Although the stiff breezes from the northeast prevented us from sailing to Vava'u when we had originally planned, the first few days of September provided some of the longest periods of sunshine that we had seen all winter. This encouraged us to move a couple of miles north of Pangai Village to an anchorage off Koulo Village, near to the west end of the airport runway.

Not only was this anchorage in a large area of sand well-protected from the northerly winds and had calmer water than off Pangai, but there were several reefs nearby on which to snorkel. I had given-up on having calm enough weather to snorkel at the north end of Foa Island, so we made three trips in the dinghy to snorkel: on coral-heads on the east side of our anchorage; the large reef off the runway to our northwest; and another large isolated shallow reef to the southwest of Tregoning.

I almost aborted our first outing on the non-descript-looking pile of coral, thinking that there must be other areas with more varied coral than this mound of stag's horn. Luckily though, I became engrossed with watching a very active tubelip wrasse so Randall had already anchored the dinghy and joined me before I could suggest that we moved. This was lucky because during the snorkel, we found five species of fish that we have not seen before: speckled grouper, highfin grouper, ringtailed cardinalfish, redhead coralgoby, and a decorated goby. This was a surprisingly good haul for one site and helped me forget about missing the leopard sharks north of Foa.



Juvenile highfin grouper (2 - 5 inches or 5 - 12 cm)

The other two snorkeling sites were not quite so productive for new species for us (just a Clark's anemonefish and Papuan toby) but they had interesting topographies with very shallow areas and some deeper walls. I saw a couple of species that we had not seen since French Polynesia, the regal angelfish and a humphead (or Napoleon) wrasse. We were joined by Marisa and Bavo on the second and third ventures and the sunshine also made the snorkeling so much more pleasant.



Outside the Pangai government offices (Customs with the red roof in the background) Alison finds Ruellia sp. (Mexican petunia) a plant that she once studied as it invaded Florida wetlands

We left the airport anchorage on Monday (Sept 4th) to return to Pangai to get our exit papers from the Customs Office, before leaving later that evening. The snorkels had been relaxing and the sun and wind had allowed us to generate plenty of power to run the water-maker and fill the water tanks as well as charge our computers and watch movies in the evening.

My only regret on leaving the airport anchorage was that we did not go to shore and walk on the beach when Marisa and Bavo did on Sunday. Later, when I was onboard Devocean trying to help Marisa identify a few mystery fish from her photographs, she showed me pictures that they had taken of a sea snake in very shallow water at the beach. It certainly looked like a brown and white snake until we noticed the dorsal fin running along its back. Not a snake then but a banded snake eel, mimicking the banded sea krait. Their photos were excellent but having never seen any snake eels myself, I was a bit disappointed at having missed this opportunity. However, five new species against one missed new family is still a pretty good record for the anchorage!