This morning when we woke up there was no wind at all and the water was smooth as glass. The water was actually a mirror, reflecting the clouds in the sky above. On the horizon, you couldn’t see where the water ended and the sky began. Up until the last couple of days the trade winds have been very strong. We thought around here the wind never died, so the calm has been something of a surprise for us.

Manihi had no bugs that bit, so we were surprised to find that Apataki has a serious mosquito problem. They must breed in the pools of water. A few mosquito had managed to sneak aboard and just about ate us alive in our sleep. Continue reading →

Now that things have calmed down with our anchor rescued, we can go back to our regularly scheduled program.

Like Manihi and most other atolls, Apataki is a thin ring of land with a huge lagoon in the middle. Apataki is sort of square-ish in shape. In Manihi you could not see all the way north from the south, but you could see all the way west from the east. In Apataki, you can’t see the end in either direction. It just looks like endless ocean beyond the L of land visible and it is hard to believe there is more land so close by. Continue reading →