We had a pleasant sail over the last few hundred miles to the atoll of Manihi (I might have spelt it wrong earlier).
On the way I opened up some strange little leaf parcels that were bought on a whim in Hiva-Oa. They turned out to contain tasty dried bananas. Nobody else would eat them, so more for me then.
In the distance, the atoll looked like a row of palm trees and it looked about the same closer up. We got to the pass into the lagoon while there was still an hour left of tide flowing out but Grapto has seen worse tides than that in the Solent and so we powered on through into the lagoon.
After anchoring near 'the' village we got a fast boat across the lagoon to the 'Manihi Pearl Beach Resort' for lunch. A fancy hotel with up-market thatched over-water huts for rooms. The place was almost deserted so I hope for them that it's very low season here. We borrowed some bikes from the resort and explored a bit looking for black pearls. We found that they are sold in the food store in the village which takes away a bit of the cachet.
Although we thought that we were the only yacht in the lagoon, two lads called John and Keith from New Jersey dropped by in the evening and stayed for beer and pizza. Their type of sailing makes ours seem like excessive hedonism but they are of an age where anything is possible and nothing is dangerous.
14:27.58S 146:03.34W Saturday evening, Manihi, Tuamotus Achipelago, South Pacific
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