Manihi to Papeete

We started to pull up the anchor at around 08:30 yesterday morning. A couple of days before I dove to check out how we were hooked and the anchor was caught under the edge of a coral head. When I dove, I attached a retrieval line, hoping that I could use that to pull the anchor out if need be. After a few anxious moments this morning the anchor came loose and we were free. Some of the other boats were taking a few hours to work their anchors free so I felt pretty lucky. Unfortunately Cats Paw IV wasn't having the same luck. Their anchor was stuck but good so I offered to dive and see what I could see. The first dive, in 15 meters, let me see the anchor but not detail. The second time down, I took a knife and went down their retrieval line. That got me to the bottom faster and I found their anchor wedged between two coral heads and under the lip of one of them. I cut the retrieval line and managed to pull the anchor free from the coral heads and made it back up. It was only a little while ago however that I realized that I was free diving to 45 feet!! I'm glad I can still do this stuff. We got out the pass by 09:30, just under 2 hours after low tide, and the pass was flat calm. Fernando came by to keep us centre channel and to say one final goodbye. I will miss him. He called on the radio a little while later and told me he would be in Papeete on June 5 so hopefully we can connect. We are experiencing a no wind crossing right now and have been motoring since we left. We may get some wind by tomorrow morning according to the Grib files. We did have a nice surprise tonight when just after we checked into the Pacific Seafarers net we made contact with Lynn Greentree off Dolphin Tales. They were anchored next to Rick and Dawn on Kalagan on their way to the Bluewater rendezvous. We had great reception and had a good talk.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see:

http://www.sailmail.com