Commodore
October 21, 2023

Sunday 22 October – beach BBQ

We went in JeldiJeldi to the other side of the island again to snorkel on the reef further out from where we had been yesterday. It was just approaching high tide and Rowan hoped for less current as he said it was pretty vicious when he snorkelled there yesterday. It turned out to be lovely, the coral is on a real revival, you can see the damage from the 2015 El Nino which devastated the coral, but new growth was everywhere, there was a lot of variety, and different colours – lime green, pinks, blue and purple. There was a reasonable amount of fish although mainly small.

On our way back to PolePole we stopped off where all the cruise liner people had snorkelled on the spit, the coral was mainly dead sadly, it must have been absolutely magnificent in the past. There were a few patches of recovery which I just hope this current El Nino does not destroy. We spotted a couple of areas with soft coral with little clown fish which was lovely to see, made it a really worthwhile snorkel.

The wind has swung around 180 degrees, the back of PolePole is facing the beach now.

The other boats in the anchorage

The clown fish in the soft coral but as you can see the rest of the coral is pretty dead

Otherwise we watch the weather developments, the cyclone off Vanuatu has been officially named now – Lola. We are just waiting it out.

Hopefully it stays well clear of us!

In the evening we went and had a bonfire on the beach with the other boats in the anchorage. It was the English Canadian lady’s birthday, we think they must be a similar age to us as they have the same age kids as us. They are both ex teachers and have befriended the French Canadian boat, Renard, with their two gorgeous girls. The Swiss German boat has twins (boy and a girl) the same age as the girls so they all had a great time making snake bread on the fire. Two more boats arrived a solo Sweidsh sailor called PE for short as his name is so hard to say! A big French ketch had a couple about our age on it, they ate at the resort last night and also had the same great experience as us. It was a gorgeous sunset and a fun evening being sociable.