Commodore
September 16, 2023

Saturday 16 September – safely anchored in Suwarrow

My early morning shift went very quickly as I had a very long call with Phoebs, lovely to catch up on her busy life and wedding plans! We had a great sail all night, consistent winds and no more fishing trawlers in our way. By lunchtime we spotted land, little green motus (islands) that are on the coral edge of Suwarrow. Such good timing to be entering the pass in full sunshine as there is quite a bit of coral about. We had a couple of knots of current against us, but after all our experience in the Tuamotus, we got through no problem. It took a second attempt to get a good holding on the anchor, getting in between coral bommies, Rowan swam and checked it all out and we look good and secure – which we need to be as the wind will be picking up. There were two other boats, both American. We had spotted a sail on the horizon just before entering the pass, it arrived a couple of hours after us, a tiny old Swedish boat.

First glimpse of land – Suwarrow

Entering the pass

Video of the pass, starting on the left, going to the right

In the pass with a couple of knots of current

Avoiding bommies

The main island where the caretaker’s house is and the only place we can anchor

Finally anchored

Coming in to do the paper work for clearance

We got called in straight away by Harry the caretaker, to check in and do our paperwork. We got JeldiJeldi in the water and headed to the gorgeous palm beach. We found Harry and Taina (yes spelt and pronounced that way) in their small home, we were invited to sit down in their verandah to do our endless paper work for clearance. Very sweet couple, he is clearly a big rugby fan sporting a rugby shirt and looks like he might have played in the past. They have been here since beginning of June and we are boat number 171 that they have checked in, roughly 1 or 2 boats a day. A month ago they had 25 boats anchored here. They only have 6 weeks left here before it closes for hurricane season, which Taina was very happy about, their freezer has broken and they have no more supplies coming for them. We offered lots of food which she readily accepted, especially jumping at my offer of eggs which I had vastly over catered. He went through the rules of the Park, we are only allowed to visit the island they are on, all the rest are protected for breeding birds which is great news, I think it is one of the largest breeding grounds for the little black Noddies. We can snorkel anywhere. The bio rules were quite strict about bringing anything onto the island, he was far more reticent about bringing them food than Taina, we assured him we would only bring them some NZ meat! We filled out endless forms, all these little places love the form filling. We even had about 5 pages of forms to take back to the boat to fill out. Anyhow they were terribly sweet – what a job!

On our way back to PolePole we stopped by at the American boat closest to us to invite them for a drink, they are a young couple sailing on ‘One Life’. They said they had invited Harry and Taina for drinks on the beach, and invited us to join them for sunset drinks. This gave us about an hour back on PolePole to settle down and recover, pleased to be here safe and sound.

We headed to the beach laden with tins of veggies and fruit, a dozen eggs, cans of coke and ginger ale, a bag of flour and some NZ mince beef! When Rowan delivered it all they were thrilled. Brooke and Gary from One Life were at the beach already, they had been turned down by the caretakers who had decided on a quiet night at home! We enjoyed drinks on the beach with Brooke and Gary and we swapped many a sea tale. Bizarrely they started their sailing trip from Florida in 2020 as novice sailors exactly the same time we started our sailing adventure from Fort Lauderdale. The Bahamas was their first destination like us, they then had a different Covid lock down experience to us, they were mainly in the US Virgin Islands for lock down. They took 9 days to sail here to Suwarrow, they had been stuck in the little island Maupiti for 10 days! I mentioned that we could not visit Maupiti as the pass was too tricky in our current weather conditions. They are doing the same route as us, Samoa, Tonga then NZ. They were a fun nice couple to get to know. They took a break from work 4 years ago thinking it was a 2 year break, but have realised they can live this life style quite cheaply and have discovered a few ways to earn a living online at sea, thanks to their Star Link (Elon Musk’s satellite dish).