Sept 8 With mixed feelings we left Suvarov exactly at high tide with me steering. It was gnarly on the windward side of Suvarov but the pass was smooth enough. I call it Suvarov because a Russian found it in 1814 and named it after his ship. The Cook Islanders want a Polynesian sounding name so they changed Suvarov to Suwarrow. Now if Suwarrow was its original name I would call it Suwarrow but really the first name it had is Suvarov, as far as anyone knows, so I'm calling it Suvarov. The mixed feelings come from sadness at leaving the amazing beauty, birdlife, clear water and thriving coral reefs mixed with relief from leaving a cruising style that many cruisers love but we avoid. There were too many boats (30 at one time), too close together, too much partying and too many rules for our tastes. The rules came, as most rules do, from people damaging this Eden. We had to be accompanied by a ranger when we visited any motu but the main one. That meant we went in groups. All the anchoring was confined to one small area so that other areas would remain undisturbed. We are happy to be free of all that. We'll miss the wonderful people we met. By the way, I have a Lonely Planet Guide to the Cook Islands and it lists the population of Suvarov as 2. That is an exaggeration because from Dec through April there is no one there.
This is the first passage we have made in the company of another boat, Aquamante, maybe Italian. 53' long and going 8.5 knots compared to our 38' going 7 knots. The speed a boat goes rises as the length increases (as long as the boat doesn't get too fat). 10 boats left the last 2 days, half going to Tonga and half to Samoa except for us and Aquamante going to Niue. Aquamante has a AIS transceiver which means we know its name, type of vessel, SOG (speed over ground), bearing and distance from us. Pretty cool.
We enjoyed getting to know Ants. He said he was chosen for the job mainly because of his ability to live off the land and sea in isolation. In his home town of Whakatane, New Zealand, he spends half his time in the bush hunting. They wanted someone who could get their own food and water, make a fire, put out fires, live outside and deal with the natural environment. I thought you would have to be a good people person but he said, no, these other things were what counted. He and Harry, the head ranger, "have their differences". Ants likes to keep more meticulous records. Ants likes to eat at the cruiser potlucks but Harry likes to cook his own food and go to bed early. Ants likes grass and Harry "cleans it up". They have resolved that issue by Ants and Harry dividing the property. Ants has a plot with grass and flowers and Harry has a clean bare plot. I'll tell you one thing, Ants is no good at his birds. He kept calling the Masked Booby a Northern Gannet (which they have in New Zealand). I think he just couldn't believe there is a bird name booby.
I think our closest neighbors in the anchorage were not so happy as we are. They had a lot of trouble with their anchor getting wrapped around coral and were often out in the howling wind hanging over the bow of the boat trying to deal with the chain. I said we weren't having trouble and she said, "That's because you have a really long snubber." She was right. Barry had commented about what a short snubber line they had out. One thing about Barry, he has a long snubber. That, and 3 bouys which kept the chain suspended over (rather than snarled in) the coral heads. I can't explain a snubber without drawing a picture, so you will just have to google it.
 |
| Snubber line, found on Google images for you |
No comments:
Post a Comment