We saw the foam before we heard the breaking waves. My husband Rob and I squinted through the morning sun, trying to pick out the low-lying shoreline of the Palmerston Atoll on the horizon. After sailing for five days through rolling blue swells, the line of white signifying land was a welcome sight. Rob did a little dance in anticipation of spearing a fish for dinner. I was more excited about delving into this bizarre community I’d heard so much about.

As the tiny settlement came closer, we hailed the island over the VHF radio to announce our arrival. Within minutes, a scuffed aluminium boat was speeding toward us from inside the protected lagoon. The driver cut the outboard and bobbed alongside our stern.

“I’m Simon Marsters,” said the short, shirtless driver. “Has anyone greeted you yet?” We shook our heads. Simon grunted in satisfaction. “Good. I’ll be your host. You can use my mooring with that yellow buoy, then I’ll take you in for lunch.”

Our cruising guidebook had warned us about the “extreme hospitality” of Palmerston. No foreigner is allowed to set foot on shore without first being adopted into a local family. Visitors are encouraged to reciprocate the islanders’ hospitality with donations of clothes, pens and other staples. Apparently, we’d now been adopted.

Located halfway between the better-known South Pacific sailing ports of Bora Bora and Niue, the Palmerston Atoll is so remote that until 1969 its position on maps was based on Captain Cook’s charts from 1774. In fact, Palmerston is the only Cook Island that the prolific Pacific explorer actually set foot on, though the clump of 15 islands are named for him. Cook dubbed the then-uninhabited atoll Palmerston, after Britain’s first Lord of the Admiralty.

Today  Palmerston is a postcard-perfect paradise with no bank, store or road – islanders have to travel 800km south to the largest island, Rarotonga, to find these modern day conveniences. But what makes this tiny Cook Islands outlier more than just a pretty place are the quirks that footnote its culture: the island has the highest number of freezers per capita in the Southern Hemisphere; locals play volleyball every afternoon except Sunday; and all 62 of its residents are related – everyone on Palmerston shares the same surname and trace their lineage back to one man: William Marsters.

A British adventurer, William Marsters landed on uninhabited Palmerston in 1883 to set up a copra (dried coconut) trade with other Polynesian islands. He brought two Polynesian wives from neighbouring Penrhyn, and later recruited a third wife from the same island, producing an impressive colony of 23 children and 134 grandchildren. Before he died in 1899, Marsters divided the 2sqkm atoll into thirds to give each of the three wives and their descendants a share. The residents still govern themselves based on these hypothetical lines in the sand, and cluster their families on their respective chunk of the atoll. Marriage within the island is prohibited, so those who choose to stay must import a mate.

Rob and I packed a bag to go ashore with Simon, bringing fishing tackle as a gift, along with notebooks for the kids at the island’s only school.

Our host gunned the powerful outboard engine directly toward the waves breaking on the atoll’s fringing reef. I held on tight, praying that he wouldn’t miss the tiny, 3m wide pass through the reef. As the boat surfed down a wave through the tight gap, coral jutting out on both sides, I was relieved we didn’t have to navigate through in our own small rubber dinghy.

Once safely inside the lagoon, we skimmed across flat cerulean water toward the bright white sand framing the island. Wind, rain and waves have slowly eroded the atoll, leaving most of it just barely submerged. The highest point on the entire island is only 6m high – a man-made mound called “Refuge Hill” where the residents cluster during summer cyclones.

A beached ship greeted us as we stepped ashore, battered, broken and belly up.

“Recent wreck?” Rob asked.

“Maybe four, five years ago,” replied Simon. His speech was slow to make room for a slight stutter.  “Good wood for building.”

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