Friday 15 September – rainless day with enormous waves

Not long after I published the blog last night I spotted our first fishing trawler slap bang in our path. With the spinnaker up there is really only a small amount of adjusting I can do. I altered our path as much as I could before I spotted another one. The radar picks them up about 10 miles away so it is a long wait to get nearer. I woke Rowan in the end as the damn things were stationary and we were getting too close. Rowan adjusted the sail so that we could get a little distance from them. We never actually saw them, We think they actually may be big fishing devices/nets that have AIS markers on them so that they don’t get hit. Otherwise it was a straightforward night sailing keeping 6.9 knots as our average speed over ground which isn’t bad.

My radar screen last night with the offending Fishing vessels. The white dotted line is our intended course

We managed to have a good long chat to Phoebe this morning, she had just arrived at Mettingham for the week end. While we were chatting this big black thing appeared at the back of PolePole and we think it was a big Manta ray. Otherwise we have seen no sign of sea life except for the roosting Boobie, who has departed, but left us a horrible messy reminder of his presence! The water temperature has gone up dramatically and is currently 29.1 C, it was 28.2 C when we left Bora Bora. We are getting closer to the equator.

We are looking good to get into Suwarrow at midday tomorrow, but have received a big spanner in the works, big stormy winds lasting days are predicted from next Wednesday, with the biggest issue being the swell. If we stay beyond Tuesday we could be potentially stuck there for another 10 days which would not be very comfortable as it is a coral atoll and not protected from the winds or big swells. We considered bypassing the island and going straight to Samoa, but Met Bob our weather router has advised us to spend a few nights here because if we leave for Samoa now, we will hit the tail end of big winds there. So looks like we stick with the original plan staying in Suwarrow until Tuesday. It does sound really amazing, it was made a National Park in 1978, and only has two caretakers living there from May to November out of the hurricane season. It has incredible birdlife and is a very important, large breeding area for a lot of sea birds. The only way to it, is by private yacht. Fingers crossed it all works out. Going to Niue is definitely out for us now, it only has mooring balls as there is no shallow anchorage area, it is a volcanic blip sticking out the water. It has not much protection and definitely no good in a big swell. So we are definitely going to Samoa, it has loads of protection from the weather, we will spend at least a week there to recharge, and wait for a weather window to go to Tonga. Everyone we know who has gone to Samoa has raved about it, so it will be fun to see it.

Suwarrow is so small it doesnt show up on the map – Tongatapu is Tonga!

A coral atoll

Rainbow out of nowhere

The winds have consistently been in the mid teens all day which has made very easy comfy sailing. Rowan put a fishing line out but no success. We had a nice big juicy T bone steak on the BBQ instead! We just missed not being able to have a beer or a glass of wine.