We arrived safely at Minerva Reef. It's so surreal! To be anchored in the middle of the Pacific with thousands of miles of ocean in every direction, dwelling in a virtual water world, blows your mind! On approach we couldn't see the reef at all being that it was high tide. Our only sighting was the two boats at anchor. Man, it would be a bummer to be cruising along at a good 8-10 knot clip and smack in to some random reef out of nowhere! I'm so glad we have charts! I'm so glad I took geometry and learned how to plot our position and course! I always wondered if I would ever use all that math. Thank you Terry Gerard for getting me through Ayarbe's class!
We had trolled our lines all day without even one bite, and since we still had 2 hours of daylight left, we decided to continue to fish back and forth in front of the pass before going in. I went down below and prepared sushi rice, sliced up some carrot, avocado, and cucumber, made some coconut curry rice, stir fried fresh veggies, and prayed for a yellow fin. A nice size rainbow runner hit our lure within minutes. As soon as we put the line back out, wham-o, yellow fin! Whoo-hoo! I love it out here! We broke our fresh fish eating record. Joel had that baby filleted, I sashimied the fat boy, Clint grilled tuna steaks, and it was on our palette within 30 minutes! Fantastic!
Clint and I got up early the next morning and went outside the pass trolling in our dinghy. We caught two Jacks. It was so much fun just the two of us on a little sunrise fishing date! Good marriage therapy.
Later in the day we went on a dive along the drop-off. It was absolutely spectacular! Joel tended the dinghy, snorkeled, and spear-fished while we did a drift dive along the wall. The coral was magnificent, beautiful colors and varieties, nice sea fans, sea turtle, schools of reef and pelagic fish. Tim and Isabel from their catamaran Camissa went with us. She is a professional diver and underwater photographer. Check out their websites at www.sailcamissa.com and www.divephotoworld.com to see some of her work from French Polynesia, the Cooks, and Tonga.
I got everyone at the anchorage here all stirred up for a lobster hunt at 0245 this morning. We loaded up people from 5 different boats and hit the reef at about an hour before low tide. We waded along the ocean side checking out every crevasse and pool with absolutely zero lobster sightings! What are we doing wrong? We're the worst lobster hunters ever! Now, all of us are more determined than ever to get some of those bugs! We are going to snorkel the pass today and see if we can find some hiding there.
The latest weather shows a cold front and low pressure system passing through south of us and moving up here, so we are holding off further until those move on and the winds return. We will probably leave here in 2 days and continue on the NZ.
Love, The Glennys