AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/09/22 20:00
LATITUDE: 14-32.88S
LONGITUDE: 168-08.89W
MARINE: NO
WIND_SPEED: 7
WIND_DIR: N
CLOUDS: 25%
VISIBILITY: 20
BARO: 1013.3
TREND: 1
AIR_TEMP: 32.2C
COMMENT: Beach House – ANCHORED – Rose Island, Rose Atoll, American Samoa
What a Magic Place!
We were met by dozens of Boobie Birds outside the reef for the last 9 miles and we actually spotted Rose Island at about 10 miles out. Easily picked up on radar at 10 miles as well.
Rose is listed at 65 feet high and I estimate that there are at least 5000 birds on or flying over Rose Island. As an aside, there seem to be no bugs here as I suspect the birds eat them all? We\’ll see when we go ashore. It\’s hard to tell about the state of the tide, but I think it\’s low. The lagoon is absolutely flat calm. No \”twitch\” at all so far from swell coming over the reef. The conditions however are truly calm out at sea, so this may not always be the case.
We also saw at least 6-8 large Green Sea turtles, several mating as we anchored. The water is so clear, you can\’t tell if it\’s 5 feet deep or 35 feet deep. We\’ve anchored in about 35 feet of water as the shelf rapidly rises and gets very shallow. No worries and we put out 200 feet of chain. The conditions are gorgeous and calm, we expect them to stay this way while we are here. The winds should swing around in two days to the prevailing ESE, but not with any gusto per the weather files.
The entry was calm and generally straight forward. For those following in our wake, the Navionics Charts have you a bit closer to the Western Reef on entry than you might think (It is marked as \”Boat Pass\”) and then you\’ll need to go left as you get to the inside, then back right. If you want some waypoints, let me know. Shallowest depth was briefly 11 feet, but if you were a little more right of where we were on the inside, you\’d have been in 15 feet all the way. There was only that one shallower spot. Otherwise, 25-50 feet deep on entry. The entire lagoon seems navagable at 35-60 feet deep.
Since we arrived at Rose Atoll around 0900 Tahiti/Cook Islands time and we\’ll now move the clocks back to -11 on UTC. We\’re getting quite close to the International Date Line.
After a tidy up, breakfast and a rest, we\’ll head to shore wearing hats for \”bird\” reasons and give a full report soon.
This also seems it would be an ideal Humpback Calving spot, but alas, no whales….so far….:-)
From a sailing perspective, this reminds me in many ways of Beveridge Reef (which is only 335 miles south of here), but this has land which Beveridge does not. From here, any destination from Niue to the South, Tonga or Fiji to the Southwest and Samoa to the Northwest is sail-able.
Drop us a note,
KIT,
Scott and Nikki