21 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
We went ashore early, because we saw booby wings floating past our boat. Rio, Sam and Paul had a profitable time hunting last night and returned with 30 Red-footed Boobies & a dozen lobster. They'd gone down to Motu Tepuka at about eight o'clock at night and walked along the narrow beach, looking for the birds roosting in the trees. The hunting technique is to smack the boobies with long bamboo poles to stun them and knock them out of the tree. They are then dispatched by clubbing them to death - sounds unpleasant.
Mike and Sam had already plucked & gutted the birds and they were boiling in a huge pan on the outside oil drum stove. There were so many that Kura shared half of them with the village. (In case you want to Cook your Boobies in the same way, they are boiled for 30 minutes.)
Kula and Rio insisted that we join them in a breakfast of lobster and rice, which was huge. Completely stuffed, we wandered around the village and did a bit of visiting. Glenys went to the school with our iPad to show the photos of the two sailing trips to the kids and Tui (the teacher). Meanwhile, I visited the minister, gave him a pack of photo printer paper and then used his printer to print some colour photos to stick in the yacht visitor’s book. While I was there, the minister kindly let me take some pictures of his wife’s intricately woven Rito Hats.
Back at Rio’s house, I gave him a hammock and told him that he needs to stop running around as much and take a rest - he liked that. Kura was sitting outside in the shade, cleaning more Rito. She tells us that she’s going to be making ten hats, fans and some baskets, so there a lot of work to prepare all the Rito. Before we could escape, she gave us two lobsters and two boiled Boobies to take back to the boat. Goodness knows when we’re going to eat it all - we've still got a freezer full of stuff that we brought from Bora Bora, some tuna from the other night and load of clams that need cooking.
In the late afternoon, Rio, Sam, Paul and I went hunting for wild pigs to some uninhabited motus on the north end of the atoll. Rio was armed with an old, rusty .22 rifle; Sam and Paul had spears made from steel conduit with a metal point and I had my camera. Sam and Paul went along the north side of the motu while I followed Rio along the south side.
The motu is covered completely by coconut palm trees with thick vegetation below. There are lots of ankle breaking crab holes and coconuts lying on the ground as well as dead coconut leaves, so it’s difficult to walk silently. Rio was like a wraith gliding along, but it took me twenty minutes to learn what I could stand on without sounding like an enraged elephant crashing through the bush.
Every so often, Rio would signal me to stop still and then would creep ahead looking and listening for the canny wild pigs. After half an hour he signalled me to stop again and then kicked off his sandals and crept barefoot through the bush towards a watering hole. Five minutes later, I heard the crack of the rifle and a whistled signal for me to go to him. I found him stood by a 50lb black pig - a good shot with his aged rifle.
We stashed the pig by the shoreline and set off across the motu, to where Sam and Paul had found a pig hiding under a bush next to the beach. One rifle shot later, we were dragging another pig to dump it next to the other one. Rio left Paul and I next to the kills and carried on ahead, while Sam went back for the boat.
Ten minutes later, I heard the crack of another rifle shot and, following Rio’s whistle, I found him with two more dead pigs, which he told me to drag back to the stash. Dragging two dead bodies through the dense undergrowth by myself was a bit of a mission, but I was soon at the shore adding to our growing pile of pigs. Sam arrived, we loaded the four pigs on board and motored along the motu to pick up Rio.
We continued to another motu. The mosquitoes had been pretty thick in the previous motu, so I sprayed myself with deet. As soon as I’d done it, Rio told me I shouldn't put it on because the pigs will smell the strong scent. We spent another twenty minutes creeping through the motu and saw or heard a few pigs running through the bush, at which point Rio sent Paul and smelly old me back to the boat and carried on hunting by himself, but didn't catch anything else.
Back at Rio’s house, they already had a big pan of water boiling and a table set up for the village butcher, Aru Kia to work on. Mike and Sam immediately started to remove the hair from the pigs by pouring boiling water over the skin to loosen the hair and scraping it off with the blade of a sharp knife. When a couple of pigs had been shaved, Aru Kia set to butchering them. I’ll not go into the gory details here, but for those who are interested, there is a set of step by step instructions on how they gutted and butchered the pig in Glenys’ cookbook.
It was interesting that they only kept the main carcass of the pigs - the head, feet and all of the offal including the heart and liver went into the sea. The villagers obviously have more than enough food easily available without having to process the more difficult parts of the pig. The sharks enjoyed it though. There were soon over thirty sharks circling around the side of the dock and when the entrails were thrown in, the water literally boiled as they went into a feeding frenzy - in three seconds it was gone.
While we were watching the butchering process (which took a couple of hours) Kura made a meal just for us and, despite our protests, insisted that we sit and eat. Our stock pile of food on-board is growing because we keep getting fed. To add to it, they gave us a rack of ribs and a whole boned leg of pork. Glenys has totally run out of space and has asked Kura to put it into her freezer until we leave.
22 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
In the morning, we ran the water maker and caught up with a few chores. Both fridges now have leaks and I had to top them up again today. I'm going to have to have a day trying to trace the leak on the food fridge which is definitely getting worse.
As Glenys was planning lunch, trying to use up some of the food that we've been given, we got a call on the VHF from Rio telling us that Kura has cooked some pork for us for lunch! Glenys went ashore and picked up a pan of pork in a sauce, which was far too much for lunch, so we had Lobster Pasta instead and had Kura’s pork for dinner.
We chilled out, pottering about and listening to Penhryn music that Rio had given me. Some of the music is an album by Mr T and a group called Tongareva 5, which was Mr T’s group in the 1990’s (Tongareva is the Maori name for Penrhyn).
Glenys did some cooking to use up food that is building up and made some Tuna Empanadillas, which she took ashore for snacks for everyone while they were opening their Pipis - they disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.
We had a quiet night in.
23 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
I got up early, which was a good job because Rio and Sam came by at half past six to ask Paul and me to go out trolling for tuna. I jumped in their aluminium boat with its 25hp outboard and we sped out to Venus Reef. Despite trolling for over an hour, chasing flocks of sea birds, we didn’t catch anything, so Rio decided that we’d go out netting.
After a quick breakfast and picking up some gill nets (and Rio Jnr), we motored along the inside edge of the atoll to a shallow reef to the south of Motu Tepuka. As we passed by the lovely motu, I could see why they’d come here to hunt Boobies a couple of nights ago because there are thousands of them roosting in the trees.
Rio took us right up to the fringing reef in knee deep water, and then had us lay out two nets parallel to the reef. As we waited, Rio explained that the parrotfish move into the lagoon on a falling tide and then return to the fringing reef on a rising tide, sometimes going out to sea at high tide. The tide was falling, so Rio was hoping to catch shoals of fish going into the lagoon.
He was right. After a short wait of ten minutes, we started to collect the captured parrotfish from the nets. It’s a fiddly job removing a flailing, 12-15 inch long, slimy fish when it’s wrapped in a thin nylon net (I lost seven.) Eventually, by watching Sam, I figured out that the best technique was to push the head through the net mesh, then to grip the fish by the gills and slide it though the net. Meanwhile, Rio Jnr was walking alongside us with half a plastic oil drum collecting the fish as we freed them from the net.
Blacktip Reef Sharks soon appeared and were nuisances getting caught up in the net. The Islanders are so used to dealing with these predators that they simply grabbed the smaller ones and freed them from the net. Bigger ones over three foot long were speared with the same steel conduit spear that we’d used pig hunting. Rather than killing the sharks, they simply cut off its tail and let it limp off to die. It sounds a bit brutal, but it’s effective and doesn’t create a lot of blood, which would attract even more sharks.
After an hour or so, Rio decided that the run of Parrotfish had finished, but there were quite a few parrot fish trapped in a pool between the reef and our nets, so we spent half an hour dragging the net in a circle around the pool and catching the rest. In all we caught about 200 parrotfish with a couple of hours' work. Rio told me that he was a little disappointed - we were a bit late getting there and we should have caught twice as many…
We motored back along the atoll to a place with knee-deep water over sand, next to a gap between two motus. Our prey now was Milkfish and Mullet, which swim in the shallows in large shoals. The technique was to locate a shoal of fish, deploy the net in a long line and slowly walk towards the fish, with a couple of people wading wide and ahead to scare the fish towards the net.
The net was slowly closed into a U-shape and the fish scared into the net. The shoal hit the net at such a high speed that the net was lifted out of the water. After gathering one shoal of about 80 Milkfish, we had a quick lunch. Kula had thoughtfully made Paul and me some boxes of food containing spaghetti, rice and breadfruit, while the others simply ate raw fish (which tastes very nice.)
We then targeted a shoal of Mullet, which moved into the very shallow water (3-6 inches deep) between the motus - Rio told me that Mullet often do this. We slowly walked in a long line towards the fringing reef and found the shoal of fish in a 9 inch deep “pool” next to the reef. It was then a matter of encircling the pool and scaring the fish into the nets. After untangling the 80 Mullet, Rio called it a day.
Before we left, Sam and Rio Jnr went off to the bushes, next to the beach on one of the motus. Paul and I followed then and found them “playing” with nesting Red-tailed Tropic Birds. These birds nest on the ground under bushes and when approached, defiantly stay on their nests to defend their chicks or eggs. I'm sure conservationists will be appalled, but the “game” was to grab a bird by the scruff of the neck without being pecked with the ferocious looking beak. I didn't partake in the “game”, but did accept a beautiful, long, red tail feather from Sam.
Back at Rio’s house the family had set up a long working table and set off cleaning the 350 fish that we’d caught. We sat with them as they worked, but kept out of the way because they were so efficient that we’d have been a hindrance. To process the Parrotfish, one person used a knife to slit the belly and cut between the gills, while another used their bare fingers to pull out the entrails and the gills. The heads of the Mullet and Milkfish were cut off before gutting.
Some of the fish were de-scaled ready to eat in the next few days, while the rest were left with their scales and packed to ship to friends and family in Rarotonga. The fish were washed in sea water and packed into six old seed sacks - 45 fish per bag. The sacks were sewn shut by Rose and Mike, then taken off by motorbike to a chest freezer. The plan is to put the frozen fish onto the cargo ship that is coming in early next week. The whole job was complete in a couple of hours.
In the evening, we invited Paul and Celeste over for sun-downers and finally got to eat the Boiled Red-footed Booby, which Glenys shredded and served with Hoi Sin sauce wrapped in pieces of tortilla as an appetisers. It was very nice - like a strong version of duck. We’re now desperately short of alcohol and soft drinks now - two cans of beer left, no wine, no coca cola and only three small bottles of rum. We scrounged some drinking coconuts from Kura, so that we could make Pussers Painkillers.
24 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
It was another Sunday - our third one already. We did the same routine - picked up a hat for Glenys from Kura, went to Sunday School to listen to them singing Hymns and then into church. Most of the service is in Maori, so to stop myself being too bored during the bible readings and the sermon, I've started to read the Bible, which I guess is acceptable - I'm half way through Genesis.
We stopped to visit with Rio and Kura on the way back to the boat and they told us that they shared some of the pork from the pig hunt with the rest of the village - of course, she wouldn't let us walk away with out our share, which was a plate of tender roasted pork and breadfruit cooked in coconut cream - very nice.
With bellies full of pork, we chilled out for the afternoon - well I slept for two hours, while Glenys cooked a lemon cake for the evening. Paul & Celeste on "The Beguine" are leaving tomorrow, so Rio and Kura arranged a get-together at their home as a farewell. There was the normal extended family of six adults plus the minister and Mr T, the four of us cruisers and half a dozen kids. Kura laid on another huge meal and it was a pleasant evening, but unfortunately, the playing of musical instruments is not allowed on Sunday, so it was a fairly subdued affair.
We've received an email from our friends Michael and Charlotte on "Salamander" who have told us that they're heading towards Penrhyn, so we're now going to stay here for another week and wait for them. This gives us a great excuse to hang out here longer and also a chance to take part in the famous "White Sunday" next weekend.
25 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
A cargo ship called the “Lady Moana” arrived from Rarotonga early this morning, so we hitched a lift across to Omoka with Sam and Rose. It was a fairly windy day, so the 30 minute ride across the atoll was very bouncy and even downwind we were getting sprayed with sea water every so often.
By the time that we’d arrived off Omoka, the sea had picked up and there were 2-3 foot waves crashing against the shoreline. Sam manoeuvred the aluminium tender into the small harbour and went alongside the ship. Rose and I clung onto the side of the ship as we bounced up and down and Sam tossed big bags of frozen fish up to the crew members for transporting to Rarotonga to Rio’s family.
Having escaped the side of the ship without losing any fingers, we tied up in the tranquil small boat harbour and stepped ashore. There was lots of activity at the dock. Most of the village of Omoka seemed to be hanging about, plus four or five boat loads of people from Tetautua. Groups of newly arrived people were huddled in the scant shade surrounded by luggage and boxes cargo that they’d brought with them, waiting for the rest of the cargo to be unloaded.
We chatted to various people who were returning to Tetautua. One of the biggest parties was Mike’s mother (Aloha) and assorted family, who had just returned after five months away in New Zealand. They were weary after the five day passage in a cramped cabin and were looking forward to getting home.
We had a walk around Omoka, but most people were at the town dock or out delivering goods that had arrived. I managed to find Ru (customs and Immigration) and told him that we’d be coming over on Friday to clear out, ready to depart on Tuesday. He was okay with that. The small village shop was closed because the lady running it was working in the bank today, so we couldn't buy anything. Back at the main dock, we found that Christine (the baker) had made some lunch for the new arrivals and she invited us to join them. Poisson Cru, fried fish and Fried Halaoa Uto - very, very nice.
Rose eventually persuaded Warwick’s wife, who runs the bigger store out by the airport, to give us a lift in her trailer to her shop. Glenys bought essentials - flour, margarine and she found some big bottles of Coca Cola. To my great disappointment there was no beer because it hadn't been unloaded from the ship yet.
We bummed a ride back to the village and then, after a bit more chatting, Sam drove us back to Tetautua, which was very, very bouncy and wet. We were a little dehydrated and tired when we got back to the boat, so we had a quiet night in and watched a movie.
26 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
We went Pipi gathering with Rio and Rose. I tried to be more scientific about it and reasoned that the bigger oysters would be older and therefore have more chance of having formed pearls. My other theory was that the ones a little deeper and in sandy hollows would have more chance of getting grit in them and creating pearls. So, I was a little more selective and kept my basket separate from Glenys’s.
Glenys went for the easier “Blitzkrieg” method and gathered anything that was easy to get to - mostly on the shallow top of the reef. She gathered twice as many as I did.
Back at Rio’s house, we sat down to open our pipi oysters (assisted by Mike’s newly returned family). My “scientific” approach was totally misguided. Glenys yielded four times as many pearls as I did and had the biggest ones - it’s obviously a lottery and a matter of gathering as many as you can.
It was six o'clock by the time that we’d finished opening our oysters, so we went back to Alba for dinner. We've now got a collection of over 50 Pipi pearls, but unfortunately most are very small with only one decent 5 mm diameter pearl. We're not too sure about what to do with the small ones, so we'll probably give them to Rio and Kura, who can sell them to the dealer when he arrives in a couple of months.
27 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
We received an email from our friends on “Salamander” telling us that they aren't coming up here because the wind is wrong, which is a shame. After a bit of debate, we've decided to stay here until next week anyway.
We've been given quite a few "Pu-pus" which are Pipi shells with embedded pearls on the inside of the shell, so I went ashore to use Rio's bench grinder to clean and polish the outsides of the shells. It's quite a time consuming job and the small shells get extremely hot during the process, so in a couple of hours, I only managed to clean six shells - four "pu-pu" and a couple of nice golden plain shells. I enjoyed doing it and the finished shells are lovely, glinting gold in the sunlight. My plan is to do some more and then to make some earrings and pendants.
In afternoon, we went for walk on a motu on the windward side of a small lagoon about a mile south of the village. There were lots of nesting White-capped Noddies and we found some beautiful Red-tailed Tropicbirds nesting under the bushes (we didn't play the local game of "Grab a Tropicbird by the Neck".)
We stopped in the southern pass into the lagoon to do some snorkelling. The water was very clear in the shallows, but at the drop off into the deeper water in the atoll, the water was very murky, presumably plankton builds up in the slow-moving deeper water. I swam over to investigate, but retreated when a couple of Grey Reef Sharks came up out of the gloom to investigate me.
Glenys had a good time snorkelling around the shallow coral patches and picked up some nice new species of shells for her collection. While we were there, Rio, Rose and Mike stopped by to make sure that we were alright. They'd just returned from three hours of gathering Pipis and I don’t think that they really understand why we snorkel for fun.
In the evening, we'd invited Rio and Kura over to Alba for dinner. We suggested six o'clock, so that they could have a relaxed evening, but Rio was far too busy to stop that early. He went fishing for Grouper just before sunset with Sam and invited me along. They took me out to the shallow reef that fringes the atoll and then we went wading through the knee deep water.
They only had two of the long bamboo fishing poles, so I was relegated to being an observer. The fishing poles were 20 feet long and very thin at the top. A 20 foot length of 25lb nylon fishing line was simply tied to the top of the rod with a small artificial lure at the business end. The lure was a small lead weight with some pig’s tail hair.
The method of fishing was to flick the lure into the shallow water and then drag it just fast enough that it splashed on the surface of the water. Small 6 inch long grouper were hitting the lure and being swung to the fisherman who unhooked the fish and dropped it into a bag slung over his shoulder. It was very effective because in 30 minutes, they caught over fifty fish between them.
Rio and Kura came on board at half past seven with Cina in tow. They had a good look around our boat and Kura was very interested in the Woven Baskets that Glenys has picked up in the Manamo and Darien regions. She also loved the molas from San Blas islands.
We had a great evening - Glenys served Texan Beef Chili and Chicken Mole with rice. They'd never had food cooked with chocolate before, so the Chicken Mole went down well. It was lovely to have them on board and give Kura a break from feeding their extended family.
28 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
I went ashore and finished off grinding my Pipi shells. Kula had already asked Sam to grind some for me , so even though I only cleaned five, I've walked away with over twenty…
Glenys decided that she wanted a nice pair of matched pearls to make a set of earrings as a memento of this fabulous place, so we did a trade with Rio. He selected a matched pair of 5mm diameter pearls with a deep gold colour from his pearls and we gave him all of our pearls. We already had a nice 5mm pearl, so we effectively swapped 50 small pearls for a 5mm round pearl , so I'm pretty sure that Rio did very well out of the deal, but we’re happy and he’s happy, so it was a good deal.
In the afternoon, we went exploring the reef where Rio took me fishing last night, but there weren't any shells worth having. We went for a snorkel in the northern pass coming out of the small reef side lagoon and the current was wicked, so we drift snorkelled at 3 knots. There are lots of big fish in the pass and I spotted a few Whitetip Reef Shark. We messed around in the shallows out of the main current looking for shells and found a fair selection again.
We had a quiet night in. We’re now out of Beer, Coca Cola, Orangina, Lemonade, so we’re reduced to drinking fresh orange juice & rum or Iced Tea & rum. Fortunately, “The Beguine” gave us a bottle of wine just before they left, so we drank that with our Spaghetti Bolognese. It’s definitely time to leave.
29 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
Kura and Rose were going to Omoka because another cargo ship called the Kwai had arrived, so we hitched a lift to go to clear out. Rose had problems starting the outboard before we left, so Mike the Mechanic came over to fix it.
I've been watching the villagers having problems with their outboards for three weeks and it amazes me how they struggle on with bodged repairs when they rely so much on their boats. Mike was able to unscrew one of the spark plugs with his bare fingers and he used a pair of pliers to unscrew the other one. The lead going to the spark plug didn't have a proper connector, so the bare wire was just twisted into a loop and crimped onto the spark plug with (you've guessed it) the pliers.
Most of the outboards are 25hp or 40hp two-stroke Yamahas, so I really don't understand why they don't have a set of spare parts like I do for my Mercury outboards. Is it the cost of spares or the hassle of ordering the parts and shipping them all the way from Rarotonga?
When we arrived in Omoka, we first went to Ru's house to clear out, ready to leave on Tuesday (2nd September). Altogether it cost us NZ$250 for our 29 day stay in Penrhyn, which was a bit of a shock to the system. We've been spoiled in French Polynesia with no fees at all, but we're now back to paying big fees. There was a $65 immigration fee per person, a charge for the officer's time and port fees of $2.50 per day.
Having received our expensive exit papers, we wandered down to the quayside to look at the Kwai, which is a hundred foot, steel cargo ship with sails. I chatted to the owner, who told me that with their main sail, top sail and jibs, they normally do five to six knots and sail when ever they can to save on fuel costs. They're based in Hawaii and regularly sail in the Line Islands and down to Rarotonga - from here they're off to Christmas Island.
The Kwai has a store where they sell a variety of goods including some clothes as well as food. They open a hatch on deck and the villagers go on board to peer down into the hold to see what is available. Everything is expensive and they only sell bulk groceries - 25 lbs of rice, 300 chocolate bars, etc, so we didn't buy anything.
Instead, we got a lift to Warwick's store in the back of Kura's cousin's pick-up truck, where we were able to buy 6 bottles of coke and sprite for our passage and a case of beer to keep me happy until we leave.
Back in the village, we helped Kura and Rose take six, 8 * 4 sheets of plywood from the Kwai, then load it onto their aluminium boat along with a huge 100lb propane tank. It was another bouncy passage back, so we all got soaking wet again.
It was very hot all day and we didn't drink enough, so both of us were feeling a bit beat up with dehydration, so we crashed out for the rest of the afternoon and had a quiet night in sipping a few nice cold beers.
30 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
We went ashore, but being a Saturday, it was very quiet - this is the villagers’ main day for relaxing and doing things as a family. Rose wasn't going out for Pipi’s today and we found Rio chilling out, chatting in Papa Saitu’s house, while Kura was at home looking after the kids and making another Rito hat.
The Cook Islanders have an interesting attitude to family. The family members are very mobile. Not only do people move to Australia and New Zealand for work, but family members will happily go visiting for long periods of time - four months is not unusual. I guess the large distances and long travelling times on ships has something to do with it.
Parents are affectionate with their very young children, but the older ones seem to be quite independent. Children are often given away and adopted by other family members. We know of one couple who gave their son to the husband’s brother because the brother didn't have any boys. It’s fairly common for children of families working abroad to send one or more of their children to live with grandparents. In some cases, the children never see or have any communication with their real parents and regard the grandparents as their parents.
In the afternoon, we went snorkelling in the main Tetautua pass. There’s a big pinnacle reef in the centre of the pass, which would have been a great place to snorkel if we’d got the tides right, but when we were there the current was ripping out. We went to the north side of the pass where there's a shallow reef blocking the current and found a great area next to two poles marking a small channel through the reef.
There is very nice coral at depths of 2-8 metres and we saw a good variety of fish. A huge shoal of Convict Surgeonfish came swirling around us. The must have been over 500 of the six inch long fish, who swarmed over the reef. I think that they were eating some kind of algae that grows on the coral and is normally protected by aggressive Damselfish. Presumably, the huge shoal overwhelms the Damselfish leaving the Surgeon fish free to steal the algae.
31 August 2014 Tetautau, Penrhyn, Cook Islands
Today was another Sunday, so we attended our fourth church service. Unfortunately, it wasn't a White Sunday, which is the one service of each month where the members of the Cook Island Christian Church take communion. On this special day, everyone wears white clothing for the service, which I should imagine is a lovely sight and it’s a shame that we've missed it, but we've got to move on.
Rio and Kura invited us over for breakfast before the ten o'clock service and served us roasted pork, two kinds of fish, rice and breadfruit in coconut cream - we could get used to this kind of breakfast. As usual, Glenys borrowed a hat from Kura and we went to Sunday School to listen to them singing Hymns before going in for the church service.
On the way back to the boat, we stopped to visit with Rio and Kura. Rio told us that he’s going to become a minister, which was a surprise to us. The plan is for him to move to Rarotonga in 2018 to receive four years' training and then he will be moved to a church anywhere a minister is required. Kura will also be doing some training and I'm sure that together they will be an asset to any church.
We chilled out for the afternoon. Glenys booked some flights from New Zealand to the UK - we’ll fly back just before Christmas and return to New Zealand in the middle of January. It's exciting to know that we’re going home to see our family - we've not seen them since July last year. However, we've still got another 2,000 miles to sail over the next three months to get to New Zealand.
This evening, we had ten Blacktip Reef Sharks swimming about under the boat - the most that we've had so far. We've got so used to them that I now find it relaxing to be sipping a cold beer and watching these sleek predators prowling about.
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