Commodore
May 7, 2023

Sunday 7 May – our first turtle sighting

We digested the Sunday paper reviews of the Coronation. It all rather passed us by, when we woke up yesterday morning the Coronation was over, it sounds like it all went well with the normal drizzle but fine spectacle. Elon Musk has caught up with us sailors on boats using his RV package that is meant for land usage. He has come out with the marine package which does not give us the unlimited connection everywhere that we have become used to. We wont be downloading so many movies anymore and I restrained myself downloading any videos of the Coronation. We knew it was going to happen, there was lots of chat about it on the net. It is still much better than trying to get local Sim cards.

We had planned to head off today, but having established we can’t get fuel on a Sunday and with tomorrow a public holiday here as well, we decided we would go tomorrow early. So we went and did some lovely snorkelling in a huge shallow area, that was full of clumps of coral. The coral was very colourful, looked pretty healthy and plenty of little fish but no parrot fish. It was like swimming in a bath the water was so warm, I thoroughly enjoyed it as there are so many little fish and babies lurking in the tree like bits of coral. Afterwards we headed to a bommie out in the open water that Rowan had Wing Foiled near, it was interesting with its resident Black Tipped Reef shark. The coral wasn’t in great shape but had bigger fish than in the shallow waters.

We found a little bay and went for a walk and crossed to the sea side on the outside of the atoll. It was a very calm day with no wind, it looked surprisingly calm. You can see the coral shelf runs for about 20m and then drops steeply off into dark blue waters. We returned to the boat and we were delighted to see a turtle swim right past PolePole, the first turtle we have seen in French Polynesia after seeing so many in the Galapagos. Apparently they are still hunted here which is so sad.

Having just said we are on Stinky rations, Rowan managed to down load a French movie called Solitaire about a French sailor participating in a solo round the world race, fascinating and well acted as he discovers he has an immigrant stowaway on board, a true story. Widge sent me a copy of an article about Kirsten Neuschäfer, the 40 year old South African woman who has just won the round the world Golden Globe race, they have to sail like it is the year 1968, no modern devices and no communications. Paper charts and sextants and no means of communictions. The movie really puts into perspective what Kirsten has achieved. One of the Swedish ladies on the Arc has a brother who was involved with the race and she kept us informed at the end of the race. The amazing thing was she did not know that she was winning the race as she had no communication on board.