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| On the hook north of Tom Neale's Jetty |
SUWARROW… no go! May 1st 2015 … Suwarrow Atoll …. (My computer is on the fritz, some keys are dead, so I’m improvising …. 13°14.86S, 163°6.467W… > “Suwarrow, Suwarrow, Suwarrow caretaker, this is the motoryacht DOMINO, DOMINO, do you coly, over” no response. … Let’s keep on fishing, then!
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| Entrance into Suwarrow by calm weather |
For the last 3 hours, we’ve been trolling the NW end of Suwarrow with fantastic results… 2 nice size wahoos and 2 yellowfin tunas. Didn’t matter if the wind blew a stink and we were pelted by rain, we were NOT to abandon the sixty pound fish on the hook! Now, the freezer is full again, especially after catching a 35lb Mahi during our crossing, just north of Maupelia.
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| Nice Mahi... our first in a over 6 months! |
We’ve done all the paperwork required by the Cook Islands Customs… form 27 gave us permission to enter Suwarrow in the presence of the park Ranger, but we were not allowed to “LAND” on the atoll in the absence of the Caretaker. The caretaker had agreed to meet us there on the 3Oth of April… we were now May 1st and nobody answered on VHF 16. By mid afternoon, the wind and seas were picking up and the forecast for the following day was nasty. We decided to take a peek inside the lagoon, just to make sure that there, indeed, was nobody waiting for us. Deserted… nobody in sight.
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| Now, this twin hooku] made rejoiced us |
Now, we were in a quandary… We could have diverted our route north penrhyn, but the rates have gone up so much (NZ$3 a foot a day!!!! } that we did't even consider it. Making an executive decision, our chief dropped the anchor north of the jetty in 1O meters of blue water, we floated our chain and waited. That was a good decision, as it turned out. The next day, we were still hoping to see the ranger’s transport show up on our AIS… what we saw was a 26 meter sailing yacht slushing through 35 to 4O knots of wind… “DOMINO, do you think we can anchor inside the lagoon# It’s too rough out here, even for us… but we have a 12 food draft and the seas are bad, visibility sucks…” We talked for a while and the yacht decided to continue on to Western Samoa. Needless to say that we didn’t leave the boat, didn’t drop the dinghy, didn’t go to shore… we just looked at the dozen shark that had decided to check us out. It was cold, rainy, and we had no desire to go for a swim.
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| What do you do with all that fish .. Tuna Tartare on a bed of avocado, tomato and hard boiled eggs |
We kept checking the AIS, hoping for the ranger to show up… nothing. And what a shame, really! Suwarrow was such a dream for us… just reaching this destination was an accomplishment… we wanted to experience one of the best diving in the pacific… It didn’t happen… in the morning we raised anchor and waved goodbye to Tom Neale’s retreat, the coconut crab we didn’t hunt, the reef we didn’t dive, the gin=clear water we didn’t experience. I’m sure that other yachts do stay even if the ranger is not around… if fact, I know several who did… but I’m not one to defy authority and I was such a paranoid mess to deal with for those 36 hours inside the lagoon that my skipper was only too happy to leave.
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| Into the West |
Off to American Samoa, then… Home port of pago pago!
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| Here goes nothing! |
Until then… dominomarie
