Sitting in the cockpit watching the moon and the stars. And this time, the moon and planet Venus hanging off to the right. It's a beautiful crescent moon setting off the horizon. We have had some gorgeous nights these past few days. Yes, thats right. I am back on night watch and with not much else to do but ponder the stars and the universe and the planet we live on.
And I think of the strange life we are living. We meet people living equally strange or different lives to what we have known. Like those on Palmerston. But the common thread is the kindness of people to strangers. Simon, our host on Palmerston gifted us with some parrot fish. We had never before tried it as we were always concerned with ciguatera, a poison that comes from the coral that makes up the diet of the parrot fish. However, the parrot fish from this particular reef are free of this poison and make really delicious eating. And as a thank you for delivering the goods from Rarotonga, the Palmerston Administration gifted us with two big packs of Wahoo filets. We were also given some freshly caught shark meat from the fellows on s/v Nirvana who we have recently run into at a couple of anchorages. So regardless of our lack of fishing luck, we now have plenty of fish in our freezer.
We arrived to Beveridge Reef on the morning of our third day at sea. Beveridge Reef is probably not shown in your atlas and I wonder if you can even find it on Google Earth. So I will give you the GPS coordinates to help you. It is at 20°00'000"S and 167°47'000"W. If you haven't been able to find us on your maps, you can always refer to our track on TrackMyTour which you can find at http://trackmytour.com/p3NMd.
The reef itself is pretty much submerged and is only visible at low tide and because of the waves crashing over it. It creates a lovely lagoon with depths of about 30 feet in the middle and coming up to shallow edges suitable for anchoring with sandy bottoms at about 12 feet. The coral and fish life is abundant and the water is crystal clear. So you would think we would have this little known place, an island oasis of sorts in the middle of the ocean, all to ourselves. We had not seen anyone during our passage, but on arriving here we found two other sailboats already in the lagoon.
Our friends John and Amanda on their 46' Halberg Rasy had arrived a couple of days previous having sailed directly from Rarotonga where we had last met them. They run a sailing school and they had a new crew on board having dropped off the students that had sailed with them from Tahiti. This group will be with them for the next two weeks learning everything necessary to get a Captain's license. And we didn't meet the other boat as we anchored at the far end of the lagoon but we spoke to him on the radio when he gave us some guidance through the pass and we were told he is sailing single handed and has been here for a week or so.
We had a restful afternoon and evening. Did a bit of snorkelling (saw some lovely coral and a white sandy bottom that was littered with Auger Shells), a bit of cleaning up and a little repair on a battcar on the main sail that had succumbed to the pressures of the winds. After a quiet night, we are now ready for the 24 hour sail to Niue.
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