Helen and I decided to go for another walk. John preferred to stay aboard so we headed off to the beach together. Having just the two of us to haul the dinghy up the beach makes such a difference as we can only lug it inches at a time rather than drag it up in one go. Fortunately Stuart from Imagine was there and gave a hand.
We walked along the beach with Stuart & Sheila for a while chatting about plans, etc. We’ve agreed to run a controlled net from here to the Tuamotus and possibly on to Tahiti. This will start up next week. We parted company when they headed off to the town in the next bay while we carried on along the coast. Our destination was the leeward beach to the east which required following the coast of this bay for a while before climbing a low saddle and out to the other side. I think I sound like a stuck record when I say the scenery and views were stunning. But they were. Unfortunately the leeward beach with it’s crashing waves also had it’s collection of trash. It was not as bad as elsewhere but even here, thousands of miles out into the Pacific, plastic bottles, old rope and other items had washed ashore.
We walked to one end of the beach before resting in the shade of a tree, taking water then turning back. On the way we found what we think was the skeleton of a horse.
After returning to the boat I popped over to Jackster to borrow some tools so I could open up our old water maker feeder pump. While in the middle of opening the pump Gary from Inspiration Lady called about some problems he had with his email software. It turned out he needed a file so I invite him over to collect the file and see how to apply it. Dave from Jackster popped by then too and hung around for a while during which time he invited us out to dive round the corner later in the afternoon which we accepted, particularly considering he was offering to fill our tanks afterwards.
Having pulled the pump apart some of the bits inside were flying around. They could have been lose as a result of my dismantling but I figured out how to put it all together. Maybe it works now but I have a suspicion some of the metal is worn and output pressure will be poor.
After lunch we got our dive gear together and around 2pm John and I were out in the dinghy – Helen preferring to read. Our first port of call was to stop by the nearby boat “Secret agent Man” which had tangled it’s chain under a coral head. I’d free dived down to take a look and realized it would take some moving of the chain and some hard pulling to remove from under the coral head under which the chain was tightly wedged.
Dave and I donned our scuba gear and we went down. We shifted the chain and anchor to create some slack on the chain one side of the coral head. I kept this up while Dave pulled the chain out from under the coral head. Then we gave the signal to Eric on Secret Agent Man to up anchor and move. They were off. We waved goodbye, got back into our dinghies and headed off to our selected dive site.
The dive was murky but we did get to see a lot of fish. At one point we found a lion fish and while we were looking at that a manta ray snuck up behind us so we had two good sightings in one. I also spotted an octopus which is always fun and I managed to spot a second, larger manta which was in view for just a few seconds.
Once we were back on the boat we received a call from Eric on Secret Agent Man inviting us over for dinner. He was thankful for our rescuing him from the reef. He’d tried for ages the previous day to free himself to no avail. While he offered us the few beers he had we declined suggesting instead he ‘pass it on’ to the next person he found that he could help. They’d cooked us a chili dinner with rice which was nice. We’d brought chocolate cake for dessert which went with their banana cake.
I was quite exhausted by the end of the evening and was quite glad to lie down and sleep.
Today we’re heading round the island anti-clockwise to Daniels Bay which has received praise from other cruisers as well has having a great hike to what some have said is the third highest waterfall in the world despite it having no water. We’ll see. We’ll do the hike regardless as it’s supposed to be quite good.
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