May 30
We arrived in Suwarrow and spent a few days there. Lost one day to rain. The water was very clear and the island is beautiful. I wish we could have spent more time there, I didn't really feel that we were rushing before but since Tahiti it sure does feel like we're always rushing - the antithesis of cruising.
There were a number of squalls that came through while we were anchored - with gusts up to 40 knots. Luckily our anchor held. Before we arrived another worldARC boat was not so lucky, they swung around and a coral head that their anchor was wrapped on snapped and they hit the reef. Through the major work of 4-5 boats that were there the boat has been repaired enough to make it to American Samoa, so we have a group going there instead of Niue. (Another group left earlier for Niue.) Getting the anchors up was a challenge, a number of boats had to have divers help/advise how to unwrap from the coral. We all made it out around noon yesterday.
We are excited about the availability of US postal rates (I can send Holly a box of books) and hopefully we can get our mail too. We've also been advised that there is a Costco there. So many of us are excited at the possibility of provisioning with some items we haven't found since leaving the US.
We didn't have much wind yesterday but we've had a very nice sail since 5am this morning. It's expected to go light tonight/early tomorrow but then fill in by the afternoon. Hope so, we don't have a lot of fuel so we don't want to motor too much.
329 miles to go to American Samoa,
Pauline