Located in the middle of nowhere. No land within 360
degrees as far as you can see (and no more, much further beyond the
horizon). Yet at anchor in 7m on a white, flat, sandy bottom. Encircled
by a coral reef, which breaks the heavy ocean swell, and creates a calm,
turquoise lagoon inside. A perfect place to stop for a rest on the rolly
voyage from Palmerston to Niue (4 days sailing).
We stayed for a week…
There’s
plenty to do even if you can’t step on land: Snorkel the reef,
inspect the ship wreck (none of our friends - it was an old fishing
boat that had stranded on the reef.) …and tried to catch lobsters…
Ben had made a genius lobster trap, which we put out along the reef
at night with some fish meat as bate. Our slogan was: Lobsters check
in – but they don’t check out! At least we thought it would
work like that, until months later we learnt that Pacific lobsters have
no claws and therefore are “vegetarian”… However,
the fish bate was gone every single morning, so we were wondering what
feasts were going on at night. One morning the cage was awfully heavy
and we finally met our gourmet guest: a white tipped reef shark, 1.5m
long, completely curled up inside the trap, and with an extrusion on
the side of his belly where he was still digesting the fish head. After
that we changed the slogan to: Sharks check in – but they don’t
check out…
We also made some wonderful “drift-snorkels” and dives through the pass. We saw a big “carpet” of maybe 30 huge eagle rays hovering just off the ground, staying completely still in the current.
Added Dec 11