The fair land of Niue, known locally as "The Rock," is simple, quiet, pretty, small and also, if I forgot to say, very quiet. A few restaurants, a few stores, a post office, police station, government building, schools, and even a small satellite campus of the University of the Pacific. Happy and well-fed dogs roam the streets, all collared, as well as some friendly cats. The locals smile like they already know you.

We've made the acquaintance of Keith Vial, Commodore of the Niue Yacht Club, "The Biggest Little Yacht Club in the World." But he's a lot more than Commodore: he's a tourism advocate, trying to promote this small island paradise; he's a cruiser's advocate, working to encourage visiting yachts, and to liaison between cruisers and the community -- fisherman, locals, and businesses in town. He knows everyone, and seems to have some pull. He works very hard to communicate with the cruisers, meeting everyone as soon as they come ashore, sending email messages regularly that keep inbound boats abreast of the availability of moorings, and letting everyone in the anchorage know what's what.

For tomorrow, What's What is the supply ship that's due in to port in the afternoon, and the news that we can't go ashore while it's here. The wharf is small, and high. There's a quite functional lift system in place for dinghies, and once they're ashore you roll them off into little parking spots near the wharf. But with the supply ship in port they need all that space, so they have asked that we remain on board for the day. Not to mention, there's a "No Boating" law on Sunday in Niue, this to encourage everyone -- fishermen especially -- to go to church. So Brian on m/v Furthur is offering a shuttle service for cruisers who want to go to church tomorrow, sanctioned by Commodore Keith, making only one dinghy moving about, and all before the ship arrives, anyhow.

It's all very simple and yet quite complicated, so we're just following the rules. In the meantime, we've made a few dives, and taken some spectacular hikes on this unique coral island. The snorkeling in the anchorage is good, with deep coral canyons, fish, snakes and white tip reef sharks right off the bow of the boat. The dives are wondrous; everyone is coming back from their dive with the Niue Dive company with glowing reports of caves and caverns and some of the best coral we've all seen since Fakarava. And lots of striped sea snakes.

The snakes are getting mixed reviews. I think they're great, and have even gently handled a few of them, since they can't bite us (mouths too small) despite the fact that they're poisonous. Others keep a wide berth, not trusting that "mouths too small" thing at all. And some won't even go in the water. The snakes are beautiful swimmers and are really quite sweet -- and curious. They will swim toward you and sometimes follow you, but in truth, they don't want to be touched. The minute I touch one of them they turn and swim away, quickly snuggling under a nearby rock. One of our dives was in "Snake Alley,' a canyon where they seem to congregate, and there were numerous nests of them sleeping under ledges, their flat tails poking out. We didn't reach into any of the nests of sleeping snakes, in case you were wondering.

The cave diving is exciting, although none of us are doing anything daring since cave diving can be quite dangerous, so we stick to wide caves with multiple exits. The one we swam into, under the tutelage of the dive master, was full of huge lobster and furry shrimp, as well as schools of big-eyed red fish hiding in the darkness. And the coral gardens are fairylands. The reefs were badly damaged by a cyclone recently, and Annie at Niue Dive says it takes 20 years to regrow a good coral reef, but it's definitely coming along.

The island itself is an amazing landscape, with some great short hikes from road to shore through lush tropical jungles and past ancient coral formations. Some of the places are right out of a movie set, they're so beautiful and unreal. The jungle is reclaiming much of the land that used to be populated, since most Niueans now live in New Zealand. Many homes appear abandoned, rotting and overgrown with vines, some with palm trees spouting right through the windows and out through rusted metal roofs. There is a large protected forest of old mahogany trees, so dense that people are advised not to go in without a guide. And most interestingly, Niue has the unique goal of becoming the first all-organic island in the Pacific.

All the land is family-owned, and I suppose there's a chance some heir could one day realize they own a slice of a tropical island paradise and return to live the good life, wondering why anyone would leave. But until then, only 1200 people live here, down from 5000 before the airport was built a number of years ago, and many more in times past. Air New Zealand flies in once a week, and last year brought a total of 1700 tourists; the rest were family on holiday from New Zealand. Cruisers accounted for a almost 600 visitors, which is why Keith is working so hard to develop Niue as a cruiser destination and not, as he jokes, "a place you come because you were either lost or diverted."

Everyone in the anchorage (over 20 boats) was invited to a birthday party at the yacht club this afternoon, thrown by the crews from s/v Visions of Johanna and s/v Curious, since they both had wives with August birthdays. When they heard I was an August baby, with only a week until I add a year to my total, they generously included me, and then a few others in the anchorage with upcoming birthdays. They provided a fantastic array of skewered meats and fish, and everyone brought side dishes. The yacht club bar and ice cream parlor were in full swing, and both Keith, and Mamata, the sweet woman who owns the yacht club restaurant, were instrumental in making it all happen.

And now it's evening, were all back on our boats and dealing with a nice enthusiastic storm; winds gusting to 28 knots with sporadic heavy rain. Every boat in the anchorage is rocking like we're all underway. We've got things battened down here inside the cabin and are trying to hang onto our computer mouses as they continuously leap off the table. The boat is creaking and complaining with every swell, and I think everyone here is looking forward to the next weather window so we can get to Tonga, where protected anchorages are plentiful. Niue is, after all, only a tiny rock in the middle of the Pacific.

By the way, the Internet is down here, so this is being posted via HF radio on our Sailmail, hence, no picture. Rumor has it things will be up and running Monday, and we'll try to get the photo gallery posted then. (Imagine the all the folks in the anchorage tomorrow, holed up on their boats while the supply ship dominates the wharf, the law restricts boating, and the rain keeps us down anyhow, and all this with no Internet! This can't be cruising in the new millennium ... we'll all have to read or something!

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Destination Niue achieved.

The island of Niue came into view just after sunrise on Allan's watch, and we were stunned to note that it's a giant flat pancake slapped on the surface of a choppy ocean. For some reason we all had visions of something more, oh, Moorea-like, perhaps. But Niue is a mesa of sorts, a straight-topped, lush green slab of coral. As we came along the southeastern shore, the waves were huge; crashing into the sheer coral cliffs and into caves, creating massive blowholes that spewed hundreds of feet into the air. The mist that remained from each explosion wafted along, making it all look very prehistoric.

So far we don't have a lot else to report. Tomorrow we'll know much more, like whether the pod of 8 whales that are being tracked and are on their way from Rarotonga arrive soon. And whether we can go diving with them. Niue is one of 3 places in the world where you can legally dive with whales, and this is the very beginning of the season. Since it's not a big place, and not many tourists (mostly cruisers, and not many of us) the whales won't be inundated by a bunch of idiotic flailing humans. Mostly whale researchers and curious, eager sailors.

Our friend Brian on Further has been keeping track of the whales, and has arranged for all of us to go out with the dive masters here on the island the minute they arrive, which could be tomorrow. If not, we have plans to go on a cave dive with Brian, who has been here a few days already and wastes no time getting the lay of the land and sea anywhere he is. He's definitely the guy to send ahead, an ambitious and enthusiastic scout.

There is not much here, otherwise. Many of the 22,000 Niueans have left for New Zealand, leaving hundreds of family homes empty all over the island. And since it's not a tourist destination, although they have tried hard to make it one, it's quite special, in a very small, private way. We met Keith, the Commodore of the Niue Yacht Club today, and he's packed full of information on what to do, where to go, what not to do, and who to meet. They say everyone in Niue knows everyone else. Soon enough, I assume we'd know them all, too. And between Keith and Brian, we have our week made.

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Ah, finally: a nice sailing day. After a few hours at sea the wind is starting to pick up, the surface of the ocean is mostly smooth with big, lazy swells that gently lift the boat up for good view from the top and then ease her down into wide valleys. Although we were the first boat to leave Beveridge Reef, five faster boats are in hot pursuit, and it's doubtful we'll be the first to arrive in Niue. Only Mary Powell, the smallest in the Beveridge Reef Yacht Club fleet is likely to come in after us, and with Steve, her expert Captain at the helm, she'll no doubt give us a run for our money.

It's not a race, except for the fact that there are a limited number of moorings available in Niue and anchoring is in very deep water and less desirable, so we don't want to be Johnny-come-lately and miss out. Our friends on Furthur are already there, and an email from crewman Tiffany confirms a number of empty moorings as of a few days ago, crystal-clear water and good diving. "We're tied up to a mooring ball in 125 feet of water, and we can see the bottom from the deck of the boat," she says.

We should arrive by mid-day tomorrow, and it will be nice to have a quick overnight sail rather than a multi-day; I had to get my head around the fact that I only have to prepare one dinner and that 4 tomatoes was plenty to meet our salad needs. The fresh produce shopping in Rarotonga went perfectly -- I haven't had to toss anything out and we're just about out of food -- good timing for our arrival in Alofi, the main town on Niue.

Niue, pronounced New-way, is one of the world's smallest self-governing states, operating in free association with New Zealand, which apparently leaves it mostly alone except to sell them things. The whole country is one lone island, approximately 10 by 12 nm in size. Beveridge Reef is one of it's possessions, but otherwise, it's just this tiny little island with it's own flag. My Moon Handbook to the South Pacific claims "Niue is perhaps the most unspoiled main island in the South Pacific." It's one of the largest uplifted coral islands in the world, and is loaded with stalactites and -mites, caves and caverns, and according to the book, "butterflies are everywhere." The flora and fauna are said to be rich and abundant, with good-smelling blooming things and fruit falling from the trees. Because everyone is required to go to school until age 14, there's an almost 100% literacy rate. And they speak English. It sounds quite Edenic.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the sea snakes. (Funny I'd mention snakes after a reference to Eden...) There's a large variety of them in the ocean in Niue, and although they're poisonous, their little mouths are too small to bite, so they aren't a danger to divers. And because there are no rivers on the island there is no silt to smother the reef and muck up the water, so the diving is rumored to be excellent. Also, it's whale season. Top it off with an entire island that has free wifi no matter where you anchor, and it sounds more perfect all the time.

I will likely not post daily for the next week, but will put up a blurb probably every few days. I've discovered that being land-based always seems to absorb a lot more of my time and scatter my focus. We'll try to get some photos in a new gallery with stuff from Rarotonga and Beveridge Reef.

All in all, we're looking forward to a week or so in Nuie, before we head for our next big country, the Kingdom of Tonga.

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And now we are eight. Allan looked out from the bow this morning where he was mopping dew from the deck and called "Incoming marauders!" Sure enough, a small fleet of boats arrived, making this place in the middle of nowhere look like it was definitely somewhere, and the place to be. One of them joked that we could now form the Beveridge Reef Yacht Club.

We gave them all time to get settled, and then hopped in our dinghy to say hello, passing out bunches of welcome bananas from Gloria. Several of them we had met previously in Tahiti or Moorea; we knew they were headed this way at some point, another was a boat we'd heard of and were looking forward to meeting, and two were new boats. We hoped that one of them would have the secret method for diving the reef safely. They didn't, and in fact, were eagerly hoping we'd figured it out. So we put our heads and dinghies together and, after some scouting and assessing the ocean current we all agreed it would work fine to anchor the dinghies just outside the pass.

In all, 5 little boats loaded with divers and gear headed through the pass, anchored to the 20' bottom, bobbing in the sea with dive flags flapping, while we explored the reef below. Sadly, it was a bit of a disappointment. Although the terrain was my kind of fun, with long, narrow canyons and sharp ridges, so I could play low-flying airplane, the coral was gray and lifeless, and there weren't a lot of fish. Allan hypothesized that we should have been diving on the other side of the reef; that perhaps the down-current side we were on was where the sandy by-product of disintegrating coral was layered on the reef. We were also curious about the north side of the pass, so we zipped across in the dinghy, stopping every 20 feet or so for Allan to hang his head over the side and take a look. He did see a large school of gray reef sharks, which he was hoping for, and some huge grouper "the size of a Volkswagen." But the waves and swell were much larger, making anchoring the dinghy precarious at best. So we satisfied our curiosity by doing the head dunk, and enjoyed the gorgeous colors in the water.

Depending on what's on the bottom; sand, coral, rock -- and it's depth; the water looks pale green to brilliant turquoise to rich sapphire blue and every color in between, in large chunks and streaks. It's truly amazing, and I'm hoping some of my attempts to capture it on my little camera will show the magnificence. If not, you'll just have to get in a sailboat and come out here someday.

It's Michael's birthday. Michael, Gloria and I were all born in 1958 and he's the first of the three of us to move into the next year, so we celebrated on Paikea Mist with lamb chops and pasta salad and tomatoes with artichokes. Steve and Melva from Mary Powell brought Steve's Famous Meatballs, and Gloria made a luscious cake with whipped cream, mandarin oranges, and mango jam. Michael got 2 t-shirts and a machete for his birthday, so he's ready to chop through the jungles of Tonga and Fiji.

We've decided to leave tomorrow, sooner than we'd hoped, because the wind is forecast to pick up, making life inside the reef much less comfortable. So we'll take advantage of the wind, which will again be pushing us from astern, and make a quick 24-hour dash to the island of Nuie, where more clear water, limestone caves, and fragrant frangipani await.

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Day two inside Beveridge Reef started nice and slow; we didn't even get up until after 8am. Gloria and Michael had been given a huge stalk of bananas in Rarotonga and shared a bunch with us; they were delicious on our cereal after a banana-less few weeks, and I am in love with Neil's freshly roasted Cook Islands Coffee. We puttered, and read, and around noon we pulled anchor and crossed the lagoon to the west side, where we had heard there was a good dive spot.

We decided to investigate with some snorkeling first, and found the current to be quite strong, so we moved to another spot. At first, it was a little like a desert; the overt landscape wasn't that impressive, although the incredible clarity of this water and 200 foot visibility is magical. But upon closer investigation, much like in the desert, we discovered a rich and beautiful place with some very interesting critters. Allan and I laughed in our snorkels while a nervous puffer fish blew himself up in a tight space and got wedged, his eyes bulging and eying us nervously. Michael spotted a giant, spectacular lobster hiding in a crevice, but he soon disappeared. Gloria found some fish we hadn't seen before that looked like little torpedoes. I saw some small fish that slithered like little snakes but had tiny invisible, retractable fins. Finally we were all cold and returned to our boats.

Allan decided to try and catch some dinner, so off he went with his pole spear and in short order had a nice fish, which we shared with Paikea Mist. I, of course, mourned the poor guy's demise as he flopped and gasped in the dingy, and decided the right thing to do was to thank him for giving it up for our dinner, which didn't really help him but made me feel a little better. I'll eat him anyhow; there's that hypocritical side again, but grilled with onions, olive oil, salt and pepper -- a la our friend Sam Bradbury -- and served with some pineapple salsa and rice, well, yum.

Allan told me as soon as he speared the fish he made a croaking sound; I'm not a fisherman so I don't know, but apparently that's sometimes normal -- and as soon as he began croaking a shark appeared out of nowhere and circled. Undeterred, Allan plopped his catch in our dinghy and went after another fish. As soon as he speared one, he saw the shark again, then the fish got away and swam off, and surprisingly, the shark didn't go after it. He may have just eaten ... he didn't seem interested in nibbling either Allan or the injured fish. Allan stayed in the water looking for another fish and the shark swam off.

In the late afternoon we saw Steve and Melva on s/v Mary Powell on her way to the pass, and joined Michael and Gloria in welcoming them with a dinghy greeting as they came through. So now we are three.

As far as the diving goes: it's too shallow inside the reef to dive, though the snorkeling is wonderful. Outside the reef, without a chase boat, we aren't sure how to dive in the current. So we're plotting with Michael and Gloria to find a way to maybe share a dive -- two in the dingy, two diving, then trade. We'll get at that tomorrow. We're not in a hurry to leave here, this is the kind of place we love. There's no place to spend money. There's no dirt. No cars. No bugs. Spectacular water. Our good friends are here, and the weather is fabulous. The moon is full tonight, the sea has calmed, the winds have died down, and it should be a beautiful night.

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Holy Reefs in the Middle of Nowhere, Batman! This is CRAZY! This place is seriously crazy. Words defy, cameras can't capture, the mind can't wrap around it even as you see it with your own eyes. A big, circular reef rising out of thousands of feet of deep, dark ocean, with no land. Just waves crashing on the submerged sharp teeth of the huge coral reef. I can only imagine the terror and surprise unsuspecting mariners must feel to be lolling along for days and days with nothing but nothing, and then see -- or worse, hear -- waves crashing. The wreck of a 90 foot trawler is lying in 1 foot of water to the east of us, jutting up out of the sea, one of those sober reminders that life, and the sea, are both immeasurably dangerous.

We were not sure we'd make it in, if the winds and waves were too much, but they eased off as we'd hoped, and the entrance through the reef was pretty simple. We had some GPS way points which we plugged into our E-120 electronic navigation thingy, and it's a good thing we had something accurate, because the whole reef was depicted about 2 miles farther west on the E-120 charts. It might be useful to note that the ancient paper charts we have on board have the reef in the correct position. Multiple sources are good, but only two makes it one against the other. And neither is always right, as we've learned through experience. Thankfully we had not only a third reference which served as a tie-breaker of sorts, but also Paikea Mist who went in ahead of us. Since they made it in using the waypoints we had, we were comfortable following.

It was very odd to look out across the sea and there, resting at anchor a few miles away, was Paikea Mist, settled in clear water the color of a pale sapphire. She looked almost like a skeleton, her sails put away, just the mast and rigging seen from the other side of the lagoon within this odd reef. Oh my, I can't quite find the words for any of this, it's just so unusual.

But, as life would seem to go, it's not all idyllic. Although we'd like to loll in this private lagoon and sip cold drinks and read books in the hammock as it swings gently from the davit, and plan our scuba diving for the next few days, we're instead dealing with yet another mechanical/equipment issue. Our generator has been intermittently shutting down within 5 minutes of starting for the last few days, so we suspected an overheat/water flow problem but while underway, had no way to determine the cause. As soon as we dropped anchor Allan was in the water for a swim, he can't help it -- but after that, he was delving into the generator issues. Feeling compassion for us, Michael and Gloria invited us over for blueberry pancakes with white chocolate raspberry ice cream and freshly roasted Cook Islands Coffee. Wisely, we didn't say no to that extravagant offer ("The best brunch in Beveridge Reef!" Gloria promised.) Then Michael accompanied Allan back to Fly Aweigh to assess the situation. The long and short, or maybe just the short, is that the sea water impeller was trashed. And it was trashed because the pump ran dry. Why the pump ran dry is still a mystery. Something could have blocked the intake, like a big leaf or a piece of plastic, or, or, or ... Allan and Michael are still speculating. (Personally, I find it odd that a huge diesel engine is installed in our boat with no gages - no temperature gage, no oil pressure gage, very odd, but apparently a normal and acceptable situation in boats.) Today we'll deal with this, and go explore the dive spot on the other side of 3-mile lagoon in our dinghy to make a plan for tomorrow's dives. I can only imagine what the diving must be like with no rivers to muck up the lagoon, no tourists to trash the coral with their clumsy errant flippers, no looters taking samples to sell in little booths in town. We're very excited to get in, but today we're all tired from the last 3 days at sea and will rest up before donning tanks and gear. I might get the kayak and paddle out to the edge of the reef just to get a close look at those spectacular breakers.

At the moment, it's just the two of us here, Fly Aweigh and Paikea Mist, and what a wonderful feeling to have this amazing spot to ourselves. Tomorrow the sailboat Mary Powell may arrive, she's a day behind us out of Rarotonga, and we know of a few others with Beveridge on their minds, but for now, we'll enjoy the utter privacy and beauty of this place.

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