Commodore
April 13, 2023

Thursday 13 April – settling in

We woke up to find the boat with a dog very close, so we had to move. Getting the anchor up took a bit of effort with Han in the water unhooking the chain and directing us to a better spot. We had a few attempts, each time the anchor dragged, it must be a thin layer of sand over coral. We finally went deeper and Han kept an eye in the water to guide us and help us not snag any coral heads. Such a shame, the boat anchors must being doing so much damage here, if only they could put up buoys, but that costs money and this place is tiny and usually does not have many boats. That faffing around took up most of the morning and was pretty stressful, what a relief to be secure in the end and that we didn’t have these issues last night, that would have been a nightmare in the dark!

The girls had a late night out last night with the Argentinian crew, Rowan went and had a snorkel in the passage on his own to check it out and came back rather sad about the state of the coral. It is amazing how many boats are here, but I suppose at least 7-8 are Arc boats. All the young kids are doing their Padi here which is great fun for them. The wind has completely died and it is boiling hot, thank god for our Dyson fan!

The girls went and snorkelled in the passage with the crew lads in the late afternoon. Rowan and I went and had a walk around the village. There is an amazing little hotel with some rustic huts on the waters edge, it is the dive centre too, and seems to be thriving. We saw a few local homes and a church but not much else. There are the ruins of a lot of old stone buildings, as if the village was bigger in its day, with two stone lined streets, no cars on the islands just paths for walking. amazingly like on some of the Panamanian islands they have solar powered street lights, which is such a great idea. We went and had a beer at the only bar, at the hotel/dive centre and met a French family taking a year out travelling the world….by plane! Their son turned 15 today and was absolutely loving it, they showed us videos of their son joining a festival in the Easter Islands, looked amazing, he joined a local team, he was all painted up and given a feather headdress and competed in the local games for a week long festival. What a brilliant education. We were impressed how they had managed to get to this really remote spot, but they had some good insider info, I suppose there is plenty of knowledge as it is a French territory.

Finally got back to the boat to another meal of beans!