Beach House – ANCHORED – Pago Pago, American Samoa…..

25 September 2016 (-11 UTC)
COMMENT: Beach House – ANCHORED – Pago Pago, American Samoa (total run 149 miles – 23 hours)

We had a brief spat of wind last night, but a false alarm and as such we ended up motoring the entire distance from Rose Atoll to Pago Pago, American Samoa. Pago Pago is pronounced \”Pango Pango\” (Why? who knows). We were within 8 miles of the Manu\’a Islands of American Samoa which might be interesting, but going back against the trade winds is against my personal belief system.

The main feature here is the Starkist Tuna Canning facility and the tuna fishing fleet in this very large natural harbor. We noticed the McDonalds as we turned toward the anchorage for the small boats which is tucked way inside. This harbor has a reputation as being very deep and lots of junk on the bottom to catch your anchor on. I recall a story from \”Amadon Light\” where they said they pulled an old railroad two man hand car up on their windlass! – Yikes. We\’re however in 27 feet of water (which is not deep) and hopefully won\’t pick any flotsam up off the bottom when we go to leave. The water here is not clear as the bottom is muddy from the high mountains that surround this natural \”hurricane hole\” harbor. There are 10 other boats here, all seem of the local liveaboard type except for \”Scoots\” which we have heard of, but never met.

The trade winds are very light now and are expected to remain weak and along about 20 to 30S. The trough is NOT often this far north and is weakening all the trade winds. This will end mid next week. We hope to be headed for Apia, Western Samoa about that time which is 88 miles from here. This is where will spend most of our time in Samoa – we expect up to a week there.

Our main reason for being here is, other than to see this famous place, to take advantage of the supposedly nice USA shopping. There is supposed to be a Costco and many other nice food markets here. We suspect a Wednesday departure will hopefully be in order. US Customs is closed today (wouldn\’t find that in the 50 States!) and as such, we are sort of quarantined aboard till they open tomorrow. We see wifi and if so, we\’ll try and connect for our first internet in a couple of weeks.

I\’ll put out a final report on the wonderful time we had at Rose Atoll within the next few days and update you on our experience here.
KIT,
Cheers,
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/09/25 19:28
LATITUDE: 14-16.37S
LONGITUDE: 170-41.87W
MARINE: NO
WIND_SPEED: 5
WIND_DIR: E
CLOUDS: 70%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.5
AIR_TEMP: 30.6C