Sailing the South Pacific

Hello all,





We very much enjoyed Tahaa and had two very good meals at the Yacht Club and a great walk to see the vanilla production. Lots of flowers on this island and the people are very friendly offering you rides as we were walking around. We do enjoy our walks as we do not get that sort of exercise on the boat. On the boat is more of a Tia Chi exercise as we are in constant movement opposite to that which the boat makes.





We had a very good short sail over to Bora Bora and after fueling up Kilkea we tied up to a mooring at the yacht club. The next day we rented a couple of bikes and rode around the island stopping for lunch and a beer here and there. Had lunch at a famous bar, at least for here, called Bloody Marys which boast sand under your feet which is not that novel for us!! Anyway Bora Bora is an atoll with all the motus on the surrounding reef and the famous mountain view in the middle. The water colours are many and very beautiful. Most all of the surrounding motus on the reefs have big hotels on them and you have to take a launch to get to them. Very quiet place and good for honey mooners. We found that after the Toamotus atolls that we were spoiled having seen such amazing reefs in there natural state.



We watch the weather closely and we saw an opportunity to move west so on Wednesday the 29th we headed off for Palmerston atoll in the Cook island group. We had easterly winds which were straight behind us all the way. On the first day out we had a problem with our main sail which kind of blew up and shredded. The uv from the sun and the heat play havock with sails but no problem we have a couple of spare mains we can put up. So it was down with the torn main and up with the spare except that the lead line to the halyard pulling up the sail broke!! Big problem. Now to get the halyard back I would have to go up the mast which is 65 feet above the deck and we were in 3 to 4 meter seas with 25knots of wind. This we decided was not a good idea at all!! Returning to Bora Bora was not on as we would be straight into the winds. No problem we had the forsail out on the pole and had to have it reefed with the wind anyway and we were doing seven to eight knots. There was one other problem with this as with the self furling system we have is in the mast and when there is no sail attached to the mandrel it bangs and bangs away against the inside of the mast. So for four days we are in three to four meter seas with winds twenty five to thirty with this constant banging going on. Not pleasant. After 680 miles and four days we arrived in Palmerston atol at noon on Sunday and managed to pick up a mooring of sorts on the outside of the atoll as there is no pass to get inside. The atol is about five by three miles. There is nowhere to anchor as there is the reef and a hundred feet past that the bottom drops to a thousand feet straight down. Sunday is a day of rest for the 67 prople who live here and they do nothing at all on Sundays which was fine with us as we were tired and I wanted to get up the mast. Even though we were on the west side of the atoll there still was a fair amount of movement on the boat but we had to get to work. So up the mast I go with the top pitching and rolling fifteen feet around the center and me with my legs wrapped around the top of the mast trying to feed the halyard back down through the inside of the mast. This is not easy when it is calm and it took about a hour before Marian secured the end of it and got me down. On landing back on deck I just lay there not feeling so good. Then I felt worse, as you feel when you get sea sick, Then it happened and after ten minutes I felt much better. Ug. I am calling this mast sickness. Anyway we managed to get the sail up before dark and went to bed early. But wait the sea gods had more for us to do as the wind changed to the west and now we are bouncing all up and down on an anchor that we do not have a lot of confidence in and the stern of the boat is only 50 feet away from the coral reef! Well we didn`t get much sleep and were glad in the morning when one of the local boats made its way to us and told us what we already knew that is was unsafe to stay where we were. We agreed and left the anchorage hoping to find somewhere on the other side of the atoll where we might anchor. We looked but with the easterly swell and beautiful surf ideal for the surfers of the world we reluctantly gave it up our visit to Palmerston and headed to Niue another 380 miles. Now we had wind on our nose so had to tack back and forth for a day until the wind dropped to nothing and we motored the rest of the way over to Niue where we are now.



I thought that I would try to put in writting what it is like to sleep on a boat that is in big following seas. Your bed is gyrating around all axis and you need to wedge yourself into whatever semi comfortable position you can. The first night is the hardest and by the third night you are so tired you don`t even notice the motion, at least not too much. If we could show this operation at a boat show I am sure they would sell a lot less boats! It took us eight days to do this last leg with 24 hours sort of off in Palmetston and was probably the toughest of any of our sails so far. The good news now is that we are on very strong moorings in Niue with a humpback whale and calf just off the stern of the boat with nice calm waters and are now going ashore for some dinner with a local couple that run the yacht club.