Where is Beverage Reef Anyway?

The July issue of Latitude 38 — now available everywhere, including online — features a great interview with Sausalito’s Marc and Doreen Gounard, who built a 33-ft cat in the early ’90s for just $35,000, and have since spent four six-month seasons in Mexico and completed a 4.5-year circumnavigation with their son and daughter. The interview makes for great reading, particularly for budget-oriented cruisers.

There is, however, one editorial goof that might have some of you scratching your heads. For in describing the route of their circumnavigation, the couple are quoted as saying, " . . . we spent six months cruising French Polynesia — it was easier to get a long-stay visa back then — then went west to the Cooks and Beverage Reef . . ."

Beverage Reef? We looked on Google images, and the only photo that came up for ‘Beverage Reef’ was a stack of beer bottles. This leads us to believe that we misheard them, and that they’d actually said "Beveridge Reef."

Diminutive Beveridge Reef — six miles by three miles — is located in the middle of the triangle formed by Tonga, America Samoa, and the Cook Islands, and is part of the Exclusive Economic Zone of only slightly larger Niue. Beveridge Reef is somewhat unique in that, not only is it not part of an archipelago, but is underwater most of the time! Nonetheless, it provides a degree of shelter in the middle of an otherwise open ocean.

Beveridge Reef was first reported in 1847 by the British Captain Lower-Tinger, who named it after his brig. It’s been the home to a number of wrecks over the years, the best known being the Nicky Lou, which got stuck in ’92. That wreck briefly became home to the facetious Beveridge Yachting Club. Jonathan ‘Bird’ Livingston and Suzie Grubler of the Pt. Richmond-based Wylie 38 Punk Dolphin almost lost their boat at Beveridge back in ’03. Enjoying dinner on another boat, they weren’t aware that the rode on their boat chaffed through, and the Punk almost drifted out the pass in the darkness. Had that happened, they might have created their own Beverage Reef.