A couple of days ago, we did make it to the Manihi Hotel for lunch. It was quite a dinghy ride, but worth the run to get a nice hamburger & fries, and enjoy some drinks at the hotel. The place was a classic island getaway. The rooms were all bungalows on stilts above the water. The bungalows were protected in their own coral lagoon and had a swimming pool with infinity edge.

The guests mostly seemed to be on their honeymoons. While a beautiful location, it is hard to imagine any other reason to come there as there wasn't too much else to do and apparently the flights to these islands are incredibly expensive... often the leg to the island from Tahiti is more expensive than the flight to Tahiti from the US/Europe. At any rate, we are now collecting pictures of nice places that we _didn't_ go on our honeymoon. This is in honor of Dana's sister Stephanie who asked where we were going on our REAL honeymoon since this boat stuff certainly didn't count. Stephanie would have approved of Hotel Manihi.

After we got back to our boat we invited the folks from the Kittywake to play games that night. They hadn't put their dinghy in the water yet, so Mark went over to collect them. We enjoyed some games of UNO and Mexican Train. They were not up for our favorite, Boat Jenga, for some reason..

The next day we worked on various projects before getting the boat ready to head out. Dana sewed the most recent tear in the genoa and ran her sewing machine over seams in our US flag that had begun to come undone. We planned to hoist anchor in the afternoon and sail overnight to Rangiroa so we would arrive in the morning. This was because the was too long for a day trip but we didn't want to arrive in the nighttime, since we needed light to go through one of the entrances in the atoll.

We were a bit surprised when the anchor rode became taut almost immediately. We had let almost all of the chain out (220ft) and were in 60ft of water so were expecting to pull up alot of chain first. The chain was going straight down and the windlass made alot of noise and we had to let the chain back out as the tension in such situations is enough to damage the windlass. We realized the chain must be fouled on coral on the floor. We realized there wasn't going to be enough time to address the situation and still get out of the Manihi atoll in the remaining daylight, so we re-snubbed the anchor and made dinner.

The next morning we decided Mark would scuba down and check out what was going on after one more failed attempt to unfoul the chain in which the snubbing line got so much tension that it snapped off. We were too deep to free dive but 60ft was well within scuba depths. We decided Mark would bring down a nylon line to attach to the anchor, hoping we could attach that to our windlass to take the tension off the chain so it could be pulled off the coral. We also readied a buoy to attach to the anchor to help in identifying the anchor location in our further efforts. There were several problems with this. One was that we only have 2 scuba tanks on board, one of which was empty and the other was only 2/3 full from the last time it was used, so we didn't have alot of bottom time to work on the problem. Second was that Mark didn't have a buddy to dive with him, which is what your normally want when diving at non-trivial depths and especially when doing things such as messing with underwater chains and lines.

Luckily, just after we had gone over our plan for the 100th time and Mark was starting to put his scuba gear, a dinghy started to come over from the Amel nearby. Art had heard us trying to take our anchor up the day before and say us getting scuba gear out and realized Mark didn't have a buddy so he offered to dive with Mark and bring one of the other crew over to help Dana on the boat while we were in the water. Also, they had dived the day before around their boat and found it was also fouled and were able to describe what the formations looked like.

Mark and Art got their scuba gear on and went down. First, they looked for and found the metal portion of the snubber which was resting on some coral. This was great because it meant we only have to get some new nylon line to tie onto the device and not have to buy a whole new one, which probably wouldn't be possible until NZ. Then they swam along the chain to see what was going on. The problem was that there were two corral formations the chain had gone between and couldn't be pulled out of because one of the formations overhung the other. They to the anchor and pulled it away from corral so it was in a patch of sand and wouldn't snag anything.

Going back up, Art suggested having Dana pull up the anchor while using the bow thruster to turn hard to the right. This would guide the chain out of the formation causing the problem. Mark was skeptical about this working but we figured it was worth a shot and were pleased to find it worked like a charm.

After Mark got back on the Northfork, we motored behind the Helena (the boat Art was on and tied a mooring line from our bow to their stern, as we weren't quite ready to go and certainly didn't want to drop another anchor. Art assured us his anchor chain was much more fouled than ours and could hold both boats without dragging. As our boats were they same model, I'm sure it looked funny to have one tied behind another. Art had some comments about how their new dinghy was a bit on the largish side. We went over to the Helena for a bit to check out their dive compressor (which we don't have) and chat for a bit, before we cast off and headed on our way.

Our friends on the Kittywake told us as we passed them that they were heading out soon too. We let them know on the VHF that getting their anchor up may not be so straight forward.

Leaving the entrance to the Manihi atoll was exciting as there was quite a bit of current going with us, including some significant cross currents on either side. Dana was on the bow to keep an eye out for shallow spots and told Mark to lower the bow thruster to make sure we didn't lose control. Indeed, the cross currents pulled hard on the bow turning the Northfork back and forth and Mark needed the bow thruster at a couple points to keep us pointed in the right direction as the rudder might not have been enough.

All this made for a long day. We are now sailing south of Ahi to Rangiroa. We are running before fairly light 10-12kt winds (what happened to the 15-20kt winds we've been suffering the last several days at anchor?) making 5-6kts. Hopefully we should get in sometime around noon tomorrow.

We left Manihi, albeit a day late because of problems getting our anchor up.