News from Suwarrow

As I write frigate birds are wheeling over the boat and tropic birds, boobies and sooty terns are flying by. Apparently at the last count there were 81,000 breeding pairs of the latter on the islets in Suwarrow. One main breeding area is Whale island, a low scrub covered islet about one hour's walk along the reef at low tide. The caretaker James took a small group of us along there. The birds are fairly fearless and hover around your head in the steady trade wind breeze. One can see many untidy nests on the ground - usually with one egg in each.
We saw moray eels and blue parrot fish along the reef and much beautifully coloured coral.

We have now had two delicious pot luck suppers with the other yachties and the two caretakers -fresh tuna , mahimahi, parrot fish, coconut pancakes, salads and all sorts of dishes from the different nationalities here. The last one was on Bastille Day in respect to the french sailors.

Most of the yachts are from USA or from Europe via Panama Canal. Most of them have arrived here from French Polynesia, Bora Bora usually being their last stop. We are the odd ones out having made the big effort to sail up from NZ. Many of these boats will be in NZ for the coming summer cyclone season so we will be expecting a few guests.

The big disappointment is that there are no mature coconut crabs on the main island here. The caretaker says that someone has been here in the last cyclone season when there was no caretaker and harvested the lot!

Apparently they are huge and quickly climb the coconut trees to snip coconut free. They then descend and carry it off to a quiet spot where they open them and take up to three weeks to consume them.

I will now have to come again in the future!

I have been for a swim on several occasions now, the sharks are no problem but Denise is as yet too timorous.

PS This afternoon Denise found a deep pool close to the shore and went for a shark free dip!!

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