No beer here, Beverage Reef.
Moxie - Beck Family Adventure
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
Sat 16 Aug 2014 23:23
16 August 2014
We arrived this morning and are now anchored up all by ourselves at Beverage Reef, this is about as far away from land as we will ever be anchored I suspect. There is no land here, (perhaps at low tide for a bit?) just a totally submerged ring of coral with a convenient 100 metre wide gap that nature built especially for yachts. The atoll is about 2 miles in diameter, 3 weeks ago I did not know it existed.
There is another boat 'Apiti' that we have been in contact with on the SSB radio they should arrive at tea time.
We were greeted here by a welcoming committee of four humpback whales! One popped his head right out of the water to eyeball us, another gave us a tail wave. Shame we didn't go for a closer look but we were tired and didn't know exactly where the entrance was, our charts are totally useless here. According to navionics we sailed right over the reef, and we spotted the whales swimming there too! We knew the break was on the north west side, eventually spotted it and checked it out in the dinghy before we brought Moxie through. Outside it is 400 metres deep when just 200 metres off the reef wash, inside it is all 8 to 10 metres deep. Extremely clear water here makes it look much shallower, there is no land, apart from breakers all I can see is a stranded fishing boat which has been here a few years, we will investigate later.
It is cold here with a southerly blowing, ok inside out of the wind though. We need a rest and a feed and will go for a snorkel later.
We took our approach from the west, Our track for entry started outside the entrance at 20.00.066S 167.46.859W then we headed directly towards the fishing boat wreck on the Eastern side of the atoll anchoring at 20.00.040S 167.44.758W in 11 metres sand with a few deep coral heads. The least depth we recorded was 8.5 metres.
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
SV Moxie
http://blog.mailasail.com/moxie