Despite the ignominy of falling overboard in the anchorage at Limu Island (and Randall did not let me forget it for quite a while), it was with deep regret that we left early on Monday afternoon (August 21st). Even though the sky was still blue and sunny, and the clear water called to us, we knew that it would soon cloud over and the change to a northerly wind direction would become uncomfortable there.

As we motored north we saw not only the usual complement of humpback whales but we were also briefly joined by a few spinner dolphins. We had not seen dolphins for weeks and having been so lucky to have become quite accustomed to the whales, these 2-m long Gray's (or Hawaiian) spinner dolphins seems remarkably small. Even though they did not stay in Tregoning's bow wave for long, as always, they made us smile.

Looking for protection from northerly winds, we plodded north across the bay west of 'Uhia Island until we reached the south side of Tatafa Island. This uninhabited island was the one we had seen on the east side of the small pass we had used just the morning before.



Brown boobies rest on the reef-marker by the pass just west of Tatafa Island

We expected to find SV Devocean there but a call on the VHF radio revealed that they had just moved north to Uoleva Island in anticipation of southerly winds early the next morning. According to our GRIB files and the Gulf Harbour Radio weather report, we did not expect the wind to back to the south until the following midday, so we were sure that we would have enough time to move to another anchorage with southerly protection in the morning. However, in a less-harrowing replay of the Minerva Reef wind changes, it turned out that, once again, Bavo was right.