We forgot what it was like to cook with the propane and how much heat the flame produces. Raining outside and a big pot of soup on an open flame created a sauna inside the boat. As the clouds were thicker and darker we couldn’t take it anymore, turned on the generator to top off the batteries, turned on the AC, and finished up cooking on the electric cook top.
Yesterday we finally got off the boat! We swam to possibly scout out the anchor chain, but the water was terribly churned up so we could not follow the anchor chain path. We walked along shore and gathered shells and relaxed in the water when four sharks were snooping around. We threw a couple of rocks hoping to scare them, but the rock splash only brought more in.
This morning we were ready to get out the dive gear if need be, however, did not. We encountered three snags the first came loose by the windless. The second snag, Wade jumped in the water to see if he could spot the troubles and found the chain was under a piece of coral hook. As he was moving the chain around to unhook it from the coral he created enough splashes that five big sharks came to see what he we up to. Normally we have been swimming with smaller sharks, maybe half the size of Sara, but these sharks were the size of Wade. As the shars retreated he made his way back to the swim ladder with his back to the boat, as Sara kept a lookout from above. The second snag finally came loose, by paying out about six feet to create a dip in the chain then we drove forward removing the chain from under the hook. The third snag we got off by driving to starboard and as soon as the chain was out from under the coral it came up with no troubles. Ultimately we were in a really safe spot and we were not moving during the storm. After our anchor was free and clear we headed to our new anchorage and relaxed in the cool sandy water under a beautiful blue sky and no sharks.
TD13F update: The storm appeared to have a fair chance of becoming a cyclone, but then weaken enough such that it is no longer being tracked on our weather reports. The lowest our barometer read was 1007 which is pretty high considering the center of the low pressure was in the 990’s. Our peak wind gust was 45.6 knots. Another cruiser from the South Pacific cruisers net, SSB 8173, told us that our wind instrument was very conservative because there were boats anchored in Fakarava reading in the mid 60’s . Who knows? Maybe a sea story?
King Neptune’s Garden update: Our very sad garden. There are some green leaves still on some of the plants, but most of them have been stripped to bare stem. We harvested the ripe tomatoes, peppers, and kale before the wind got any worse. We’ll leave it be for a couple of days to see what actually survives, and then we’ll clean out the dead plants, booooo.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
Boat Position: 16 degrees 31.414 minutes south and 143 degrees 49.232 minutes west.
