Beach House -En Route-Apia, Western Samoa…..

Beach House – En ROUTE – Apia, Western Samoa – Now +12 on UTC and skipping a day ahead.

We had a nice stop over in Pago Pago, but are glad to be on our way. American Samoa is really sort of a \”shop/fuel/propane – take a quick look around\” and go type of experience. The Starkist Tuna Cannery is the major employer and as the smell of fish being cleaned out of their boilers permeates Pago Pago Harbor, I was just as happy to move along. We did a taxi tour of the island and shopped at a \”Cost U Less\” which is similar to Costco in the US and K.S. Market, which was close to it and well stocked. The bus system here is very inexpensive and the taxi\’s are like New York! We did three jerry can runs in the harbor for fuel, took a taxi to the markets and the propane filling station. There is an old aerial tramway that had a horrible accident back in the 1980\’s here. At a \”fly by\” the aircraft clipped the wire and all were lost aboard the aircraft. There is remnants of the old station next to the tuna cannery and on the opposite side of the bay. Some lovely colonial archetecture and of course some evidence of the 2009 Tsunami.

Pago Pago is notoriously rainy and the mountain next to the harbor is called \”Rainmaker\”. We had been led to believe that the Customs and Immigration was US Customs, but it is definitely NOT. The uniforms and badges are very similar, but it is strictly a local affair. Customs charges 100.00 USD on leaving and the harbor fee was 53.00 USD. I would not check in over the weekend or I suspect those fees would double. Pago Pago is also notorious for junk on the bottom of the harbor. One boat, \”Scoots\”, told us the Tsunami of 2009 added to the mayhem with tons of rubbish on the harbor floor. They pulled up a huge plastic bag of baby diapers on their anchor. Fortunately for us, as we left at 0400 this morning, we had only mud, no worries.

We\’re currently half way across the 37 mile wide channel en route to Apia, Western Samoa. Western Samoa, is linked extensively with New Zealand and as such, they have recently changed which side of the road they drive on and have become the Western most nation to politically choose to be in the Eastern Hemisphere, time and date wise to coordinate better with Australia and New Zealand. So when we arrive, we will change the clocks to +12 on UTC instead of -11 and jump ahead a day. The actual date line is still some 450 miles to our West, we\’ll cross that when we get to Eastern Fiji.

So KIT, we\’ll still do our update on our wonderful few days at Rose Atoll in the next few days.
A lovely day out here, just passing the Cargo Ship \”Pacific Forum\” en route to Pago Pago.
Scott and Nikki

TIME: 2016/09/29 20:05
LATITUDE: 14-11.12S
LONGITUDE: 171-05.04W
COURSE: 302T
SPEED: 6.7 (motoring)
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 9
WIND_DIR: E
SWELL_DIR: N
SWELL_HT: 1.0M
SWELL_PER: 10
CLOUDS: 30%
VISIBILITY: 20
BARO: 1012.5
TREND: 1
AIR_TEMP: 32.2C