Anchorage #16 and The Coral Gardens

August 28-30, 2014

Anchorage #16 is a small bay on the Island of Vaka’eitu. The anchorage is surrounded by coral with just a narrow deeper spot to get through. It was plenty deep, but it’s still nerve racking to watch the depth sounder click to lower and lower numbers as you move along. The anchorage itself isn’t very pretty, but it was well protected from the strong SSE winds that we experienced while there. The island was definitely inhabited, but we never saw the people, so we weren’t sure if it was just a fishing outpost or something. There were corrugated tin structures, a few animals including a pig and a dog, and trash, lots and lots of trash. Like a disgustingly huge amount of trash strewn all over the settlement. Tim, Craig, and maybe Steve (don’t really remember) went ashore with food scraps to feed the pig, and they ended up also petting the dog for a while. They said the dog is clearly NOT a pet and had clearly not ever been pet before, because it shied away from their hands at first, but then just couldn’t get enough of the petting. Poor puppy.  The cruising guide shows a short trail to the other side of the island to a secluded beach. I hunted around and eventually found the trail (38 paces left when facing the house from the beach), but unfortunately, I never made it over to the other side to check out the beach.

The real highlight of being here, the whole reason we were at this anchorage in the first place, was to snorkel at the coral gardens. There is solid reef between the islands of Vaka’eitu and Nuapapu, and on the outside of that reef was the so-called coral gardens. We took the dinghies and anchored them off the small beach on the tip of Vaka’Eitu Island, and since the tide would be dropping, we anchored the dinghies out quite far. Then, we swam as quickly as we could over the reef to the outside, timing it just right in between the smallest of the wave set that was crashing onto the reef. I was very glad to be decked out in a full wet suit, thick booties under my fins, and gloves.

Once out there, wow, was it amazing. Here’s an email I sent out to friends about it: “Yesterday, we once again topped our snorkeling experiences with at what is known as the coral gardens along a reef that extends between two islands. We were anchored in a sheltered cove on the inside of the reef, so we had to swim across it with waves coming over to get out to the good stuff, but once we did, wow was it worth it. The color of the coral was unlike anything I’ve seen before, and it was cloudy, so the sun wasn’t even out that bright. I wore a weight belt with almost the right amount of weight in it, so I was able to dive down deeper than I ever have before. My reward was being able to hear the whales singing, since you couldn’t hear them near the surface.”