I awoke with a start yesterday realizing that we’d forgotten to message someone back home about a favor we needed done for us with New Zealand Immigration. I left a note next to Jason on the bed and went topside to see what Frank thought we could do. He offered the use of his SSB radio or his SAT phone if we needed it.

The story is this:
Jason received a message (a week after it arrived in his spam mailbox) on the morning we made our escape for the passage to Galapagos, April 4. It was from NZ Immigration and it said he was required to answer a new question on his EOI (Expression of Interest form for immigration) by no later than April 7, New Zealand time. The site was down the morning we left, so he couldn’t log in to complete the task. We resolved to ask someone back home to help us do it since we’d be incomunicado—only we never sent the email.

So, on April 6 when I awoke, you can imagine my panic at the thought that we might miss an immigration deadline. These departments don’t mess around. They’re just waiting for some dingbat to present them with an excuse so they can pull them out of the already overflowing pool of applicants. Jason woke up and we pored through our lists of friends and families to figure out who would be the most likely candidate to be reachable by email from a weird address within the next several hours and able to navigate the layers of website to be able to make the change.

Our friends at Brunet-García made the cut. Not only could we notify a whole team at once, but we could be sure someone would be in front of the computer to receive the email and make the change we needed.

So, we turned on the SSB radio, generating 100s of volts of electricity from our boat, and sent the radio mail into the ether. Within minutes, we had an out-of office reply from Aliera. Darn.

I put my hopes on Aerien and Jenny to come through, and low and behold, within about an hour, after another voltage-packed interaction with the ionosphere, I had a neatly composed note from Miss Jenny Camet, stating that shed found the question, answered it, and printed out proof of the interaction with the department. She went on to promise that she wouldn’t share any of Jason’s secret information with anyone, and once she received confirmation all was well, she’d conscientiously destroy it the evidence. You gotta love Jenny. Shes so thorough.

Anyway, the point of the story is that our sincere thanks go out, yet again, to Miss Jenny and Brunet-Garc, for helping Lara out of a bind. Jason thanks you too.

Shout outs to our families, Donna and Pete and Gayl and Fred and Nick and Carrie and Cammie and Debbie and Courtney and Kayla and Haylie. Were doing okay, and well talk to you when we reach Galapagos!