Pitcairn Island Adventure 3

Today we loaded the Dinghy with our stuff in waterproof bags and headed for Oeno to spend the night on a deserted island.
There is only one small opening in the outer reef and it is an about 1 meter deep sandy part in the all around coral.
We approached the gap and big waves pushed us on in, just at the moment we where in the hole a 2 meter high wave caught up with us and we went sidewards and almost tipped over, if it weren’t for the skilled steering of Andrew, he got the boat straight again and got us trough the hole.

At the moment we where trough the engine died. Turned out that the wave had made the fuel line come off, but Andrew put it on again and it was all smooth sailing for the last 500 meters to the island. We could finally let our adrenile rush calm down
Once landed on Oeno we unloaded our stuff in an old shed. The Pitcairn people are building a new one now because for them Oeno is a holiday island where they spend in average one week each time they go. It is about 120 km (75 miles) from Pitcairn Island.

The rest of the day we walked around the island and snorkled the inner reef. In the evening we heated up canned Spaghetti on an open fire, had canned pineapple for dessert and topped it off with some freeze dried coffee, yes we are really true survivalists. Altough we did get some coconuts out of the tree and eat the meat and drank the milk at a big bonfire we started at the beach, Alcohol is not allowed on Oeno.

On Sunday morning we packed up and headed out again. After an other adreneline rush going to reef and hitting some 2 meter waves head on we returned to our boat.
After our breakfast it turned out that our wonder worker had got the compressor working and he had filled up some bottles with air and we could go diving. So we put on our scuba gear and hit the water.
The visibility is amazing and the untouched corals beautiful. There aren’t many fish around but we did see an astonishing beautiful Nudie Branch, with green and black colours and grey spots.
After returning back to the boat we went back in the old rythem of eating and sleeping as we set sail for Pitcairn Island.
If the wind stays calm we should reach Pitcairn Island around 23.00 hours tomorrow.
Kurt told us the original plan to go to Ducie is no longer an option because of the state of the engine.