A night of stormy weather got the KUNA on a beam reach
far too fast to Tikopia island73 miles from Anuta.
Despite the moon coming back, it was so dark due to
thick cloud that we could only distinguish the crest
of the waves lit by the running light (maybe I would
have rather not seen them).
After heaving to for 3 hours, still pushed in the
right direction, I woke up at 6am to the sight of
the island 3 miles away, straight downwind! Patrick
my Duff Islander crew was on watch and I hadn't managed
to teach him the subtleties of GPS waypoints: I was
hoping to get in the lea of the island, but had to get
some sleep, short handling, ahh!
We motored straight into the wind the last miles to
drop anchor in Ringdove Cove, in 20 m of sand with
large coral bommies, beautiful clear waters
(S 12 deg 17.580, E 168 deg 49.153) ! The anchorage
is easy to find with the help of the locals but it
seems that the charted depths for the shoals are
out by 100-200m or so in plan 17. The first canoe
we saw came to collect 500 Solomons dollars landing
fee: Tikopian have become tourist savy due to the
visits of large cruising ships
Tikopia is much larger than Anuta and its tall volcanic
cliffs (390m max)offer a bit of protection but the wind
buffets through the bluffs to extraordinary speeds.
Do not expect to hang off the reef in a SE wind: so
far KUNA has been on a lee shore most of the time!!
The winds deflected by the island and the high cliffs
create an eddie, and wind in the opposite direction at
the anchorage. So after laying a scope of 1 to 3 in
20m of water, I thought that I was going to be a
comfortable distance away from the reef edge but ended
up one boat length to the breakers!!
To secure the boat and prevent the 60m of anchor chain
to drag and destroy too many bommies, I set up a mooring
near the boat: in 15 m of water, I picked a nice round
bommie with hoverhangs and wrapped a chain around it
that goes straight up to a swivel, 2 ropes (backup!)
to a large fishing buoy (donated by Taumako Island),
to the front bollard. A quarter of a scuba tank was
sufficient to do the whole set up despite several ascents
to tune up!
NOw the KUNA is hanging to a mooring hammerlock style,
preventing her to swing onto the reef, and preventing the anchor chain to drag over square meters of coral, which is critical habitat for the few fish that are left on this already depleted reef but still retaining the main anchor as a backup in case the
mooring gear breaks!
2 weeks to wait here while the crew is filming on Anuta!
