We were 3 boats that arrived on Sunday 31 July at Palmerston Atoll, Chantal and Fredy from Micromegas and Hanuku and Darrel from Cool Cat. Our hosts Edward and Simon brought the officials aboard on Monday morning. No problems clearing into the South Cook Islands, although quite expensive, cost us $105.00 NZD. After clearing in, we all went ashore where the hosts organized a lunch at their home for us all. We met the family and had a very lovely and interesting time.
Palmerston Atoll's population is 64, where more than half are children. We went for a stroll through the village and met the school principle. She took us for a tour showing us the school. We were very impress with the amount of organization and work that goes into the school. There are currently 3 teachers at the school.
The anchorage is good as long as the wind is blowing from the S, SW or SE. As soon as it changes the anchorage becomes a lee shore, uncomfortable and not safe. We did not manage to fix the wind vane in time before the wind shifted towards the NE on Tuesday 2 August, as Dinis helped Edward to do a service on his quad's engine and also another quad that had some problems. They use quads and motorcycles as transportation on the island. Micromegas and Cool Cat decided that it were time to leave. We tied ourselves to another buoy, so that we were now tied up to 2 buoys just for incase.
On Wednesday the water tanks were full and Dinis had managed to temporary fix the wind vane, as by now the swell in the anchorage was quite bad. We decided that we will sleep the night and then leave on Thursday morning first thing. During the night we were woken by noise and Dinis went outside to investigate. It looked like one of buoys that we were tied to was not holding us anymore. The reef also looked to close for comfort to us, maybe 2 boat lengths. We decided that we have to leave, so at 4 am Dinis started the engine. After bit of a struggle for me to pull the lines to release the boat from the buoys we were released and began our trip to Niue.
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