We finally had a descent weather window for the next four to five days. Our dive gear was spread across the cockpit, our anchor is again wrapped around a another bombie 80 feet below the surface, and we are still really enjoying Penrhyn, so we’ve decided to let the good wind go and wait for another weather window. Generally a window comes along every week, yet one this good might take another month, haha, but we’ll see. Half of yesterday, we put things away and got organized for the next window.
We gained permission from the Deputy Mayor (as the Mayor is off island) to anchor near the furthest southern motu, Atutahi. We planned to be anchored in lovely sand in front of the motu, but we are anchored a mile north in this deep anchorage because during our travel south across the lagoon a squall with 35 knot winds forced us to hang out in known deep water areas until the squall passed and visibility improved. The hour became late and with the sun at a 30 degree angle from the water we could no longer see the shallows. In addition, the wind was still blowing 25 knots and this would make maneuvering around all the shallow water bombies even more dangerous. We could have retreated back to the village 6 miles to the north, instead we decided to try deep anchoring, which is how our anchor became entangled as aforementioned. Although we wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else the anchorage has been really nice because away from land we have lots of wind to keep us cool, no bugs, and less sharks when we go swimming each day. Our dinghy and dive compressor gas is starting to get low with only a 12 gallons left, so we would like to get closer to the areas we are exploring with the big boat.
Yesterday we performed a little due diligence and snorkeled the route to our anchorage. The route has shallows that are 7 to 10 feet and with a draft of 6 feet we really wanted to make sure we’d clear. There isn’t a drastic tide but we’re mindful of high tide. During this snorkel adventure Wade spotted a shark that could have been a Gray Reef, Galapagos, or Bull shark. We both remained calm and kept an eye on it’s movements. It appeared as though the shark was headed for deeper water so we kept on snorkeling. Looking behind frequently to maintain our awareness of everything around us we spotted the shark again. The shark stayed on the bottom and kept the distance and turned in a different direction. This time Sara started to swim slowly to the dinghy stopping frequently and looking behind her, when she was about 3 feet from the dinghy she turned around and the shark was no longer at the bottom and 8 feet behind her. It took maybe two kicks and she was in the dinghy super fast. Wade kept swimming around checking for reef clearance as Sara yelled to get his attention. He made his way back to the dinghy and we are both safe.
There was a father shark and a baby shark, the father shark said to the baby shark, “Are you ready to learn how to eat human?” The baby shark replied enthusiastically, “Yep, let’s eat human”. The father shark spotted his target and explained to the son, “See the target lets circle him further away, then circle him again closer”. After the second circle the baby shark said exhaustedly, “Are we ever going to eat the human, why do we have to keep circling?” The father replied, “They taste better after they poo and pee”. Bahahahahahaha
Today we started the Ech-O Tec Watermaker to make water as we moved anchorages, but the pressure would not build and upon investigation there were a couple of leaks. Wade having installed it himself pulled the entire system out and found two end caps were leaking under pressure and one under pressure. We’ve been really happy with the Watermaker because it produces about 35 gallons of water an hour; which can fill our 2 57 gallon water tanks in a couple of hours, instead of an all day process like some Watermakers. Replacing the cracked end caps took most of the day so it looks like we delay our move closer to land another day. If the watermaker could not have been repaired then we would begin devising ways to catch water from the rain and then boiling the rain water to purify, in case you were wondering.
Wade and Sara
