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Firefly - Suwarrow



Firefly is anchored in the lee of Anchorage Island in Suwarrow lagoon. It is stunningly beautiful and feels like we are miles from anywhere - and we are!

Getting through the pass into the lagoon proved reasonably easy although it always makes the nerves go a little on edge. As the entrance to the pass is approached, the depth sounder (which has not read anything for days as the Pacific is so deep) first shows 100 metres and then counts down rapidly to below 10m. The water is so clear it looks incredibly shallow and there is a lot of current flowing out of the lagoon making the water choppy. The various reefs in the pass are easy to dodge as they are very visible and the Navionics charts on both the boat chartplotter and the I pad 'back up' proved to be spot on regarding the charting and the GPS.

Interestingly, just after we arrived we had an e mail message from rally control at World Cruising saying that due to the light winds predicted and in order to make sure there are not too many WARC boats at our next stop, Niue - can we stay extra time in Suwarrow? Sure thing - we were wondering if we could stay here for ever!

The anchorage is quite large and currently we have about 10 World ARC boats here and just a couple who are not with the Rally. There is a really great atmosphere amongst the crews with people dropping by to say hello as they move around in their dinghys and some are helping each other out with boat jobs. Its sociable too, at 1730 each night there is a gathering on the beach for sundowners and on one night a few crews stayed ashore for a BBQ on the beach.


There are a lot of small/medium black tipped reef sharks in the lagoon - several seem to be at the back of the boat most times you take a look. Surprisingly, the sharks do not stop World ARC crews from swimming and snorkelling and when you are in the water they keep a good distance away from you.

Our day time activities have so far included; exploring Anchorage Island where Tom Neale lived during his years alone here, dinghy excursions to other motos (small islands) in order to watch the huge populations of birds (Frigate, Booby, Red Tailed Tropic and Spectacled Terns), 2 sessions of kitesurfing, great but both a little short lived due to the wind dropping, - plus, our latest was a snorkelling trip to a reef about half a mile from the anchorage - here we saw 4 manta rays, one stayed around the reef for a long time and appeared to be very happy to have us watching him/her from the surface - just beautiful to watch.

We have extended our stay to 5 nights here but we do have a plan to leave on Thursday 22nd - several of us will head off together as we are planning to go scuba diving together when we get to Niue where apparently there are some underwater caves to discover. For the time being however we are going to relax and enjoy our remaining time on Suwarrow.

Paul and Susie



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