We anchored in about 60 feet with Cat Mousses in calm waters right off Isle Fouquet. We spent about 4 days there, snorkeling a few wrecks and exploring the islands. The water here was clearer than in Peros Banhos and we hiked the white sand beaches at low tide and drifted in the swift current between two islands.
We found small birds nesting in the protected sand that was islolated from predators on the main islands.
There were 4 boats we could see anchored off Boddom Island about 3 miles to our west, so we weaved our path among the coral heads and joined them.
Boddam is the largest of the Salomon Atoll islands, and was home to the copra plantation workers. Photos from the 60s show an open sward of grass, dotted with a church, hospital, school, homes and copra sheds. Today the buildings are slowly being reclaimed by nature, with strangler figs shrouding buildings and palms colonizing the once open areas. After only 50 years, the village looks like the remains of a lost civilization. The roofless jail cells have lost their doors, but the tiny metal grills remain in place, high on the walls. One remaining piece of stained glass hangs precariously in its window frame.
The cruisers have adapted the buildings for their use and makeshift tables, plastic chairs and volleyball net adorn the camp. Several cruisers had constructed a smoker to smoke the abundant fish and we even tried it out with fish that we caught. It worked OK and we ended up with about a pound of smoked snapper that we vacuum packed for a later day.
There were well-marked trails and we spent one day exploring the island and visited the cemetery and saw numerous enormous coconut crabs.
We had an overheating problem with the genset and it took more than a week of troubleshooting and more bloody knuckles to narrow the problem to the heat exchanger. Tom built a makeshift tube-reamer from some submarine-grade Inconel wire and harmony (and air conditioning) aboard Emily Grace were restored.
Two Italian crews were avid fishermen and would stop by giving away a dingy full of grouper, rainbow runner and yellowfin to the anchored boats. Dropping a baited hook or lure over the side of our anchored home would yield a 20 inch snapper in about 5 minutes…my kind of fishing. We only fished every 2 or 3 days when we needed a meal, but many of the boats fished daily and canned or froze the fish for later.
Emily and Catherine did homeschool in the mornings and spent every afternoon playing and writing stories. It seems that both liked dragons and they wrote 3 fanciful stories about dragons and their quests. Cat Mousses only took Sunday's off school and therefore Saturday night became sleepover night. We stayed at Chagos long enough for 3 sleepovers and the girls hand a grand time.
The weather to our south was unsettled for the first two weeks and 4 to 5 meter waves and high winds made any thoughts of moving on undesirable. Once we saw a calmer window, we decided to leave early even though our entire 4 weeks was not yet over. We decide to keep a SSB net going even though most of the boats were heading to Rodrigues or Mauritius. Our route to Madagascar should be close enough to stay in contact for some of the passage. They will be coming to Madagascar later and they may catch us there or in South Africa.
Several cruisers have told us that Mayotte, a French Island to the west of Madagascar, is nice and we will keep that in mind as we get closer. Mayotte would add another 2 days to our 1500 mile passage so we will decide that when we approach Madagascar.
The snorkeling was quite good here and I leave you with some underwater shots of what we saw.
Tom
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