Commodore
September 18, 2023

Sunday 17 September – anchoring in bommies!

We both had such a good sleep after our nights of shifts, it was great to feel restored. The forecast was for good weather today and tomorrow the wind and rain pick up. Our plan is looking good, with Met Bob our router, to leave Tuesday morning for Samoa. We are excited about visiting Samoa, a few yachties have raved about it. Amazingly Hannah has two Oakham school friends, Marina and Monty (school sweethearts) who work for the UN (I think) out there. They have passed on loads of info via Han. It will be such fun to catch up with them, and to have insider knowledge! The last time we saw them I think, was dancing with Monty at their school leavers Ball.

We decided we better do the two best things to do here, today before the weather arrives, firstly to find the Manta Ray feeding station, a spot the rays visit to be cleaned by the fish, secondly to snorkel in the pass. We decided to look for the Mantas before breakfast, while I was getting up Rowan went to check on the anchor. He returned with bad news, the anchor was not well bedded and caught on some coral. We decided we better move, especially with the big blow tomorrow and a decent wind in here today. It turned out to be an extremely stressful nearly 3 hours while we battled to get the anchor into a sandy patch that Rowan had found while swimming. The wind made it very difficult to stay on target between the coral towers. First time after a lot of effort, getting off some snagged coral we discoved we had hooked this enormous big boulder of coral, no wonder the windlass (motor to bring the anchor up) complained bitterly. Rowan finally had to attach the main halyard to it and with a little tilt it came off thank goodness. Next attempt we got horribly tangled in a coral tower, Rowan had to swim out and move the chain while I had to drive the boat with out using the steering wheel, just using engines which was all a bit hair raising for me. We finally got untangled. Third attempt just as we were wondering what an earth we were going to do, we finally dug into sand. Rowan swam to check on it, we resorted to using one of our buoys we had salvaged in the Tuamotus to keep the chain up so that it did not snag on any other coral. A chap from one of the boats came snorkelling over to see what we were up to. All the boats must have thought we were crazy. But as I’m writing this now, we are grateful to be tucked up closer to the beach and have less bouncy waves. The other 3 boats, all monohulls are bouncing like hobby horses, especially the poor Swedish boat, it must be incredibly uncomfortable for them, and I’m hugely grateful to our fat cat, PolePole.

Relieved to be secure, we had breakfast at midday and then went in search of the Mantas, sadly the wind was creating such a chop it was not very pleasant, it was impossible to anchor JeldiJeldi as it was too deep. Rowan did a drift snorkel but never saw the rays, quite a few fish and a few big ones. I didn’t get in, i don’t like snorkling in chop, plus I have one ear bothering me, even though I always swim with ear plugs – the other reason was that Harry warned us yesterday to beware of the sharks, it is not just the friendly black tip reef sharks here!

Finally in our new sheltered spot

Those waves look smaller than they are

Rowan looking or Manta Rays

It was far too choppy to get to the pass in JeldiJeldi for snorkelling there, so we resorted going to the island and walked three quarters of the way around, which was good to stretch our legs. On the way back we stopped off at the other American boat to see if they wanted to join us for a sunset drink, but they took a rain check on it! However in that short time we discovered they were from Oregon, and that he was a lecturer at Corvalis, the university Han went to for a year.