The Day of Rest
25 January 2009 | South Pacific
Randy
Everyone aboard the yachts in our little group was still a bit tired today. Things started getting back to normal though. Solomon gave us a hello call in the morning on 16 to let us know that his office was closed for Sunday and that mass was at 9:30. The one hour time difference was still catching us off guard so no one made it to mass. We are all now on Pohnpei time (UTC+11).
It was an overcast and rainy day with wind quite out of whack with the GFS GRIB predictions. We are anchored behind the east line of islands, so we have good protection from the predicted winds running generally east to ENE, and even for NE or SE. Today the wind is basically north. It is a long way to the north end of the atoll from here. This has created a fair amount of chop in the anchorage. It is not really bad but unless you like being secluded I would probably advise anchoring up near or past the village in the NE corner of the lagoon this time of year.
Winter winds seem to run NE to E with anomalies from N to SE. Other times of year you can get west wind in occasional gales, so we hear, which would require migrating to the north side of the atoll to anchor behind the reef.
The forecast suggests a next window with winds from the east over 10 knots and clear skies of January 30th. This is probably when we will head up to Nukuoro, a one night trip from here.
Hideko made a lovely breakfast aboard and we took care of routine tasks while the generator/charger brought the batteries up. When we run the genset it doesn't make much difference whether we use 1 amp or 60, fuel wise. So we try to use as close to 60 as possible and get everything done all at once. While the genertor was up this morning we ran the water maker, the washer/dryer, the espresso machine (high priority), the hot water heater, the cold box (usually off unless the sun is really making a lot of solar power for us), as well as charging cameras and computers. I also got some navigation work and blogging in.
In the late morning Solomon called again and asked us to stay aboard our yachts. He had just talked to immigration in Pohnpei and apparently there are issues. It rained all day so this was no real hardship but we are curious to find out what the story is.