We have spent a week in Suwarow now and have enjoyed the company of Group 2 of the fleet. We started the first evening with a barbeque on the beach with a couple of the other boats coming ashore to partake as well. The uninhabited atoll (except for a care taker and his family for a portion of the year) has a small “yacht club” where there is a book exchange, tool shed, table and chairs, small kitchen and barbeque drum. And I think there has been a bbq on the beach every night since.
We took the dingy over to a small motu aptly called bird or gull island, where literally thousands of birds nest, rest and squawk. We took a small picnic and luckily did not have to share our lunches with any birds. We then walked in the shallows of the reef towards a modern shipwreck on the reef. On the way we saw baby reef sharks less than a foot long and numerous white eels. We even had one eel swim through our legs for a closer look.
There are rumored to be two large Manta Rays at one snorkel location, but unfortunately the day we chose to try and seek them out was quite overcast and they didn’t feel like coming out to play. Instead we moved to another snorkel spot closer to pass which allowed for a drift dive more or less back in the direction of the fleet. Mike tied the Wind Dancer dingy painter around his waist so no one would ever be too far from a hand.
This has also been a great location for the paddle board. Mike and Karson have been around the anchorage several times and other boats in the fleet have been taking time to practice as well.
Karson also had a dive on one of the boats to try to retrieve a lost snorkel fin, but unfortunately could not recover it. She was able to help sort out the anchor chain which was wrapped around a big chunk of coral (also known as bommies). We do have a trip line on the anchor just for this instance which will hopefully allow us to pull up the anchor with the attached rope and free it from any coral interference.
We have had a change in the weather and a couple of low systems are coming through affecting our departure from Suwarrow. We have decided to skip the next island of Nuie, as there is not much weather protection and believe it is a more wise decision to push on for Samoa and Tonga.
The Wind Dancer Crew