The little reef black tip sharks (top photo with small wrasses and little black and white striped seargeant majors in foreground) can hardly be called "Jaws"€, yet they are sharks nonetheless, and must be a nightmare sight for the serried ranks of sweetlips, emperors and surgeons that crowd the bases of the large coral outcrops here in Kauehi lagoon.

We have been blessed by an unusual run of calm weather, yet we are in the middle of the trade wind season, when it should be blowing between 15 to 25 knots from the East. The lagoon is spectacularly beautiful in the weak winds, with the water clear and the sky a fantastic blue above the coconut palm fringed motu. We have based ourselves at the bottom end of the lagoon and have had our first dive since gaining our PADI certificates in Panama (courtesy of Gary from Ephe'Mer Plongee) as well as exploring the lagoon's coral by ourselves with snorkel and mask.

The underwater world has been richer and more diverse than anything we have seen on the entire circumnavigation, including the hot spots of the Komodo Islands in Indonesia, the Andamans and the Red Sea, the flourishing corals and fish have matched the best we were used to seeing when we lived in Papua New Guinea with butterfly fish, wrasses, surgeons, damsels, angelfish, cardinals, squirrel fish, Moorish idols, groupers, huge moray eels and the odd shark and spotted eagle rays. There are plenty of clams and colourful Christmas tree worms embedded in the coral. Both oceanic white tip and reef white tip sharks, as well as black tips and an odd grey shark get the pulse racing as they cruise past huge hoards of emperors. The manta gang seems to have disappeared, but the odd turtle sticks its head up above the lagoon surface.

We are expecting the wind to shift at last and a short-lived "€œmara'amu" the Tahitian name for an accelerated trade wind - should blow through in the next few days. It should soon drop again to a more average 12 to 18 knots when we will sail the 200 odd miles to Tahiti and the honky tonk city of Papeete. The next main passage to contemplate is the 1200 nm crossing to Tonga through the scattered Cook Islands. From Tonga, the NZ coast is only a further 1000 miles, but we will probably press on westwards through Fiji to New Caledonia where we complete our circumnavigation and from where the route to North Cape lies only 700 miles or so and the angle makes it easier - we hope - sometime in November.



The Kauehi shoreline at the South end of the atoll.