The next island south from Lifuka is Uoleva Island and that is where we moved on the afternoon of Friday (August 18th) when the winds had finally backed to the southeast. There are two long sandy beaches on the west side of Uoleva which are separated by a tiny sand spit which extends out underwater about 100 m to a shallow reef. With plenty of room in coral-head-free sand, we anchored off the northern beach while there were two cruising boats in the southern bay.

At last, the sun had reappeared so we rowed the dinghy to the shallow reef between the beaches to go snorkeling. Most of the shallow coral was dead which was a bit depressing and puzzling since this seemed an unlikely spot to be too exposed to storm-waves. However, there were plenty of small fish and as we moved into deeper water on the north side, the coral and fish populations improved considerably.



A log on the north beach at Uoleva Island that looks like a (sicklefin lemon) shark swimming though the sand (OK, should we be starting to worry about my obsession with needing to identify fish yet?)

The following morning was also sunny but we noticed that the water was quite a bit choppier in our anchorage than it was off the southern beach. To be fair, waves always looking bigger nearby than they do further away (akin to the grass always seeming greener on the other side) but in this case we could actually see smooth water in the southern bay while we had choppy, chuckling water. The latter expression, “chuckling water” is the name we give to water that is unexpectedly choppy and turbulent due to the influence of water current and wind direction not matching. We first named it when sailing our previous boat in the San Juan Islands off Washington State, where patches of water with little waves that make a chuckling noise crop up next to glassy smooth water, as currents surge from deep to shallow water or around islands.

Presumably, there was a water-current affecting our bay that was not influencing the southern anchorage. So looking for a more restful night and a different snorkeling opportunity, we raised the anchor and motored around the outside of the reef to the southern bay, all of 1 nm away.