Commodore
October 12, 2023

Friday 13 October – a morning with whales

Rowan was up early as usual, it wasn’t long before he heard some whales, they were just outside our anchorage. We landed up having three sets of mums and babes, playing around about 100m away. The one mum was tail sailing, this is when they rest upside down with just their tails out the water. She did it in stretches of 20 minutes at a time, quite amazing. I looked on google and scientists are not quite sure why they do it, there are a couple of theories – to cool themselves down and the one that makes more sense to me, is it is an easier position for the calf to get access to milk from it’s mum. Whale’s milk is squirted out in a thick toothpaste like consistency (because of it’s high fat content) so that the baby can roll its tongue to suck it up. They don’t have lips so they can’t suckle. We saw the babies playing about while the mums just hung about. We watched them for nearly two hours, sadly too far away for any good pictures, but Rowan did get a great Drone shot.

Rowan’s drone footage

My video of Tail Sailing

The Kiwi resort owner is a keen photographer and this is his photo of Tail Sailing, this underside of their Fluke (tail fin) is like our thump print, totally unique to each whale

After a late breakfast we paddled to the shore in the kayak. We decided to go for a walk, and followed the dirt road along the beach. A terrible road that looks a sticky nightmare in rain. We found one old banger (car) abandoned in the road, everyone has just driven around it. I suspect it will get fixed one day, as cars look a real premium out here. It was interesting walking along passing various small holdings, with pigs and a few cattle, but mainly crops in between the trees and coconuts. We came across a very well spoken gent with a panga, he is the Wesleyan minister! We finally got to the village, it looked pretty poor, but the impressive thing was the enormous solar panel field that supplies the village with electricity. I think most of their electricity must go on playing music, which they play at an astonishing full volume, all competing with one another. So bizarre out here in the middle of nowhere. We returned to the kayak after walking for about an hour, on the way back we passed a couple of lads riding a horse bareback with a tiny foal following on, it is the first time we have seen anyone on horseback since being in the pacific. Sadly he also looked one of the shiftiest characters we have seen, with scraggily gold teeth!

We got back to the kayak on the beach and met the Swedish lady, Susan, from Seawind, her husband has a bug and not feeling well, there seems to be something going around as a few people have had it. Rowan felt a bit snuffly for a couple of days. She was very funny telling us their incredible sailing experiences around Cape Horn and to Antarctica in their tiny 37 foot boat, where they got really sick with Covid, in freezing weather with 70 knot winds. What a nightmare – why would anyone want to do that!

We went for a snorkel hoping to go around the Mushroom rock, that the anchorage is called after, but the water was too churned up and visibility was no good. We got back to PolePole and decided to move to the next anchorage across the bay which is more sheltered, which will be good as bigger winds are predicted over the week end.

It was a couple of miles to the other anchorage, and definitely one to do in sunlight, it was quite hairy weaving our way through the coral, we had left one of our dagger boards quite far down and we did hear a little scratch. Luckily we were going so slowly and Rowan had a look later when he snorkelled over the anchor and there was no mark thankfully. Quite a tricky anchorage between 4 boats and coral, we finally found some good sand and a good holding. Later in the afternoon we went for a beach walk and discovered a beach resort full of Kiwis and a S African girl from Durban, serving at the bar. We booked in for dinner on Sunday night. Our meat and fresh veg supplies are running pretty low. I put a belly of pork into the slow cooker at lunchtime for supper, we have a chicken and a piece of beef left in the deep freeze and that is it. We haven’t found any fish for sale, and as the waters all look rather over fished I’m reluctant to buy it anyway. So booking in for supper is a good idea especially as the resorts always seem to need 24 hours notice.

We met a young family on the beach on a boat called Renard (fox), they are French Canandian, the dad is a red head and always been called Fox! They invited us to a beach BBQ with the rest of the boats here, they all seem to have been sailing together for a while. We walked further around the spit of the island and found another kiwi resort, turns out the owner who lives at this resort owns both places. He was very chatty and gave us some great sailing tips for around here. The location of their resort is amazing on this beautiful white sandy spit, they have done it in a very low key manner with some nice touches, amazing tables with huge slabs of timber with their waney edge kept and sanded, they have done a mirror image so the two tables can be slotted together on their waney edge or kept separately, clever idea and so tactile. Tomorrow night they are having a lobster dinner which we couldn’t resist booking in for. We enjoyed an ice cold beer there and were amazed at the number of Kiwi guests.

Our lovely anchorage

Our walk along the beach

Amazing old tree at the resort beach bar

PolePole far left in the brooding clouds

We headed back to PolePole, our pork in the slow cooker still had 2 hours to go so we decided to go for drinks at the beach but not stay to eat. It was a lovely evening with a spectacular sunset and a very good fire. It was fun meeting so many of the boats who we have seen before, but not met. The Swedish boat has a real character on board, you would never guess he is Swedish as he speaks with an Irish accent and has long curly dark hair! His ex wife is Irish and they lived in Dublin for many years, he is sailing solo at the moment, he crossed the Pacific on his own which is quite something.

A whale was breaching in the fading light creating a huge splash which was rather magnificent. We left everyone to their food and returned to PolePole for our pork belly which luckily was well worth returning for!