Kenutu

On Monday morning Helen and I took a stroll ashore. Ben stayed ashore as his feet are sore due to a few coral scratches and some sores from when he went snorkeling without boots on. There was a grass/sandy track just behind the beach on the NW shore of Ofu that ran along the edge of the village. It was well kept and even as we walked along locals were sweeping and cutting down the grass to keep it that way. We walked from one end of the village to the other before returning to the dinghy along the beach.

Shortly after returning to the boat we up anchored and moved around the bottom of Ofu and anchored off the west side of Kenutu. There are still a few boats around but there is a great sense of isolation here.

In the afternoon we went snorkeling. We cut the trip short as it wasn’t that good. Instead we went ashore and hiked the short trail over to the east side of Kenutu. We explored around a while to see if the trail went anywhere else and found some more interesting sites. The east coast faces the prevailing winds and seas and is hence quite rugged – reminding us much of Niue.

In the afternoon I inspected the drive batteries. The batteries that were originally the house batteries are all 0.1V less than the ones left in the drive banks. This may be because I haven’t really pushed them all to full charge and held them there for a few hours to equalize. I’ve decided to stop cross charging the house bank for a while and use the generator a bit more to top up the house and in turn pushing up the drive banks at the same time. After a week or so of this I’ll retest.

One thing I neglected to mention is that the net I started when we left Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas ended last Saturday. We had originally intended the net for the trip down to the Tuamotus but it caught on. My belief is that the guys who put the effort into doing the weather every day drew in the crowds. However, the weather guys were getting tired. Two of them were on their way to Australia and behind us in time. Also, in this region, are established nets which have been running for years and give weather too. It seemed the right time to call it quits. Rather than just cut everyone off we spent some time gathering info on other nets in the area and compiled info on gathering weather for oneself. We gave out most of the information several times over the last week and put it up on our website for reference. You can see that info by going to http://www.aboarddignity.com/pacinfo.html.