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September 14
Today we left Asanvari on Maewo and headed over to Lolowai on Ambae
island, about 12 miles to the West. The sky was partly cloudy and
there was practically no wind at all. We raised anchor at 1pm sharp
and motored out of the bay into a clearing sky. It is very hot as it
has been the last few days and with no wind to speak of we will motor
the whole way there.
We are towing our dinghy though we lifted the engine as a precaution
and at 2pm we are about 6 miles from Lolowai. We are motoring at a
speed of about 5k and the seas are flat calm. There is no swell at all
and we are very comfortable all in all. Lolowai has a shallow coral
"bar" protecting the bay and is reported to have a least
depth of 6' 6" at low tide. The tide is low at noon so we plan to
arrive at about 3:15 on a rising tide just in case. Our draft is 5'
6" so we should have no trouble entering as long as we follow the
leading lines and stay in the right channel. We should have at least
7' 6" to 8' at that time and expect no trouble.
At 3:30 we arrived at the entrance to Lolowai. We had a bit of
difficulty locating the leading lines. We found the bar easily and the
leads became obvious in plenty of time to correct. We had 7ft at the
least but our sounder is not exactly accurate and in fact reads about
1.5ft too shallow, so I suspect we had 8.5ft at the least. We are
anchored now at 3:50. The bay is striking geographically with rocks
guarding the way to sea and cliffs ashore. The village looks dirty and
scruffy, we are not sure how long we will stay. The water is cloudy
and green, not like Maewo where it was crystal clear.
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