeys!

And...this webpage is also sending a surprising number of web surfers our way...it has a long list of sailing related sites, including tons of sailing blogs...http://cruisenews.net/db/discoveries.php. Who would have guessed?

A New Look!!

Amy tells me that she has updated the blog to include a picture of Renova in the header. I'm sure it looks awesome! Hope you like it. We look forward to being able to log on in Tahiti to check it out. THANKS Amy!!! (Don't forget to blog about your impressions of your trip - I'm sure everyone would love to hear all about it)!

We continue to hang out in Rangiroa. We hitched a ride into the village of Atuona a couple days ago...had a good walk around the town. We watched the surfers on the point, and one of the big cargo ships unload. They brought six forklifts off this boat!! Four aussie guys came off the boat and were searching for the ideal surf spot. Also two Americans unloaded their 12 surf boards for their three month holiday. Yeow. We caught a ride back to the quay with a nice couple from French Guinea.They were also here on their boat, and had been here for two years already! French boats are free to stay much longer than us foreigners, and they are everywhere here.

Sadly...we've continued to have high winds for the last couple of days. We're getting bored, sitting on the boat, waiting for a weather window to leave. Can you believe...bored in paradise!! Well, let me paint you a picture of paradise...the boat is super rolly with all the swell; the town is small, so you can only do so much exploring; snorkeling isn't good with clouds and rain; but...we aren't working. We've been watching movies (we can tell you that the DUDE in the Big Lebowski has the same shoes as John), and reading books (just finished Les Miserables). But...with all the cloud, we can't be on the computer too long, as we don't have a lot of solar power to recharge our batteries!!

By the way...I'm practicing my french. It's coming back...albeit, very slowly. And painfully, at times!

2009 Blog Stats

Inspired by this post on our techno-wizard friends' blog: Hello World, I thought I'd take a look at our blog stats for 2009. This is what I found out (we launched the blog in August 2009):

3,078 Visits
579 Unique Visitors
5,346 Page Views

58% of visitors come to the site directly
11% of visitors come via google
9% of visitors find us via blogger
6% of visitors come via a hotmail link (likely my email signature)

Our visitors hail mostly from Canada and the USA, but also consistent number from UK and throughout Europe, and odd numbers from all sorts of countries around the globe. Brazil, seems to also have high number of visitors for some reason??

The keywords that people used to find us were mostly typical - some combination of our names, the boat name/model, etc. Other questionable/humorous keywords were:

• engine cleaners
• renova .02 pump
  
• renova more:drug_warnings_recalls
  

Obviously, I need to take a page from Hello World, and write more posts about Blue-footed Boobies and turkish hookers, if I really want to increase my readership. Hmmm... perhaps a resolution for 2010 is in the works here...