Saturday, 21 June 2014

Surrerier Island

Land Ho!

A nice short day sail to this one, 16 miles. The french survey captain, Baudin, named this island after one of Napoleon’s commanders, but the locals tend to call it Long island. Becomes obvious why when talking to other cruisers - 

“We’re going to seru.. surra… se..  Long island”. 

No one remembers how to pronounce it!


What's the name of this place again?
The sea gods blessed us with another fine day of favourable winds and Ashiki skimmed across at 5 knots, very satisfying leg. The new software for the phone, Navionics marine charts, a backup for the laptop, was working well and guided us around the outer reefs and dropped anchor 1/2 mile off the beach in 2 fathoms (4 metres, 12 feet, forget how many cubits..)

On the excursion ashore we see these shells. I never seen such huge shells, except in shops. Spiral shells, several, over a foot long. The place was littered with these monsters. Also there were large shallow holes pockmarked large sections of beach, were they made by turtles? Then we found several turtle shells/skeletons and that answered our question. It was  a beautiful place and we stayed 2 nights to recuperate, for the next stop was to be the hurly burly of civilisation..


The other side, a lone fishing boat.

We saw "craters" in the sand all over, and here are the
remains of one of the crater diggers



Metre long coral sculpture


Huge shell, saw several of these, no perfect samples though,
too damaged or eroded if you're thinking of making $$


We hiked all over this island
Surrerier sunset






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