Worm in the Apple

Okay, so now we know that some serious weather happens out here in the middle of nowhere and you'd better be prepared to cut and run. As soon as the sun came up (after we had anchored out in deeper water in the wee hours of Thursday morning), we moved back to our spot in front of the big reef. But then we decided that wasn't going to protect us from the forecast wind direction so we moved to another place which still wasn't perfect for the wind we were actually getting. Anchoring three times in one day is not my idea of paradise! When the weather continued bad yesterday we decided to head for the SE corner of the atoll:

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,57.233,S,144,34.851,W,TahaneaSE

Unfortunately we waited until the afternoon to leave, just when the weather started to go from not-so-great to bad. Big black clouds, thunder, and enough rain to bury our side deck in six inches of water when we stuffed the scupper to let it flow through our deck fill into the water tank. But we could see immediately that this was the place we should have come two days ago, and the skies cleared and we enjoyed a peaceful night for a change.

Last night we had sundowners on Soggy Paws as a farewell to Visions of Johanna who moved on to Fakarava this morning. This morning we took a beach walk (on broken coral; there's very little actual sand) with Dave and Sherry to circumnavigate the motu immediately in front of us, after which Sherry and I snorkeled a small shallow reef. I swam back to the boat and was surprised to see what John later told me were half a dozen ramoras swimming under Nakia's hull. I don't think I've ever seen one free-swimming before.

It's still a bit breezy with some big white clouds, but the wind is from the SE so there's no fetch and we are happy not to have had to move today!

Linda