We left Yap, sadly, today. Yap is a wonderful place with wonderful people. No crime, clean, friendly and just enough civilization without spoiling things. The customs and port officers met me at 6AM to clear us out. They would not do it the night before. Seems a little dogmatic to me but I was up anyway, and surprisingly, so were they.

The immigration officer failed to appear so we departed without exit stamps on the passports. I have been put in this situation by immigration officers before but I have never had anyone complain about missing exit stamps. The crew list shows all three of us and we paid all of our fees.

Eric on Whistler suggested we stop at Ngulu on the way to Palau so we did. The only problem is that as far as we can tell they didn't. Whistler left last night to make Ngulu in the AM. I think they probably got here in the predawn dark and decided to just keep going to Palau. We have hailed them on the VHF but have no contact. My guess is that I'll get an email from him when I post this.

We left the harbor in Yap around 7AM after stowing the dink and getting everything ready to go. Miki was still asleep and Hideko knocked off as soon as we got the sails up. It was a lonely passage. Fast though. We did 9 plus for the first few hours with 15 knots on the beam. The rest of the day averaged 8s.

I talked to a nice Russian sounding guy on a big oil tanker that was crossing close by. I mostly just wanted to make sure they recognized there was a little bitty plastic boat on a collision course, but I also asked what he had for a weather forecast. Ours said 10-15 from the ENE and mostly cloudy with isolated showers, possible TStorms. He had a much more abbreviated picture. I guess you don't care about much short of a gale when motoring along in a 350 footer.

The weather was great at the onset of the day, but it got more and more squally as the day went on. We only got a brief shower toward the end of our trip but I could tell things were deteriorating.

As we closed on Ngulu we hailed Whistler a few times, hoping they would have done the work of sussing out the best anchorage in the 10 plus mile long atoll. No response. So we decided to try the north islands. They look to have a little better coverage from the north swell and NE wind. The big question was, would there be anywhere to anchor.

[P.S. We met a boat called Lorax in Palau that anchored in a small reef anchorage in the south where the 20 some locals live. It sounded like it may have been a tad better but not much.]

I had tried to corner various folks who had been to Ngulu to get recommendations while in Yap. When the rubber met the road, no one had really anchored anywhere, or if they had they were just a passenger and didn't remember where.

We cam in on Mesran Island through a cut in the outer submerged reef charted at 130 feet. The skinniest bit was supposed to be 40 feet but we never saw less than 60. At Mesran we found decent protection in the SW corner but the bottom was 125 almost all the way up to the shore. After looking around a bit we found a place we could have hooked up in 90 feet. Hoping to upgrade, and to beat the big nasty squall coming in, we ran up to the next island, thoughtfully called North Island on the chart.

North Island was not too much better. Maybe a little more bump in the anchorage but we found a spot at 80 feet to anchor and took it. No sooner were we set with 300 feet of chain out than a big 30 knot squall hit. Whew.

We thought about checking out the little sandy island one more up. It looks like it might have better reef coverage from the waves and possibly a better (shallower) bottom, but once set it is hard to relocate after a long day out (and with rain coming left and right).

So here we are at lovely North Island. As we settled in for a nice pasta dinner, a la Hideko, we saw a fricus in the water near the reef. It was a turtle. No it was two turtles. In fact it was two turtles mating. Wow, never thought I'd see that. A lot of splashing goes on, let me tell you.

We may leave tomorrow for Palau, one nights sail away, or we may stay a day. Have to see what the weather man says and what it looks like out the hatch.