Ailuk - Sailing Canoes, Beaches, Spearfishing and more

The view of the southern anchorage by Ailuk village from SV Sweet Dream's drone.  Thank you Colton for the use of the imagery.

While the focus of our recreation time was the kiteboarding, and considerable "non-fun" time was spent on maintenance, we had no lack of other activities to keep us busy.

Camping with the SV Sweet Dreams "kids".  At this point they are 17 and 20 so not really "kids" but we met them in 2012 on the way to Mexico so we still consider then "kids".

Fun at the campfire while camping

No lack of good drinks.  Johnathan is our coconut gatherer and processor.

Cracking a drinking coconut once back at Fluenta.

Johnathan and I spearfishing. (Colton Nie photo)

Bang.  Johnathan shooting the speargun (Colton Nie photo)

Not a great photo but we swam briefly with a pod of noisy dolphins while were out spearfishing

Lunch !  Filleting fish.

Bonfire time with Fluenta in the background

Victoria baking bread with her little helper.

And watering the plants

and knitting me a hat for Alaska.  Benjamin is using the needle sizer from Grammy Brown to check the size of Victoria's needles.

Where ever we anchored we were on the main route for the sailing canoes so nice to see them zoom by.  We wrote about the sailing canoes from our visit in 2017: http://sv-fluenta.blogspot.com/2017/04/ailuk-traditional-sailing-canoes.html

This is one of the smaller canoes.

and a bigger one carrying copra.  Note that to tack they move the rudder and mast base to the other side of the hull.

Sailing canoe details in Enejelar.

Nice areas for hikes ashore but not much elevation gain

Plenty of pounding surf on the windward side.

On a scuba expedition on SV Sweet Dreams to one of the leeward passes.  They are much more adventurous than we are when it comes to anchoring!

Johnathan made Benjamin a climbing harness and swing.

Time even to sit for a bit

or do yoga.

While we spent about two months the same lagoon we shifted anchorages many times.  Here Liz and Victoria are guiding us in closer to the reef in a new anchorage and deploying the anchor.

Not a bad beach view.  The lagoon was the busiest it got that day with three boats: Fluenta, Sweet Dreams and Free Spirit.

More beach views.  Not too crowded.

and lots of sunsets.