This guy was just cruising the shallow water-where we were walking!

Our new anchorage on the other side of the lagoon.

“There we were…”(as these stories always go). We were exploring the beach at our new anchorage when there was a section where we had to wade into the water to get around a large rock blocking the beach. There was some eel grass in the water and Ann half jokingly said; “keep a watch for eels”. As I rolled my eyes, threw caution to the wind and took a step, there not two feet away in the water staring at my toes was a deadly coral sea snake. This is a snake with one of the most venomous poisons on earth. One bite and you’re dead in minutes. Uh, oh.

Fortunately the deadly coral sea snake also has one of the smallest mouths of any deadly snake. My toes are big enough that I’m relatively safe from coral sea snake bites unless he were to catch the skin between the toes. Not that I’m testing the theory mind you. I gingerly stepped another foot or two away so as not to disturb him, took a couple pictures and we moved on only to discover just a few feet away the fierce Fijian land crab blocking our way. And so the day went.

We moved our anchorage this morning. The wind came up last night and turned a bit south. The combination made our old anchorage a bit rough with two foot waves setting down from the far end of the lagoon driven by the 15-20 knot wind. So, we moved. About ¼ mile to the south into a pristine little bay with a beach at the south end where we are anchored, that also curves around to our east with a sand spit to the north. We are virtually covered-completely actually when you consider that the only winds we have seen in the last two weeks have been between south and east, northeast. And we’re only about 50 yards off the beach. Even though it’s still windy -although we’re protected a bit more from the palms fringing the shore, there’s no chop at all. We’re very comfortable and it was worth the effort to move. We’re in between 14 and 19 feet of water over sand (depending on the tide) and I have a little over 100 feet of chain out expecting some higher winds that are forecast in the days ahead. We’re tucked in a sweet spot.

Even though we like where we are, the first thing we do after we anchor is create a route on the gps to get from here, out through the bommies and the reef to open sea in the case that everything goes wrong and we need to depart. Since we came in with the gps turned on and the “tracking” function set to take a reading every 10 seconds, we have a pretty accurate track to go out on. All I have to do is put some waypoints on top of the track and name it and we’re ready to depart. With this set up, we can theoretically follow the route we took to get here, back out in the middle-of-night darkness -although I’m not keen to try it. But, that’s just part of sailing in the wilderness. You have to be ready for anything.

So, that’s it. An easy day -well after I finished with my machete, cutting the coconut we collected while on the beach and then cleaning up the mess in the cockpit when I was done. I need a little more practice. I still have ten fingers though and the coconut milk is sooooo good and refreshing after a hike on the beach and fighting off deadly sea snakes. Then to really make a mess you split the coconut in half and scoop out the soft meat inside for a little snack. Ahhhh -I think it’s time for a nap.