Commodore
July 23, 2025

Thursday 24 July – lovely anchorage at Santa Ana island

Rowan woke me at 7:30am as we were approaching land, it had been a very uncomfortable sleep for me, we had very little wind, from the wrong direction and a short nasty wave action. I did not get much sleep, so I was very pleased to be near the anchorage. It is a fairly small island with three villages on it, the village at the anchorage has 1000 residents which seems incredible. Definitely the biggest village we have visited so our expectations were low, how wrong we were. It turned out to be a wonderfully sheltered bay with reef running out on both sides at the entrance, so lovely and calm, but with a breeze. Essential to surviving the heat. We were welcomed in with dolphins which was a nice surprise. We had to anchor in 20ms again, but everything Rowan had read said it was good sandy holding with no bommies, fingers crossed. We have no chain counter now, so it was a case of counting out the chain. Luckily it held perfectly.

Rowan then set to work on the faulty engine. It wasn’t long before we were besieged by little canoes with kids arriving to beg for sweets. Rowan gave them a lesson in manners and sent them packing. I had a good conversation with Geoffrey, who was 15 years old, we explained that we had issues with the engine, and we would go into the village to see the chief at 4pm and would talk to everyone then. They got the message and all departed. One elderly gent arrived shortly afterwards while Rowan was head down in the engine room, this man had all sorts of amazing carvings and a pawpaw to trade. Of course I couldn’t resist and made his day! I guess he bragged back at the village as we then got a stream of carvers coming out to the boat, including a couple of men who had paddled from another island which seems extraordinary that they were out in those seas in their tiny canoes. Interestingly no outriggers here. Anyway we kept telling that we would meet everyone at the beach at 4pm.

The best news was that Rowan managed to contact a guy who serviced our engines when we first arrived in NZ nearly two years ago. He came up with a very straight forward plan to follow. Hey presto it worked, it was just a case of readjusting a cable. The alarm fault has gone, the engine is behaving and going forwards, not just backwards! What a relief.

We went into the village in the afternoon feeling much better about things. All the carvers were there waiting for us. We told them we needed to see the chief first, feeling rather guilty they may be paddling back to the island in the dark! Geoffrey took us to Chief John Bush! He was a friendly old character, his name came from some obscure story about George Bush and John Major. He is nearly 80 years old. We had taken a bag of goodies to trade and a present for him. I had taken some reading glasses as well, which he was very pleased about. He liked our presents and said we were welcome to stay but we must come back to tomorrow to sign his visitors book and bring our boat card with us. He said two yachts were here last week, they never came on land, never came in to sign his books, and clearly didn’t trade with anyone. A bit sad and rude of them.

We were so taken with the village, it is a stunning bay, all the buildings seem very traditionally made, no vehicles, we did spot a tractor and that is it. No litter like at Lata, and everyone very friendly. We finally got back to the carvers and bought one item, we apologised to the others who didn’t make a sale. We had biscuits to hand out, and hope that gave them enough sustenance for the couple of men to paddle back to their islands, about two miles away, in the dark!

We had a lovely evening cooling off and watching endless fisherman heading to the reef in their canoes to fish in the dark. Chief John had said we would see them, quite a few with lights. Poor fish don’t really stand a chance.