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Date: 10 Jul 2012 05:39:30
Title: Days 51 & 52 Manihi Atoll Tuamotu's 14:27.53S 146:01.0W
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We have a couple of wonderful days here at Manihi. We walked over to the sea side of the eastern end of the island on Sunday. The vegetation is mainly Coconuts with a few She Oaks, Pandanus and other trees & shrubs we don't know the name of. The land is coral and volcanic rock (broken up) with a little sand at the waters edge. The reef extends in a shelf for about 200m then drops off to very deep water. We found crab and lobster shells on the beach, although they don't appear to be big on the local's menu. Miss Kitty & Nigel collected handfuls of Sea Urchin quills and intend to make wind chimes. We spent another couple of hours scrubbing the hulls so 'Liseron' looks a little more loved. We then motored with the head sail back to our original anchorage. 2 Canadian monohulls came in late yesterday afternoon. We had been speaking to the on the radio that  morning and they joined us for happy hour. Bruce & Jeanie from Jaboula are Sth Africans (now Canadians) and Jordon & Judy from Sea Turtle. After a late night we rose early this morning & Fernando arrived at 8am & took us out to the pearl farm.  He arrived with fresh baguettes (straight from the oven as he had finished baking at 6.30am) and we then delivered bread to the other boats in the anchorage. It was sooo good. The pearls are grown on 'ropes' of plastic mesh hung from ropes slung between floats at a depth of 20m (any deeper and fish eat them) for about 18mths when they are first seeded. The mesh is an Australian invention and is brought in from New Zealand. The pearls are seeded with an abalone bead (nucleus) and part of another oyster mantle that gives the pearl it's colour. This is taken from a oyster that has good colour in it's shell (the green, blues, purples and silver of the mother of pearl). The shell is then drilled and tied onto knotted nylon rope (10 oysters per rope) and then these are also strung along ropes suspended between floats. They are left until they are around 3 years old then harvested, the pearl extracted and a new nucleus inserted. They then go back on the ropes and can be impregnated with a nucleus 3 more times. We snorkelled to gather ropes of oysters from the 3 year and 5 year groups. Fernando then took us back to the shed where he showed us the seeding process and the pearl extraction (most exciting bit). We each had an opportunity of opening 2 oysters and keep the contents. Nigel was lucky and had a pearl in each shell, Kitty, John and I had one shell with a pearl and one without. The sizes ranged from quite small to 15mm diameter, shaped from round to tear drop to totally irregular and coloured Aubergine, blue/green, tray, champagne and creamy/yellow. All distinctive and very beautiful. Fernando gave us a few extra pearls so all in all it was a great experience. We also brought back pearl meat which Nigel (our resident chef) will prepare in some exotic way to taste marvellous. We leave here tomorrow morning after going into town to buy up on bread (ordinary & coconut baguettes) and a few supplies (including more Tim Tam biscuits). Our next landfall will be Fiji about 2000nm away and about 2.5 weeks sailing. We have really enjoyed this stop (thanks Terry & Laine for telling us about it) and would recommend this Atoll and especially Fernando (the Baker and tour guide extraordinaire) to anyone coming to the Tuamotu atolls.
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