agility @ sea

I’m posting this as a blog post so that others can enjoy but this post is for the two of you.

Suwarrow is an isolated island in the Cook Island chain. It’s located at GPS coordinates 13 15.213S 163 06.454W, a 5 day sail west of Bora Bora. Entry formalities are pretty basic as Harry and his son Pi (the rangers) come on board soon after you arrive to clear you in. The process includes filling out a half dozen forms, paying a modest fee and the spraying of an insecticide to eliminate bugs and insects that could damage the fragile ecosystem of the motus.

We were limited on the types of plant and animal products we could keep on board, but NZ beef and local Polynesia foods are generally OK. We also had to list our ship’s stores to make sure we didn’t have too much alcohol or medicines. We made it just under the limit on all of our ship’s stores. We bought as much food and drink as we could manage for 2 months before we left French Polynesia since we won’t be in a good place to provision until we reach Tonga. Even then things are expensive so we keep well stocked.

After we arrived we come to shore for a quick tour of the motu (Island) called Anchorage. The beach is beautifully maintained and even raked so that it looks like a zen garden. We walked to the other side of the island and walked down the beach and reef with our reef shoes, but it was becoming high tide and more difficult to walk so we’ll have to go back when it’s low tide in able to walk right on the reef. The reef on shore doesn’t have live coral so it’s not a problem to walk on it.

We toured the outpost and saw a large collection of fishing buoys that have washed ashore along with a ton of other flotsam and jetsam. They keep the buoys and ship them back to the capital periodically to help prosecute illegal fishing that takes place in remote places like this.

The day for a Ranger is part tour guide, part administrator, part farmer, part caretaker. They live a fairly isolated existence but seem to really enjoy visitors and welcomed us with big smiles and warm embraces. They are also very strict and lay down the rules of what you can and can’t do. No foreign food or plants, no pets, no exploring the other motus, and no throwing anything overboard as there is a risk of attracting dangerous sharks to the anchorage. There are, however, tons of reef sharks, black tip and white tip, that are docile and stay around the boat all of the time and swim with us. Jerri and Elizabeth like to talk to them since they act like friendly sea dogs.

The fish here are spectacular and the morning after our arrival, we took our dinghy about 1 KM to a little reef that is home to giant Manta Rays. We anchored in a small patch of sand and the four of us swam with the one Manta Ray that showed up. Apparently, a juvenile had been spotted too, but we missed it. The Manta Ray are truly majestic animals and eat krill the same as whales, and are very friendly and social. I was about 10 feet away when it pooped. Glad I wasn’t closer.

Later in the day we went to the beach to hang out on hammocks that the rangers maintain and talked with another cruising couple that had a 13 year old girl aboard. The dad was from London, spent a lot of time growing up in Hong Kong, had a company that he sold and moved to the Denver Tech Center 10 years ago. The mom is Australian and they have been living on the boat for 5 years. The girl is enrolled in the first year of high school in Sydney and she plans to start in January, the beginning of the school year.

We hung out with the family from Yacht Sarista and later the younger Ranger, Pi, came down to visit. Did I mention that Pi is a cage fighter at home and had a boxing gym setup using the coconut trees? We had a conversation for a couple hours with Pi and he shared what it’s like to grow up in the Cook Islands. One fascinating story is that at age 8 you get sent to a small motu with a bunch of other 8 year olds to spend a month living off the land. There are elders that go with the 8 year olds who at 13 are in charge. Sort of like Lord of the Flies from what I could tell. He said that he became very comfortable with Coconut Crabs living on that motu years ago and asked if we wanted to see some Coconut Crabs, of course we said YES!

A few moments later he came back holding this giant crab/lobster shellfish creature that I held and got the picture in this post. We then went in the brush behind the cabin and spotted a dozen of the creatures with a flashlight. We came back down to the beach and put two crabs on the palm tress and they climbed up about half way and watched us until we left just before the 8:00PM curfew. A few weeks earlier one of those crabs stole all of their tea. They are tea drinkers here and were very happy that we gave them about 60 tea bags as a gift.

After we got back to the boat, I took the dinghy over to Sarista to drop of some fashion magazines for the girl and she gave me a gift for Elizabeth and Alex. It’s a small bottle – the perfect size to hold a sand sample. It was collected on the beach here in Suwarrrow and had a shell on the top of a cork and some string from a coconut husk. Everything was found on the beach except the cork.

Today we went to Parfact reef which is a mini atoll within the Suwarrow atoll that has tall columns of coral heads inside and an abundance of fish. It was a 10KM dingy ride so we were a long way from the boat. Almost so far you couldn’t see the masts, but we had a GPS on my phone and a VHF radio to call the Rangers if we got into trouble. You can swim on the outside of the reef also, but there are sharks that are a bit more “inquisitive” there so we stayed inside. Inside the reef is like a forest of coral heads that you can swim though. They are anywhere from 10 feet to 30 feet deep and you can skin dive to the bottom. Many have little caves where the fish hang out. There are more clams than I’ve seen before and they are a little bigger the farther west we get in Polynesia. The big ones are about 10 inches long and have a colorful set of lips that are sometimes purple, brown, tan, pink, blue etc. I like the purple ones the best.

Hope you are enjoying your Summer. Hope to see you guys on the high seas at some point.