Olimarao atoll is small and looks nicely surrounded by a barrier reef, so we expected a calm anchorage. Unfortunately the barrier reef is so submerged, that swell makes it in from all sides and at high water we were bouncing every day in crossed seas despite different stern line attempts to try and face the swell… We ended up sleeping in passage mode (one on the salon sofa the other one on the passage mattress on the floor) most of the time and we spent one unnerving night pounding the sandy bottom with the keel during low water (that anchorage was a teeny bit too close to shore).
We’re now in the NE trade wind belt and so it’s blowing hard most days with accordingly high waves and swell.
Anyway, it was worth it as we got to enjoy an incredibly lively underwater world with swarms of chubs, scads and all the predators chasing them. Olimarao is uninhabited, but people on Elato told us that they (and more often the neighbours from Lamotrek) go over to the little atoll to hunt turtles. Their raids are apparently thorough–we didn’t see a single turtle in 2 weeks (and that’s not a seasonal thing as we saw plenty in the neighbouring atolls). What’s also missing in the lagoon is sea cucumbers (so maybe a Chinese ship got in to harvest them?) and parrot fish are functionally extinct (most likely due to too much spearfishing at some point), which is a shame as the corals in the shallows are badly damaged and in need of herbivore fishy cleaners.
The main island with an anchorage for E and NE winds is quite pretty with not just palm trees, but also some leaf trees that provide nesting space for noddie terns.
We found an abandoned church in the forest and WAY too much plastic trash all over the place that gets blown here… We burned some and hope that cruisers following in our wake will do their share to help cleaning up the island as well 
Unfortunately erosion is visibly gnawing on the shore: where older google images still show a beach off the coast the waves are now splashing up right to the trees. We found dozens of sunken trunks close to shore in the lagoon and the next line of palm trees and shrubs has already fallen over again–we witnessed several trees coming down while we were there with high tides during new moon and some southerly swell. Really sad to see rising sea levels and coastal erosion at work:
