Position: Still at Palmerston
Here's Downtown Palmerston. Really.
You can walk around the outside of the island in about an hour
This is the main road through the center of the island
It's paradise, but you can't be careless or this could happen. This boat chafed through its mooring two years ago and ended up on the reef.
It was a windy, rolling night at our mooring here. Glad to be on a mooring. We’re only about 75 yards from a very mean looking reef, so glad to not have to worry about an anchor dragging. We do usually worry about old moorings letting go in the night, but this one’s brand new. John from Orcinius dove with SCUBA gear on several of the moorings to help the folks from Palmerston inspect their moorings. He also “found” the one we’re on-it had been lost-and re-tied it. There is chain wrapped around a coral tunnel about 40 feet down and they put brand new rope on it, so we feel pretty confident unlike at some other stops where you look at rope that’s been in the water for a year or so and wonder how much longer before it dissolves.
Anyway, as part of mooring in a place like this there’s a neat trick we learned. Since the moorings are so close to an ugly reef, if anything on the mooring or your own lines breaks you have no time whatsoever to react before you’re on the reef. Solution? Drop you anchor until it’s just a couple feet off the bottom. This way if the mooring breaks and you start to drift in, your anchor will hit bottom as it gets more shallow. Not guaranteed to hold, but at least the racket of it dragging along the coral bottom will wake you up! Also, never, ever use one mooring line from one side of the boat through the mooring “eye” and to the other side. It will “saw” through the line in one or two days (sooner if it’s windy and rough). We have two mooring lines through the eye of the main line. Each goes out from our cleat, through the eye of the mooring and back to the same cleat. That way there’s no friction or rubbing at the eye and if one of your mooring lines breaks you still have the other one tied on.
OK, about the rest of the day; I don’t mean to brag….oh hell yes, I DO mean to brag. This place is amazing. We were sitting at coffee this morning here in the beautiful blue water right off an island and lagoon out of Fantasy Island and not 75 yards behind the boat a couple of BIG whales came sliding by slapping their tails about every 10 seconds. HUGE TAILS. BIG SLAPS. I have pictures since they were close enough for our regular lens. At first I just heard some noise like gunshots and thought; “oh that’s just John (on Orcinius who is moored about 60 feet away) working on his boat”. But I kept hearing the reports and finally looked up to see two whale tails in the air at the same time-right over my coffee cup! Then a little while later while we were enjoying fresh papaya with lime juice (brag, brag, brag…) a group of porpoises swam by intent on their mission to catch their own breakfast. All right off our back porch. Weare getting very spoiled by these whales as they do some kind of show every morning here. We’ve heard on the radio that in Niue-our almost next stop-the whales have been swimming right through and around the moorings. Probably some kind of teenage whale antics. Can’t wait to experience it. The other highlight of the day was after dinner. The family who is hosting us offered to sing some songs in the Maori language and style. Grandma came out for the first time since we’ve been here and led the extended family in several beautiful, haunting, songs. She was the lead and other family members harmonized around her. I can’t really properly describe it as it was part chant, part song and part oral history told in the traditional tongue. All of us guests were deeply touched by the music and all realized we had just witnessed a vital cultural tradition that goes back hundreds if not thousands of years.
We’re probably going to stay where we are for a couple more days. The weather for our next leg is unsettled (Palmerston to Beverage Reef) and it’s so nice right here. Ann’s looking forward to attending the local church on Sunday where they do the service in English, but sing the hymns in Maori. This being a really small island, we’re also met the minister who will be doing the service, so it should be fun. We’ve also met the Mayor (Bob) and the Policeman (Edward-who is one of our hosts). Yes, there’s only one policeman. Not surprisingly when I asked what the most difficult part of his job on Palmerston was, he replied; “domestic disputes”. Not surprising since there’s only one bar on the island-The Palmerston Yacht Club-but they ran out of beer two years ago and haven’t been able to resupply it since. Without beer, the yacht club has fallen into disrepair. Since there are no cars either, excessive drinking and drunk driving aren’t an issue. OK, so I’m being sarcastic here. The reality is that these are wonderful people who are dedicated to their families. We have not seen more happy people anywhere.