Dean and I had a lovely Christmas day on on the boat. John and his wife who own Laidenki Diving & Tours were out on their Christmas morning paddle and came by to say hello. As a bit of a treat, for morning tea I made blueberry muffins.
Later we had our Christmas lunch- a tiny Cornish hen with roast potatoes, onion, carrots and sweet potoatoes. The sweet potatoes were out of a can, something I have never seen before but they tasted exactly the same and turned out remarkably well. With a serving of cranberry sauce to go with it and our Christmas tree lights flashing, we were pretty chuffed with our festive feast. Then we topped the day off with a long kayak. Perfect.
After our kayak we were treated to a nice sunset. All in all we had a good a Christmas day as we could without our family.
The weather was looking good for us to sail to Ahnd Atoll on boxing day so we upanchored around 9am and headed off. As we approached the Port, we called Port control for permission to pass by the runway and out of the channel. After having to stand by for a few minutes while they checked there were no planes landing or taking off, we were given permission. We could see quite a few fishing boats in the harbour, tethered up to their mother ships to move their catch over for processing, as we went by. This is big business.
Another fishing boat was standing by on the outside of the reef until we had exited. As we were coming through the pass it radioed us, asking our intention. Dean replied we would cross its stern. The captain confirmed “So we will pass port to port?”. “Yes”. And as we left the channel, they entered without delay, eager to get back in after what I can only imagine is weeks at sea. Kindly they wished us a nice day as they signed off.
And with that we were on our way. The sea was very calm but we had enough wind to sail most of the way without the engine. We were hit by one small squall, but other than that it was a blue sky day.
As we sailed beside the atoll towards the entrance we could see a small boat bouncing through the waves towards us. It was the Pohnpei dive boat just leaving after a trip there, and they came over to say hi and to tell us that Run to Paradise looked nice with her sails up. I should have asked them to take a snap for us, it is hard to get a photo of your own boat under sail!
Ahnd Atoll is pronounced “ant” so is often misspelt as Ant Atoll. The atoll is formed from a volcano that has sunk and been eroded. As it gets lower the coral polyps keep building up until the outer ring of reef remains and there is a lagoon inside. Islands form as sand, shells and debri get caught up on the reef until finally there is enough to sustain plants and animals. The atoll is large and the lagoon measures over 70square km and has 13 islands sitting in it.
This atoll is privately owned so before you go you need to pay the owner. So we called Augustine, our trusty cab driver and he was able to take us to the LPG shop the owners run. William Jr, the son of the owner who is known as Rosa (this is a title), and whose name is William, met us and gave us a run down of the history and what they are trying to achieve there. It cost US$10pp and a US$35 anchoring fee and you can stay as long as you like.
The owners are making a real effort to try and make the atoll a world class preserved area and after some lobbying it has been made a UNESCO Biosphere reserve which is a start. They have five rangers on Pasa Island as caretakers and to ensure no poaching occurs. It has been an uphill battle for instance to stop locals from eating the turtles that nest here. It is of course an important food source for them, but as human populatons increase through better healthcare and people have access to motor boats that allow them to reach the island very quickly and in larger numbers, the turtles are in danger of being overhunted. In fact I haven’t seen one turtle so far but it may not be nesting season.
Due to spear fishing the reef fish numbers are becoming seriously depleted. Since the larger fish are being hunted, they are unable to live long enough to come into their prime and breed. It is a real conundrum. Then of course politics play a part. The owners want this to be a real marine sanctuary with no fishing allowed, however they don’t own the water so technically they can’t stop people fishing in the waters. And politicians are reluctant to get behind a fishing ban in case they aren’t voted back in.
There is only one island you are not allowed onto and that is Bird Island. It is restricted so the bird populations have somewhere to go without being bothered. There is a rat problem on all of the islands except Pasa and Bird Islands so I am wondering if it s a way of also restricting possible movement of the rodents that could then effect the birds. I think the rats were probably introduced during the Copra trading era.
While I ache to see the problem here, I also understand the locals point of view. For our visit we will be refraining from eating the wildlife. No turtle soup for us!
The entry to the atoll is a channel with some markers. We had perfect conditions to enter. There was little cloud cover and being about 2pm the sun was high and behind us, so we could easily see the reef. We went in on the flooding tide so we would travel in with the current. The channel is deep, we had no less than 35m under our keel as we travelled down it. It is quite long and has a couple of dog legs but we had no problems navigating the stretch. The reef on either side is a complete drop off, and is supposed to be the best snorkelling and diving in the atoll.
It is nice to now have our journey on our chart plotter in case we return on a cloudy day. We definitely wanted that visual to confirm the sticks and markers on our first entry. In addition to our other navigation aids, Dean also had the satellite images of the atoll on his tablet to follow. I took the helm as he stood on the bow and looked out for bommies with his polarising sunglasses on and used our hand signal system to indicate my path.
We decided to go straight to Pasa Island and introduce ourselves to the rangers and make our presence known. They would be expecting us since the owner will have notified them we had paid our fee, and also the other yacht there who sailed in the day before, let them know we would be arriving.
I motored around the anchorage until Dean was happy we had scoped it out enough and he had located a nice sandy patch with no bommies to run into or tangle our chain on. We could see a few buildings onshore, there was some kind of swimming enclosure, and a number of dogs were already barking at us.
We untied the dinghy and rowed straight in. The dogs were barking like crazy now, and someone had come out to greet us. After making friends with the dogs we had a chat to Rickson who is the head ranger.
Since this is an old Copra plantation, coconuts are aplenty and they gave us drinking coconuts while we chatted. Clearly I have a drinking problem when it comes to drinking out of coconuts!
Rickson rowed over with a basket he had woven filled with more drinking coconuts as a welcome gift. We invited him onboard and spent a lovely evening talking about all kinds of things. He has been a ranger here for 10 years and it is the first time he has ever been on a yacht! While that may sound a bit shocking, many yachties have come from places where the locals can be pests and steal or simply not go away. Pohnpei is definitely not one of those places. The locals are lovely, educated and have boundaries. This is a place we can happily leave our boat unlocked and have no concern that we will have property stolen.
We could see Cheyenne anchored at another island, but we decided to stay here for now and check out this island before we moved. White coral and sand beaches, crystal clear water, maybe this is paradise?
The “swimming enclosure” isn’t really a swimming enclosure. It is just a series of buoys marking out an area for visiting children to swim in, but it doesn’t have nets. There is a healthy population of reef sharks here and they are friendly and inquisitive. Unfortunately people started feeding them. Never a good idea to associate human with food no matter how friendly a shark seems. Then before they knew it, the sharks were hanging out here. So the owner put a stop to that practice and started putting up the enclosure, but it never got netted. It is now quite funny to see more sharks in the enclosure than out!
Making the most of the crystal clear water, Dean dived down and gave the underside of the boat a bit of a clean. The sharks came over to see what he was doing and see if any food was on offer, but they were sadly disappointed and left him alone.
I can only describe this place as sublime. Apart from the residents including the rangers here on Pasa and a caretaker family who look after the the family holiday home on Imwinsapw Island the only visitors are us and James on Cheyenne and the occasional day trippers to have a dive or snorkel. I guess there are people who fish from Pohnpei but we haven’t seen any. Mind you with an island this size we may not even see them.
Later when our basket started to die I thought I’d set it to float away……
Run to Paradise 