Position  08:57.43S 157:55.75W     Anchored off Te Tautua village in Penrhyn

Since the last update we had a good couple more days on passage and arrived here in Penrhyn (Tongareva is its polynesian name) on Tuesday.

After 24 hours with the spinnaker up the wind increased a bit and we switched back to the genoa for the rest of the passage. We arrived off the island early Tuesday morning and sailed up and down in the calmer water in the lee of it for a few hours until the sun was high enough to safely see our way through the narrow reef pass between the breaking surf and through the patches of reef inside the lagoon.

After checking in at the big (maybe 200 people) village of Omoka we pulled up the anchor again to cross the lagoon to the more sheltered side near the other smaller (about 50 people) village of Te Tautua before it got too dark to see our way through the reefs. I managed to replace the broken wind turbine blades with the spare set and hub so it is working again – just a bit noisier with the cheap original blades. Feels like all the space and weight on Sea Monkey devoted to all sorts of spare parts and tools is worth it when you suddenly need them in a remote part of the south pacific!

The last day or two here has been amazing. The huge lagoon and motu (islands around its edge) are beautiful with turquoise waters, palm covered coral islands and many rainbows every day. It is dark early at night with a good view of stars, shooting stars and some great bioluminescence we saw during a squall and the bright moon rises later.

But even better than that are the people of Te Tautua who are unbelievably friendly. The first evening we got a few visits from people in their small aluminium boats and more than one invite to visit everyone and to a big lunch for the whole village. The next day we went ashore and after a couple of visits along the way we made it down to Rio’s house where they were already working on the dock. They had asked for help from New Zealand to improve the docks all along the front of their village and been given many tons of cement –they just had to do all the rest. Almost everyone in the village works together – mixing concrete, laying out sticks and old fencing as a substitute for re-bar, making food and drink... So we spent the day working with them, pushing lots of wheelbarrows of concrete, meeting everyone in the village at the same time. In the afternoon we all stopped to eat the feast of roasted pig, fried fish, raw tuna in coconut milk, rice, corn beef hash, coconut breads, plantains and more. After that most people had a rest if they were not busy dealing with the entire truckload of milkfish that they had just netted –maybe we brought them luck!

We headed back out to Sea Monkey in a rain shower just as the sun was going down a little tired but having made many new friends and with full stomachs and a bowl full of milkfish.

Phil