Niue

Wildfox
Anthony Swanston
Sun 8 Sep 2013 20:58
I arrived at Niue on Sunday afternoon to be greeted by sad news about my friends on Blue Marble -the eight Norwegians who were with me at Palmerston. They did everything right. And it all went wrong through no fault of their own.
 
They arrived at the south end of Niue in the middle of the night and the wind was blowing 40 knots. The comfortable thing to do was to make a night entry and pick up a Niue Yacht Club Mooring. (You cannot anchor here as the water is too deep with a solid rock bottom). The safe but uncomfortable thing to do was to stay at sea and make a daylight entry. They did the safe and uncomfortable thing and on arrival in daylight were directed onto a mooring owned by Niue Fisheries. Ironically this mooring is normally reserved for big boats of more than 25 tons - Blue Marble is about 10. They went ashore, the mooring broke and Blue Marble went onto the reef. The island had a crane big enough to lift the boat and out of the water and it is clearly a write off.
 
Yesterday afternoon they had a sale of all of their un-insured items - everything from a brand new RIB and 10hp outboard down to tins of corned beef.
 
A sad end to a great adventure for a wonderful group of young people...

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