May 24 Suwarrow was really worth the trip. It is a beautiful island inside a protective reef. The water in the lagoon had the clearest visibility that I have seen on the whole trip. Coconut trees lean out from the land over the white coral beach.
There were many sharks in the water and when we pulled up to anchor they gathered around. Garry got into to water to check the set of the anchor and for any coral heads that would be a threat to the boat when it swings due to wind shifts. Rachel is wife was not at all happy about this. It is a good thing that the sharks are little black tipped reef sharks that are more scared of us than we are of them . well maybe only some of us.
Most people including myself walked around the island which takes about 30-45 minutes.Imagine getting up in the morning and being able to walk about 100 yards to view the sun rise over the open ocean crashing onto a reef. Then having your morning bath in a pool protected by the reef. Too make sure you are fully awake for the day you could be sharing your bath with a few reef sharks. Then in the evening walking about 100 yards in the other direction to view the sun set over a white coral sand beach leading down to crystal clear flat water in the lagoon.
After walking around the island I went over the help Andy on his yacht Into the Blue. He had some electrical fault that shut down his wind speed, wind direction, and depth sounder. Worst of all it also shut down his course computer that drives the auto pilot. His AIS also stopped working. He and his crew had been hand steering for the last day and night with no wind speed or direction indicators. Possible but stressful especially with all the squalls that we have had to deal with on this leg.
He was justly concerned about not having a depth sounder when going through the narrow shallow pass into the lagoon.
There are two paths into the lagoon so to help Andy I set up way points onto my chart plotter on the safer deeper path that Andy preferred to take. I watched the depth readings as I followed the path between the way points, the minimum depth was 36 feet. This was plenty of depth for Andys larger mono hull yacht which requires a lot deeper water than Zoom does. Via VHF radio I passed the co-ordinates of the way points to Andy so that he could enter them onto his plotter and follow the exact same path with confidence that he would not hit the reef. This worked very well and Andy was very grateful.
For about half an hour I did some diagnostics on the Ray Marine navigation equipment on Andys boat. I have very similar equipment on Zoom and had narrowed the fault down to the SeaTalk bus. (A Bus is a communication cable that passes data between different bits of equipment.) About this time Steve from Blue Summit arrived, he also has the same equipment and is also very familiar with it. I explained what I had determined so far and we both agreed on the next step to hopefully isolate which device or section of cable was causing the short which was shutting down the complete system. We got lucky and found the short on the second device on the bus. When this device was removed the short disappeared. Luckily Andy has two of the particular device, one up on the helm and one down in the navigation station. We swapped out the faulty device in the navigation station and everything powered up OK. Even his AIS started working again. Andy is a very happy guy now and again very grateful. Later in the day Andys wife Gina also thanked me and said what are we going to do when things go wrong after you leave the rally in Australia?.
There is a statue honoring Tom Neil the guy that lived alone on the island for many years.
The dwelling that Tom lived in is still there even his fishing spear. In his cooking house the oven he made is still intact and the Barometer that was a gift to him is still hanging on the wall.
I could see that attraction of living on this beautiful island but I do like the comfort of modern living standards like, air conditioning, freezers, electric lighting, bug free houses and other people to be with, especially Andria. The last comment should be worth at least ten brownie points.
The fleet of boats on the island had a BBQ on the beach the last night before we left which was a really nice way to end our one full day on the island. Everyone bought a dish and shared.
About 8:00am the next morning before we left we took the dingy to a location that is reported as being a Manta Ray cleaning station however we did not a single Manta Ray.
We are currently on our way to Niue where we would normally stop for three days. We have to get to Tonga by the first of June for Garry and Rachel to catch their flight out on the 2nd June, so will not be staying the full three days. How long we get to stay there depends a lot on the winds. The last 2-3 days since we left Suwarrow the winds have been very light and all the yachts have been burning a lot diesel including us. I think we will end up using more for this 500 mile leg, than we did for the 2800 mile leg from Galapagos to the Marquesas. We are caught between a rock and hard place. If we go too slowly to save fuel we miss the flight. If we go too fast we burn too much fuel run out of fuel and still miss the flight. What makes it more difficult is that we cross the international date line between Niue and Tonga and loose another day. What we need is more wind. Who said sailing was relaxing and stress free?
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