Ingo---sorry for hijacking your thread. I thought about other possible landing places on Niku that on first glance seemed to make more sense to me. Your theory of a parallel landing was one of those. Landing on the northern reef/beach side was another. But, after looking at pictures of the reef/beach area, and taking to members of our team that have been there, I found those possibilities might have met with a worse case scenario. I think what really made me take a hard look at the current theoretical landing site, was the pic of some team members doing laser survey work near the site of Bevington's object. They reported the reef was smooth enough to facilitate a wheels down landing, so I defered to their onsite expertise.
We still have a theory that has yet to be proven, but IMHO in the grand scheme of things, this one make sense to me. But, I'm sure there may be other places that she 'may' have landed the Electra.
Tom