The visibility in the crystal-clear water is just fabulous here. It was novel to be able to see both the seabed and the boat behind us as we swam to the reef, instead of the more recent featureless murk. Soon, bommies began to appear ahead, accompanied by all the usual characters that we haven't seen for a while. There were sharks, rays, and a whole variety of colorful reef fishes. It felt good to be back in their neighborhood. We poked around for a while, exploring ridges and canyons to our heart's content.
Views around the reef. The picture of Begonia with the rainbow was kindly taken and shared by the crew of Midnight Sun (anchored nearby)
Mentally, I think we both would have been happy spending the rest of the day in the water. Physically, not so much.
It turns out the water, while not being nearly as cold as back in New Zealand, wasn't exactly warm either. We both started shivering and there was no disagreement or bargaining when it was suggested that maybe we should call it a day.
I had originally hoped to spend an hour or so when we got back wiping off some of the river slime we had accumulated in Opua, but we were just too cold to bother. I split that job between the next two days, so our antifoul looks once again like we went into the water yesterday. We had a bunch of adorable little Seargeant-Majors (fish) who appreciated this quite a lot. Their little mouths had a hard time grazing on the stuff that was stuck to the hulls, but once it was detached and sinking to the bottom in little flecks, they were in little fishy heaven. None of that stuff made it all the way to the sand. They had to make quick work of it because our three resident sharks, who I named Tom, Dick, and Harry, seemed to be waiting for one of them to stray too far from Begonia.
The weather as South Minerva was a pretty good mix of everything: sun, clouds, rain. The trade winds and the lack of anything to slow them down allowed our wind turbine to keep the batteries at 100% twenty-four hours a day. On sunny days, the solar panels would take over and the turbine would brake to a stop until its night shift.
We also got the usual four-times-a-day tidal changes of two rollicking high tides and two comfortable low tides each. High tides, particularly during stormy periods, often made it feel like there wasn't much point in being in an atoll in the first place to escape the heaving sea. It was nice to know at those times that, just like clockwork, everything would be gentle serenity again in a few hours.
For most of our stay, we were accompanied by four widely-spaced monohulls. They had a rougher time at high tide to ride out and no wind turbines, so the gloomy, rainy storm days were probably something more for them to endure than they were for us. These times were a chance to get caught up on admin and blog writing and photo editing, while knowing we could have all the free electricity we could use.
For the most part, all the boats were far enough apart that casual intermingling was inconvenient. We tended to stay in their own neighborhoods, so to speak, but we were able to chat with a few wet snorkelers passing by on their way back home. We seemed to all be content to enjoy a little peace and quiet while we waited for the weather to figure out what it's doing. At least that was our experience at South Minerva. North Minerva is where the vast bulk of the rally fleet went, as it's more capacious. I imagine they had more of a Spring Break vibe going on up there.
South Minerva Reef is only forty miles south of the Tropic of Capricorn, so technically it is still within the temperate zone for weather and climate. As I have said before, the weather has been weird this year generally, with a strong El Niño forming. This means that, even though the Minerva-Fiji leg is only half as far as the one from New Zealand to Minerva. We have been dealing with the same weather frustrations as the last leg, with window after window opening (and then closing again) that are only long enough to do half the journey. That's fine. Maryanne and I are especially well-equipped for long stretches in the middle of nowhere. We might certainly start getting bored after a few weeks, but we are not in danger of running out of anything anytime soon, so we can hold out as long as it takes.
Still, out of the eleven days we spent at South Minerva. Eight of them were bad enough that leaving the boat had little appeal. If our cabin fever had been really bad, we probably could have forced ourselves out in half of them, but the idea of drying-off in the rain following a swim in churned-up water seemed like it would be more work than fun. Also, our towels and anything we wore would be dripping wet for a week.
I was worried our best day to depart would be another miserable one, after latching onto the southerlies of a new cold front, with all of the accompanying gust and rain. Instead, the low-pressure center of said front passed well north, leaving us with clear, dry southeasterlies. It was even persistent enough to allow us to leave on the second day following the wind shift. That gave us one last day of good snorkeling, followed by a dose of rainwater bucket laundry, then line-drying everything in crisp sunshine and air that hasn't seen a tailpipe or smokestack for maybe thousands of miles.
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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