Penrhyn - Rain

We stayed 2 nights at Omoka, then moved across the lagoon to the village on the eastern side. The easterly trade winds at 15 knots were building a 2 foot wind chop making the anchorage bouncy.

Th health inspector, OJ, rode with Bold Spirit guiding us across. It was a nice sunny day, most of the 8 miles across. It did shower once or twice on the way. The coral heads coming straight up out of 150 feet of water made beautiful light colored water. They have marker poles on lots of them. A white pole with a white triangle at the top, made them look very much like the green of a golf course. The deep water is dark blue with the coral fading through turquoise, light blue, baby blue, yellow and
finally white and some brown where the coral is only a few inches from the top.

Saturday OJ and his cousin and nephew took us to gather clams. He is flying back to Raratonga for a month and wanted to take some to his family. We collected a whole boat full. The clams are a relative of an oyster, in that they attach themselves to the coral heads and the coral grows around them, making them hard to get off. They just stuck a screw driver in the top and pried it right off. Trinda and Kathie declined to eat them raw, in the water, but Jeff and I dug right in with the locals. You
just pry it open, cut out everything from the shell,, cut of two blak looking lumps and the rest you can rinse in the salt water and chow down! Donnie, yes we had the right ones, and almost every thing inside was good to eat.

OJ insisted that it was OK to walk around town after church, so Trinda and I went in about 1:00. She made a chocolate cake. Joe, OJ's cousin, took the cake and shared it with his neighbors and family. But, Most of the people gave us funny looks. They are VERY religious here and believe in Sunday being a day of rest. The little children are not even allowed to play outside until after 4PM. Everyone just lays around in the shade. It may be OK to watch DVDs though. Joe has borrowed several every day.

Monday we planned to walk around and meet more of the people, but it started raining early. It rained hard from 9 to 3 with wind gusts of up to 40 knots! Our anchor didn't drag very much, thank goodness. Every thing is wet. It must have rained 6 or 8 inches. I am sure glad we are on this side of the lagoon, as that kind of wind would have made 5 or 6 foot wind waves on the other side. We have not heard from the other boat there to see how bad the waves were.

Today we hope to go walk around.