Day 5

Kahia
Paul and Catherine Davis
Sun 30 Sep 2012 23:29
17:41S 164:27W
 
With the sea moderating we are having a pleasant time aboard and enjoy our night watches bathed in the beams of the full moon. With winds forecast to become very ligh, as we sail through the Tropical Conversion Zone, we will have to make decisions, perhaps stopping at Nuie, only about 300 miles away.
The sea bed around here is a dramatic landscape of gigantic mounts and we are heading South of Antiope Reef rising up to 9 meters under the sea surface, which causes the sea to break in the middle of the ocean.
Last night we also passed north of Palmerston, a small atoll of the Northern Cook islands, with about 50 inhabitants, descendants of a Lancashire sea captain William Marsters who settled here in 1862. With a supply ship coming here only once every 3 to 4 months, the islanders live in total isolation and refused an air-strip to be build and cruise ships to visit, but they are maintaining a few moorings for passing yachtsmen and are known to look after them with true hospitality. If we had not passed this atoll by night, we would have stopped here, in these settled conditions, to see this unique place.