Suwarrow 9-2-2014

While waiting for a good weather window to depart Bora Bora for Aitutaki, in the Cook Islands, we began to second guess our route. I casually dropped the possibility that we could head to Suwarrow, which was farther north than Aitutaki by about 5 degrees latitude. The weather down south had continually been crap, with the more equatorial Cooks having better weather consistently. We began to look more closely at our options. Suwarrow is interesting in that it's situated between the North Cooks and the South Cooks, at about 13 degrees South latitude, and is "uninhabited." In fact, there is a park ranger, Harry, who lives there with his wife, Vahine. After reading some great accounts of time spent on the island by other curisers, we decided to go. Beyond the usual intreague of clear water and protected anchorage-ness, we were interested in the island's history. The island gained the world's attention when in the late 1950's New Zealander Tom Neale went to live on the island by himself. Truly, a castaway in the South Seas, albeit self-imposed, Neale lived on the island in three different stints for about 17 years total (pretty sure) and describes his experience in his book, An Island to Oneself.

We applied to be given permission to visit, as is required by the Cook Islands government, and were promptly accepted. After a very slow but otherwise painless 6-day passage from Bora Bora, we pulled in to Suwarrow on August 22nd. The island is absolutely beautiful. It's surrounded by crystal clear water of every hue, and fringed by healthy reefs teeming with fish and thousands of sharks. Thankfully, the sun shone nearly the whole time we were there - admittedly a brief 3-day stop - and helped make the area that much more picturesque. As on other atolls, countless palms dominated the treeline. Crystal clear water, abundantant sunshine, a little white-sand beach, palms, fish...paradise.

Rob and I jumped in to explore the structure around the boat, and to do a quick anchor check. We were immediately greeted by dozens of blacktip reef sharks. These smaller, non-aggressive sharks are usually quite safe to swim with. However, dozens of sharks circling you and acting very curious is always uncomfortable. We dove down to the bottom several times to get a closer look at the groupers, snappers, parrotfish, and other reef species around. Each time, the sharks would get closer. We decided to go check the anchor and probably cut our snorkel kind of short. I found the anchor and saw that the chain was thoroughly wrapped around a coral head, with the anchor pointing 180 degrees from where it should. I dove and struggled to move our 33kg Rocna anchor. During my frantic anchor moving, I scraped my knee on a rock on the bottom, drawing blood. Now the sharks were really coming toward me, and their behavior was getting a little more erratic. We decided to get out, just in case. We'd re-anchor from the boat.

The following day, Rob and I decided to try our luck trolling the pass. We were slated to have a potluck dinner on the beach with the other cruisers, and we wanted to provide some protein. We'd heard that there are tons of pelagic fish, especially rainbow runners, that hang out in the pass and we were keen to catch some. We loaded up the gear and motored over. After a couple of sweeps, we still had no action. We tried jigging some, but still turned up nothing. Dismayed, we headed back toward the boats to cast at the shallows. As we were pulling up to the rocky area, I spotted a large bluefin trevally swimming on the surface. We pursued him, and did a hard U-turn when he changed direction. Rob kept his eye on the fish and I prepared to cast. I laid the lure about 10 yards from the fish, and just when the jig hit the water, the trevally exploded with speed and darted over to take the bait. He let out a screaming run, and I tried to tighten the drag. The battle was less against the fish and more against the clock: quickly boating the fish is imperative because of the massive shark population. I worked the fish way harder than normal, and we even drove the dinghy over to where he had run. I was reeling and reeling. As he was right next to the dinghy, we tried to lift him up, but looked down to see two small blacktips hanging on to his tail! The extra weight bent the hook shank, and he slipped off to be devoured. Bummer for us, but especially for him!

Unfortunately, we didn't have any fish to bring ashore that evening. Luckily though, Harry had caught a few rainbow runners and the Kiwis on Marionette had brought in some fish as well. It was quite a feast! Harry's wife, Vahine, had made coconut pancakes. This interesting treat is made from the foamy center of a coconut that has become overripe. Grated and mixed with some flour and sugar, the coconut makes a tasty pancake indeed! Harry prepared a fire for grilling the fish. He used half of a 200 liter drum, and started a fire deep at the bottom. Then he piled it full of rocks to heat up and hold the heat longer, he said. Over top, he laid down a grill for the fish that had been prepared with some garlic and citrus. It was delicious! The rainbow runner was similar to mahi but perhaps even tastier? Big, big fan of this fish. There was some rice and a pasta salad to accompany the fish, and of course plenty of beers.

We brought a chocolate cake for dessert that Mom had made. We had departed Bora Bora on Rob's birthday, and never got to properly celebrate. So, we made a cake for his belated birthday celebration. It was certainly memorable for all of us to celebrate on Suwarrow with the company of three other cruising boats and Harry and Vahine. Happy birthday, Rob!

Later in the night Harry and Vahine disappeared for a little bit. Vahine had previously asked if we'd ever seen coconut crabs (we had) and said that she'd find some to show us later. Being polite, we said that would be great (even though we'd seen them everywhere throughout Polynesia). Man, we're glad they found some! We had previously only seen small ones, apparently. The two large males that Harry and Vahine brought out to show us were incredibly huge! Our hosts had the two crabs on leashes, walking them out like dogs! I'd guess that they weighed 8-10 pounds and were probably about 18 inches from claw to tail. These two coconut crabs then started to climb up the palm tree that was near us. They proceeded all the way to the top, and hung out there for some photos. They were honeslty kind of creepy, reminding me of giant spiders a little. The locals throughout Polynesia eat the crabs as a staple of their diets. However, the crabs at Suwarrow were all poisonous, due to the rat poison that had been spread around the atoll as part of an eradication project. Law of unintended consequences for the win.

In the morning, after our mild hangovers wore off, we tried to do some more trolling. Again, we had no luck. We didn't try too hard since we knew that we'd be departing the next day for Tonga, and we'd probably catch fish en-route. On the way back in, we ran into the crew from Marionette, who were heading to the pass to do a drift dive and recon the spearfishing possibilities. That sounded like a good idea to us, so we returned to the boat and got ready to go back out. We figured we'd bring a gun just in case we saw something we wanted to shoot. The plan was to drift for a while, and plug one good fish right before we leave.

Well, we arrived to the pass and jumped in. I immediately saw a school of bluefin trevally, a bunch of snappers and groupers on the bottom, and a large napoleon fish. The life was unbelievable! I dove down to look at the napoleon, and as I was surfacing, I see rob pointing behind me. I turned and saw a reasonably large grey reef shark swimming toward me. Of course. WIthin another minute, there were a half dozen sharks circling us. We certainly weren't going to be shooting anything here. Alas, we resigned to just look at the fish for a while. However, the sharks got increasingly more curious and kept inching closer. These weren't the kinder, gentler sharks of the lagoon. We were now right next to the big wide ocean, and we weren't too sure how confident we should be around these sharks. In the end, prudence won out, and we decided to call the dive short. That was fine with me, honestly, because these sharks were preventing me from just relaxing and enjoying myself anyway. Grrrr so many sharks!!

With all of our chores done and the boat ready to depart for a rough, windy passage to Vava'u, Tonga in the morning, we just relaxed the rest of the afternoon. Suwarrow was a neat place and I'm so glad that Harry and Vahine were kind enough to host a potluck for us on the beach. We made some new friends on Marionette who we've already reconnected with here in Tonga, and I'm sure we'll be in touch in New Zealand. Overall, a great, short stopover at the "minimally inhabited" island of Suwarrow. Thanks y'all!