We have had 3 days of bad weather now. I readjusted 2 of our anchors this morning so they spread the load around a bit better. The wind is from a constant direction so we are not in trouble of turning around and getting tangled. If we get a decent break I'll pull up our main anchor and move it further out to the middle of lagoon and put a longer rope on it. The problem is I was not expecting to be anchoring in 20 metres (66 feet) of water. To safely anchor you need to have 8 times your depth in rope, or 3 times your depth in chain to ensure the anchor pulls against the sand at a low angle and is not pulled upwards and out. We have combination chain and rope but don't match those multiples at all. I was expecting these lagoons to be no more than 10 metres. We do however have a huge anchor and two other anchors also a little oversized for this boat so I am hoping that makes up for it. So far they have not budged and Friday night we had constant 30knot winds gusting sometimes to 25knots. I know some would say we would be better off taking the chain and rope from one or both of the other anchors and making a really long rhode (the rope and chain combination from boat to anchor). But I somehow feel uneasy sitting all night in this wind on just one anchor and one anchor line. We only need one link to break and....! I am probably too fixated on these anchors and perhaps writing up too much about them. But they are our lifeline so it is a healthy fixation for now. There has been damage on the island with this wind and rain. Enough to knock down some big trees and a lot of breadfruit from them.

Breadfruit is to these islanders what rice is to Asians and the spud is to the Irish. Whilst it is a fruit and grows up on a tree it is remarkably like a potato. Full of complex carbohydrates they can be be eaten boiled, mashed or even fried as we pleasantly discovered. Breadfruit chips are nice. They are a little sweet too. I've been noticing that there are different varieties too. The fruit is about the size of a small water melon and green and a bit spikey. Accordingly the trees grow to a massive size. Not that tall but huge with big black trunks. The older leaves are like large somewhat spikey elephant ears (the plant not the animal) whereas the younger leaves at the top are rounded. As one walks around them in the forest at the back of the village lots of noises can be heard as lizards and large crabs clamber over the burtress roots and into their safe homes. On this mornings walk after Saint Joesph's I came across a young coconut crab doing just that. He could not be bi g enough to crack a coconut so must feed on something else till his claws are bigger. He was not docile either clambering away at quite a rate unlike the older ones which move at a snails pace.

On this island they have decided not to hunt coconut crab except at Christmas time when they share a couple around or when someone is sick and requests one. When the people on Woleai visited and saw the crab population returning and heard about the policy they adopted it too. The use of spear-guns is also banned in the lagoon. Another local policy. They noticed soon after they started using them that the fish become spooked (perhaps a Pavlovian reaction to the sound of spear head hitting coral or rock) and started to even fear the canoes thus were getting harder to catch even with a line.

Jeremiah photographed above visited the other day. He showed me a spear head they use to catch turtles. It was still in it's packet which had Japanese writing on it and a price tag. He asked if I could somehow send some back to them when I returned to Japan. When I looked closer I could not believe to see that the package was from Shimoda my Japanese home town!! What a remarkable coincidence. I retrieved my own fishing tackle which I had bought in Shimoda and sure enough it was from the same shop. Shimoda Gyo-Gu just 150 metres from where I kept Yarramundi. How the hell did something from a Shimoda fishing tackle shop end up here?

Rain has abated a little so time to do some deck work.

David