After a little more than a day’s sailing from Manihiki, we reached Suwarrow.
Like Manihiki, Suwarrow is a coral atoll with a large lagoon in the middle, but even on the approach it was obvious that this place was a little different. The atoll is almost completely enclosed by reef, and the lagoon is entered through a single main pass that demands some attention. There is coral on both sides, the current can be strong, and it is definitely not the kind of place where you want to get your course wrong.
Once through the reef, an enormous lagoon opens up in front of you, with a number of small motu scattered across it. The main anchorage lies near Anchorage Island, one of the few parts of the atoll where there is anything resembling a human presence.
Suwarrow is now a national park and one of the most isolated protected areas in the Cook Islands.
When we arrived, we found what could almost be described as traffic.
Three boats.
For Suwarrow, that already seemed like a crowd.
We dropped anchor and, as usual, I almost immediately jumped into the water. I swam and snorkelled around the boat for ten or fifteen minutes, completely relaxed, and then climbed back aboard.
Around that time, a park ranger arrived to explain the rules.
After a few minutes of conversation, he asked us:
“Are you afraid of sharks?”
“No,” I said. “Why? Are there sharks here?”
He laughed.
“The lagoon is full of them.”
I looked back at the water I had just climbed out of.
He explained that we should never throw food scraps overboard. Sharks quickly learn to associate boats with food, and the next time you jump in, they may come over to investigate what has just entered the water.
Right.
My spontaneous swimming sessions had suddenly acquired an entirely new dimension.
A little later we lowered the dinghy and went ashore on Anchorage Island.
The island is so small that you can walk almost all the way around it in thirty or forty minutes. For much of the year there is practically nobody there. During the season, park rangers stay on the island, living in very simple conditions while looking after the national park and the yachts that stop in the lagoon.
Those days, however, the island was unusually busy.
We met a British couple with two small children, several local rangers, and a group of scientists and volunteers who had come to study Suwarrow’s wildlife. Some were from the Cook Islands, while others had travelled all the way from the United States.
Their job at the time was to count birds.
At first, that sounded slightly ridiculous to us.
“How on earth do you count birds?”
I could not quite imagine someone sitting under a palm tree waiting for the birds to fly past one by one.
They explained that, of course, the process was a little more scientific than that. They monitored nests, counted eggs, surveyed specific areas, and used the results to estimate colony sizes and breeding success.
Suwarrow is particularly important because huge numbers of seabirds nest there. Once you move away from the shoreline and actually start paying attention, you begin to realise just how much life there is on such a tiny island.
The Child and the Shark
Because Anchorage Island is so small, we kept running into the British family throughout the day. Even if you wanted to avoid someone, it would be difficult to manage for more than half an hour.
At one point we stopped together near the shore and started talking about sailing, the places we had visited, and how long they had been travelling.
While we were talking, I noticed a shark about a metre and a half long swimming almost into the shallows.
Their child, who could not have been more than three or four years old, picked up a stick and started splashing and hitting the water in the shark’s direction.
I looked at the parents.
“You might want to watch him, just in case something happens.”
They smiled.
“No, no. He does that all the time.”
I looked at the child again.
Then at the shark.
The only thing going through my head was:
“That thing could drag him into deep water in seconds.”
Apparently, I was seeing a problem where they saw none.
We continued talking as if everything was perfectly normal, although every now and then I still glanced over at the child.
What can I say?
Instinct, I suppose.
Or maybe I simply had not been British long enough.
Tom Neale – The Pacific’s Real Robinson Crusoe
On Anchorage Island there is also a simple house connected to one of Suwarrow’s strangest stories.
Long before today’s park rangers, a New Zealander named Tom Neale lived here for years, deliberately choosing a life of almost complete isolation.
Neale was born in 1902 and spent much of his life moving around the Pacific, working various jobs and living on different islands. He first saw Suwarrow in the 1940s and apparently never managed to forget it.
In 1952, already around fifty years old, he came to Anchorage Island intending to stay alone.
And stay he did.
Not for a few weeks.
Not for one season.
Over three separate periods between 1952 and 1977, he spent a total of about sixteen years on Suwarrow.
Alone on a tiny coral island in the middle of the Pacific.
He lived in a simple hut, grew whatever food he could, caught fish, collected coconut crabs and rainwater, and made use of almost everything the island could provide. Ships passed far less frequently in those days, so months could go by without any serious contact with the outside world.
Of course, from a distance, that kind of life is easy to romanticise.
Palm trees, sea, fish, no bills, no boss.
The reality was much harder.
Neale had to deal with tropical storms, food shortages, injuries and long periods of complete isolation. At one point he badly injured his back and was left almost helpless, waiting for a passing boat that might be able to assist him.
And despite all that, he kept returning.
He wrote about his life on Suwarrow in An Island to Oneself, which later became something of a cult book among people dreaming of escaping civilisation and living alone on a tropical island.
His final stay ended in 1977, when illness forced him to leave Suwarrow for Rarotonga. He died later that same year.
It is a strange feeling to stand on an island that already seems incredibly isolated after only a few hours and realise that someone spent years there completely alone.
We had GPS, radio, an engine, a refrigerator, a watermaker, a dinghy and a boat full of food.
Tom Neale had a hut and the Pacific.
Dinner on the Island
The rangers had caught plenty of fish that day and announced that there would be a communal dinner that evening.
The arrangement was simple: they would provide the fish, and everyone from the boats would bring whatever food or drinks they had to share.
We returned to the boat and collected whatever we could find.
Coca-Cola, juice, whisky and various other supplies.
That evening, a fairly colourful group gathered on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific: local rangers, the British family, scientists, volunteers, and a few of us from the boats.
The fish was excellent, the company even better, and the conversations lasted far longer than we had expected.
That was when we got to know Ashley better, an American who had studied oceanography and was volunteering on Suwarrow.
Apart from the birds, she was particularly interested in manta rays.
She spoke about them with such enthusiasm that after a while I had the impression she knew each one personally. She explained that there was a particular area of the lagoon where she regularly found them and said that if we wanted, we could go there with her early the next morning.
Naturally, we agreed.
The only problem was that the evening had only just begun.
Later on, Ashley produced a bottle of Jim Beam from her things, which, as far as I remember, had been left for her by the person who had brought her to the island.
The bottle did not last very long.
Neither did my coordination.
At some point I realised that I no longer had complete control over all parts of my body.
The island seemed to be moving slightly.
The sea even more.
And the dinghy suddenly looked far more complicated than it had earlier.
Somehow, partly with Damjan’s help and partly on my own, I reached the shore.
According to his version of events, it took me almost forty minutes just to manage to step into the dinghy.
He spent most of that time sitting there and laughing himself to tears.
I do not remember every detail.
When we finally reached our boat, a new problem appeared.
I had to climb from the dinghy onto the deck.
I looked at the boat.
I looked at the dinghy.
Everything was moving.
So I made the entirely rational decision that I would spend the night in the dinghy.
Damjan started laughing again.
He only added:
“Just don’t throw up over the side. You’ll attract the sharks.”
Suddenly the dinghy no longer seemed like such a safe bedroom either.
I woke up several times during the night, and eventually thirst became stronger than my fear of falling into the water among the sharks.
Somehow I gathered enough strength to climb aboard.
Hungover Among the Mantas
Whenever I drink a bit too much, I cannot sleep for very long anyway, and the first rays of sunlight did the rest.
Then I remembered that we had promised Ashley we would go and see the mantas.
Wonderful.
I woke Damjan and we went ashore.
We found Ashley asleep in a hammock, stretched between two trees.
Eventually we managed to wake her.
She looked at us and, as if nothing had happened the night before, said:
“We can go.”
So early that morning, all of us more or less hungover, we climbed into the dinghy and spent twenty or thirty minutes crossing the lagoon.
The sun was already hot.
Water everywhere.
Water to the left.
Water to the right.
No buoy, tree, house or anything else that I could recognise as a landmark.
At one point Ashley simply said:
“This is it. They’re here.”
We looked around.
I had no idea how she could possibly know that manta rays were directly beneath that completely ordinary patch of water.
But we put on our gear and jumped in.
And they were there.
Huge manta rays glided through the water beside us, with wingspans of several metres.
They do not really look as if they are swimming.
It looks more as if they are flying underwater.
They passed beside us, turned, disappeared into the blue and then came back again. Some had wingspans of four or five metres, and only when an animal that size passes a few metres in front of your mask do you truly understand how large it is.
It was one of those dives you do not forget.
We took several excellent photographs and stayed with them for quite a while.
By the time we returned, we were thirsty, exhausted and thoroughly roasted by the sun.
Ashley then explained something else that I found fascinating.
Every manta has a unique pattern of dark spots on the underside of its body. That pattern remains effectively unchanged throughout its life and can be used by researchers almost like a fingerprint.
There are databases where divers and researchers can upload photographs of a manta’s underside. The image can then be compared with previously recorded animals. If the manta is already known, researchers can see where it has been photographed before. If it is not in the database, you may have just documented a new individual — and in some projects, you can even give it a name.
We had photographs.
We had mantas.
The only thing we did not have was internet.
So any possible christening of our manta would have to wait until we returned to civilisation.
I cannot say it was physically the easiest day of the voyage.
But it was certainly one of the more memorable ones.
So Where Was the Reverse Wave?
Of course, I had not forgotten the story told to us in Tahiti by our crazy Australian acquaintance.
He claimed that Suwarrow had some special “reverse wave” near the entrance to the lagoon and that every serious surfer had to ride it at least once.
I looked for it.
I did not find it.
I asked the locals.
They looked at me.
I looked at them.
They were not sure what exactly I was looking for.
And, to be fair, neither was I anymore.
Eventually I concluded that our Australian friend had probably mixed up the islands again.
It would hardly have been the first time.
In Tahiti, he had gone to collect forms for the Cook Islands and returned with paperwork for New Caledonia.
He had a 39-foot yacht and a watermaker he did not know how to use, and when a technician finally explained how it was supposed to work, they discovered that it did not work anyway.
So it is entirely possible that his famous reverse wave really exists.
Just perhaps several thousand kilometres away.
Who knows where that man eventually ended up.
We spent a few more days on Suwarrow, spending time with ranger John, the British family, the scientists and the others who happened to be there.
For such a tiny island, an astonishing amount had happened to us. We had arrived at a lonely anchorage in the middle of the Pacific, and within a few days we had learned about a man who spent sixteen years there alone, discovered how scientists count seabird colonies, watched a three-year-old chase a shark with a stick, dived with enormous manta rays, and found out that the lagoon was full of sharks only after I had already enjoyed a perfectly relaxed swim.
Eventually, it was time to move on. We raised the anchor, carefully passed once again through the narrow opening in the coral reef, and headed back out into the open Pacific.
Suwarrow slowly disappeared behind us.
Ahead lay our next stop — Pago Pago, American Samoa.