Well, we made it to Kiritimati - aka Christmas Island! On advice of several folks, we ended up NOT entering the lagoon here, and it seems it was a wise choice. Locals report that the lagoon entrance is now even shallower than on the 1956-era charts (Brit. Admiralty #2993). The chart says a one-fathon path exists, but locals say it has silted in and is now only 3 to 4 feet deep - not enough for our 6-foot draft. So, we anchored on the west side of the island, about 1.25 NM north of the Cook Island Pass entrance, There's a fairly new jetty/pier here, built in the late 90's for Japanese fishing trade. It seems not to get too much use other than for the 3 or 4 times a year supply ship. But we can get a tanker truck to deliver fuel to the end of the pier - price not yet known. There's only one other boat here in the anchorage, a 60-foot steel custom sailboat "Fanning Island Trader" (hailing from Honolulu). Chuck and his crew have been most hospitable and had us over to dinner last night. Chuck was also instrumental in making sure our arrival was event-free. There are apparently some local officials who think they can gouge any arriving power vessel ("can afford fuel" implying "can afford extra fees"), but Chuck was sure to make our arrival known to customs and immigration rather than relying on the port captain to report us. We had radio contact with the officials within 30 minutes of dropping anchor, but had to wait for nearly 8 hours because the customs folks were busy clearing in TWO large cargo planes that arrived. They finally showed up at the boat at 1600, and we were finished with clearance procedures within 30 minutes. All together, we had to pay AUS$40 for the customs folks; immigration was already paid for by our visas (which we'd obtained in Honolulu before departure). They didn't even bother to charge us the AUS$120 anchorage fee! Contrary to Ice Dancer's previous experiences here, ours was quite good. Only 5 persons visited the boat (2 customs, 1 immigration, and 2 from the local police), and they finished business quickly and efficiently. This is a very small place, with only 7000 inhabitants. Provisions will be rather basic here, but we should be able to stock up on enough stuff to get us through our next leg - Rangiroa. Our plans are to take on some fuel on Monday afternoon, and clear out Tuesday morning. Oh, yeah, one more thing! The International Date Line plays some real games in this part of the world. In order to keep their whole country in one time zone, the Kiribati government extended the date line several hundred miles east of its "official" place. As a result, even though it took us exactly 6 days to make the 1180nm run from Hawaii, we left on Aug 5 and arrived on Aug 12 - 7 days later! :) We'll get that day back when we head south to Tahiti.