Haul Out, Neiafu, Vava'u, Tonga, Oct 20 - 23, 2008

On Monday morning we checked again to see if the cutlass bearing had arrived in Neiafu, and we were told by someone from DHL in southern Tonga that it was in her hands at the moment and would be on the plane to Neiafu the next day. We were also waiting for space at the haulout place. In Neiafu they have a rail haul out system, where train rails go from shore into the water and boats get placed on a cradle that rides on these tracks and then the cradle is pulled up the tracks until the boat is out of the water. The boats remain in the cradle while being worked on, so only one boat can be hauled out at a time here.

When we first got to Neiafu we were told that there were two boats in line for haulout ahead of us. As of Monday, one boat had completed it's work, but the other was not out yet, so we made plans to watch Monday Night Football live on Tuesday afternoon at Mala island (this dateline stuff is a bit confusing). On Tuesday we got up and were having coffee when we got a call on the VHF from another boat saying the haul out guys were trying to find us. Apparently they couldn't find the other boat that was supposed to be in line before us, or maybe there hadn't ever been another boat, they weren't really sure, but they'd let us haul out today if we wanted to. We did. Fred hustled ashore to check for the part again and to talk to the haul out guys while Jeff and I got the boat ready to go. The part hadn't arrived on the morning plane, but we were told it would be there in the afternoon, so Fred came back and we took God Spede over to the dock near the haul out rails, which are very conveniently located next door to the Mermaid Cafe, which is also the yacht club.

The cradle was lowered down the rails and people stood on the docks on either side of these rails and used lines from the boat to position it approximately over the cradle while two guys swam in the water and positioned some struts that stick up vertically and form the sides of the cradle. Since the bottom of the keel is skinny and the boat is wide, it's important to get the boat positioned correctly so it doesn't fall over as it's pulled up the rails out of the water.

Fred and Jeff were on the boat while all this was going, broiling in the hot noon day sun. I was on the deck manning one of the lines and being a bit concerned because all the other line handlers were talking to each other in Tongan and nobody was telling me whether I should be pulling on my line, or letting it go slack, or what. I assumed somebody would tell me if I was really messing it up, but I sure wished I could speak Tongan so I'd know for sure. After about 10 minutes of this the guys in the water gave the go-ahead and they began pulling the boat up the rails, but the lookout guy (who was positioned onshore dead ahead of the boat) quickly shouted for them to stop because he could see the boat leaning to one side. So, the boat went back down, more adjustments were made, and 10 minutes later they tried again. This time the boat completed it's jerky journey up the rails, out of the water. A few more supports were added and a ladder was tied to the side of the boat and all the yard guys went off to have their lunch. We headed over the Aquarium to check on the cutlass bearing and were told it hadn't arrived yet, but we'd have it later that afternoon for sure, so we decided to go ahead with our football plans and called a taxi to take us to Mala Island.

The taxi guy took us for a nice drive and then stopped in the middle of the road at the edge of a nice beach. I thought he was showing us the great view, so I began admiring it, but then I realized he meant for us to get out. "Where is the place that shows the football?", we asked. "Over there", he said, pointing to an island off the beach. "How do we get there?" "Boat?" he mumbled, in a way that made me think he was guessing. Then he started chatting with some guys who were lounging on the beach, and told us they would take us over. I never did find out for sure if they were the offcial Mala island ferry or if they were just some nice guys with a boat who gave us a ride, but in any case we made it to the island in time to watch the Patriots give somebody (is it a sign of early alzheimers that I don't remember who?) a serious whipping. This was the first game we'd seen all season and we really enjoyed it.

After the game we boated back with the owners of the Aquarium. It was a very scenic and enjoyable ride. Tonga really is beautiful.

When we got back to town, we found that the cutlass bearing had not come in, but it would be on the morning plane for sure. We got some dinner and headed over to our temporary boat haul out digs. We stayed at a place called Harbour View that was about 10 minutes out of town via taxi. Harbour View consists of multiple guest cabins. We were put in "the old managers quarters". I don't know what the other cabins their were like, but ours was interesting. It had a lovely stone patio out front, but the inside was quite rustic. That's the kindest word I can think of. The walls were a mix of various building materials, and the light switches were all in odd places, and all the beds had mosquito nets which made me a bit nervous about the number of mosquitos we would be encountering, but there were two bedrooms, and a kitchen, and a bathroom with our very own shower - woohoo! Unfortunately, as the very nice current manager was showing us around, a big cockroach ran across the top of the fridge. She apologized laughingly and said there's just not much to be done about them. Hmmm. Despite all these warning signs, our first night there passed uneventfully and I thoroughly enjoyed my access to unlimited hot water, even though I did have to choose between either very hot or cold because the on-demand water heater (with flames inside a box in the shower with you) did not provide any middle ground.

The next day we had a quick bite at The Aquarium for breakfast then headed down to the boat to begin the project. First we had to take the prop off. Fred had asked a very knowledge cruiser named Dave to come by and take a look at things. He did and he had some very helpful information. Unfortunately, the haul-out place is right on a major walkway in Neiafu, so everybody else came by throughout the day with advice also. Some of it was also helpful, but much was of the "sky is falling" variety, which is extremely NOT helpful when you are in the middle of doing something. Anyway, we managed to get the prop off and were also able to verify that the existing cutlass bearing was still functional, and the screws that were supposed to hold it in were in fact still there, which was good news because we weren't sure we were going to be able to find new ones if they weren't. It seems that the existing cutlass bearing was maybe not dimpled enough originally for the screws to hold it in place. This was also good news because the new cutlass bearing still had not arrived on the island. We wanted to use the new one if it arrived, and we were told it would be here in the afternoon for sure, but by now we were beginning to think that maybe "for sure" meant something different in Tonga than what we were used to.

We spent the early afternoon cleaning the prop and reading the directions on how to put it back on. Turns out there are a lot of little bitty markings on some parts that had to be lined up with other little bitty letters on other parts. I was really wondering what on earth those people who told us that all of this could be done underwater had been thinking! It was difficult enough doing it at this haul out spot! Fred and Jeff had taken turns dismantling things while either standing on a shaky box with the shaft at their shoulder level, or while standing on the ground with the shaft above their heads. Then, when the tide camea in, they had water about a foot deep right where they were working. This made the rickety box the best option for standing on, since the top of it was above the water, and it also made it very tricky to find anything you dropped, since it was then underwater. What fun! My job was to go up and down the ladder to fetch more tools or put the boat into or out of gear as needed.

Fred spent the late afternoon riding around in a taxi trying to get the part, only to find out three stops later that it wasn't here yet, but would be in the morning "for sure". At this point we decided to break for the day and if the new bearing came in on the morning plane we'd take the old one off then, and if not we'd re-use the old one after scoring it's screw notches more. Either way, we were going back in the water the next day at high tide, which would be mid-afternoon.

So, after dinner we headed back to the Harbour View. All was well until an earthquake woke us up at 2 AM. An earthquake! Jeff and I both woke up thinking about the boat. Was it OK? Did it fall over? Why, oh why, did there have to be an earthquake tonight?! And why did it have to have that nasty extra sharp shake right at the end? Should we go look at the boat? What could we possibly do if it had fallen over?

With all these thoughts swirling around our brains, we got up to check on Fred. He was in the living room looking a bit dazed. Was that an earthquake, he asked? Apparently he had woken up just before the earthquake and was getting out of bed when he saw a huge cockroach that was halfway up the side of his bed. Then the earthquake hit and he wasn't sure if it was really an earthquake or if he had shaken the bed trying to get off it as fast as possible. He kept saying that he didn't think he'd be able to sleep again, and this was definitely the last night we were staying at this place, and so on. Jeff and I finally went back to bed and Jeff was wondering if Fred had even thought of the possibility that the boat had fallen over. I said that of course he had, that's why he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, he just didn't want to talk about it. Jeff thought he hadn't thought, but didn't see any point in bringing it up. Why make Fred sick to his stomach about it too? There really wasn't anything we could do at that point one way or the other.

The next morning we took a taxi into town, and it dropped us off at a point where we could see that the mast was still pointed straight up. Jeff said, Thank God, with much feeling, and Fred asked him what he was talking about. Turns out, Fred really hadn't thought of the possibility of the boat falling over during the earthquake - the cockroach had had his full attention!

Now, of course, the part has still not arrived. We finish breakfast and there's still no news, so we head off the to boat to get to work. After we get ourselves all set up to drill the old cutlass bearing, the Chatham Air guy finally calls on the VHF and says that the package is at customs and Fred can come get it right now. So, we put everything on hold again and Fred heads off to customs for about the fourth time, but this time the package really is there and we do in fact have the new cutlass bearing. Hooray! We got the new one installed and the prop put back on in no time at all.

We told the guys at the yard we had finished and they said the tide was at a good height and they could put us back in water soon. Fred and I got on the boat for the trip back into the water - and what a trip it was! The way it is supposed to work is that the cradle the boat is sitting on gets lowered down the train rails into the water by gravity when they slacken the cable they use to pull it up. Well, in our case that didn't happen. Apparently something was stuck somewhere. So the yard guys get prybars and sticks and they're trying to pry the cradle to get it moving. Meanwhile Fred and I are on the boat and we can't see what's happening - all we feel is the boat rocking beneath us - which is NOT a very nice feeling when you know there is no water below it!

Next thing we see is a whale watching boat pull up in the water. Fred immediately gets that they are now going to try using this boat to pull the cradle into the water, despite the fact that nobody has told him anything about what's going on. We are only getting vague reports from Jeff who is down below watching. In the meantime, our supposed friend James from Kaama has arrived onshore and is watching the spectacle. He shouts up to Fred asking if Fred is OK with the fact that they've tied the line from the whale watching boat onto God Spede's rudder - and that's when Fred's face turned purple! He calmed down a little once James made it clear that he was kidding, but he didn't calm down much because still nobody from the yard had said one word to him about what was going on. He started yelling for them to stop everything and send the boss over to talk to him. One of the diver guys tried to tell him to relax, it's all OK, which didn't help at all. They finally explained that the cradle was stuck and they were trying to pull it down the ramp with the whale watching boat, which we had kinda figured out already. So, they begin again, and now the boat is really rocking as they cradle moves a tiny bit and stops again. Thankfully, on about the third try the cradle was freed and we started down the rails toward the water. That trip was the least fun roller coaster ride I have ever been on, but boy was it a relief when the boat hit the water. Fred had us out of the there as soon as we could get the lines untied and we headed back out to a mooring again.

Jeff was following us in the dinghy and while he was starting it the pull cord recoiled back onto his wrist and in the minute it took him to catch up with us his wrist had swollen up to the size of a golf ball. At first he thought that it might be broken, but after we got the boat on the mooring and got Jeff onto the boat he realised it was only swollen and bruised. Whew. We had been thinking about staying in Neiafu one more night to race God Spede in the Friday night races, but at this point we all thought we'd had enough excitement for awile and decided we would head out to the outer anchorages the next day in search of a little relaxation.

PS - We're currently in Opua, New Zealand. We'll all be back in the states Dec 10 till Feb ? I added some pics of us diving to the last post and will put in some haul out pics when we get them off the camera. Sorry blog is so far behind again!

Neiafu, Vava'u Group, Northern Tonga Oct 13 - 20, 2008

Our sail from Nuie to Neiafu was fairly uneventful. We crossed the international dateline, but we never saw it. We had very little wind for the first 24 hours (much less than had been predicted) which we had to just wait out since we didn't want to put the engine in gear except for emergencies with our temporary cutlass bearing fix in place. But once the wind arrived we moved right along. As we approached Neiafu we were in radio contact with Honahlee, another boat that left Niue the same time we did and were nice enough to slow themselves down and wait for us at the entrance to Neiafu in case we needed help getting into the harbor. We really appreciated this, it's always nice to know somebody's got your back, but, despite the fact that this was NOT an easy harbor to sail into, we did manage to make it without any help. Of course we had to tack upwind into the harbor entrance, dodging various islands along the way. It was a lot like dinghy racing, but with a much higher penalty for hitting a mark. Fred steered, Jeff winched, and I manned the slack headsail sheet and would run up and walk the headsail around the cutter stay if it didn't go around on it's own. Jeff got a good work out and instructed us to remind him of all this winching later in the day if he began thinking he was having a heart attack from the chest pain he expected would come his way. Once we got ourselves inside the first bay, we needed to go down a skinny, winding channel into Neiafu harbor itself. This wasn't anything we wanted to attempt under sail alone, so we got ourselves to a fairly protected part of the bay and slowed the boat way down and I steered while Fred and Jeff assembled our inflatable dinghy, got it in the water and got the outboard engine onto it while we were still underway. We tied the dinghy to the side of the boat in the back and I got in and became part of the new auxilary engine. Luckily the outboard Fred has provides enough power to manuever the boat pretty well in calm sea conditions.

After all this drama getting into harbor we were all looking forward to dinner ashore to celebrate, but as we approached the customs dock we were waived off by our friends on Honahlee who then came on the radio and told us that normal check in hours end at 4:30, and since it was now later than that the customs guy said we would have to pay an extra $150 Tonga if we wanted to check in that night, otherwise we could check in in the morning, but we would need to remain on the boat until then. The current time was 4:37 - serious bummer. Fred got on the radio and we were directed to an available mooring ball, which was a big plus since trying to anchor under dinghy power was not that appealing. Then a few minutes later we found out from Honahlee that this was the last available mooring ball in the whole harbor. There wasn't one left for them (they had been at the customs dock finishing their paperwork while we moored, since they made it in right before the 4:30 deadline). The other big bonus was that the Honahlee crew came over for a few drinks and brought us a big piece of the Mahi Mahi they had caught on their way over, so at least Jeff had fresh fish which he made into a delicious dinner, despite the fact that he had really been looking forward to cooks night off.

The next morning, Tuesday, we had to push the boat back over to the customs dock to get ourselves checked into Tonga officially. Then we went back to the mooring ball, got the boat settled again and headed into shore. Our first stop was the Aquarium Cafe, which was to become our onshore home in Neiafu. The Aquarium has a nice dinghy dock, a great atmosphere, fast, cheap internet access, good food and coffee and very nice owners. What more could a sailor ask for?

I think all of us spent about 3 hours online that day. This was the first fast and cheap internet access we had had in quite some time. In most of the places we've had to pay about $7 - $10 USD per hour for an extremely slow connection. We mostly get on, painstakingly check our email and get off again as quickly as possible. Here it was 75 cents per hour and it was fast. We could actually surf around a bit and get caught up on news and sports - woohoo! The downside in Neiafu was that the phones are crazy expensive and the stores were very bare. We apparently timed our visit badly with respect to visits from the supply boat, but hey, you can't have everything.

One of the first things we checked on was the new cutlass bearing that was supposed to be arriving by mail from New Zealand. Turns out it hadn't been sent out yet but would be soon and we should have it sometime later in the week. Then we heard the bad news from the Aquarium Cafe owners that the parcel service to northern Tonga was a bit iffy. Apparently packages get to southern Tonga fine, but it's a crap shoot as to whether the delivery process goes smoothly from that point on. Great. We crossed our fingers and hoped that we had earned some karmic mail credits during our ordeal in the Marquesas where we had already been through one seriously delayed package experience.

Our first week in Neiafu is a bit of a blur. It's quite a social whirlwind in Neiafu in general, but at the Aquarium in particular. They have outdoor tables on a breezy upstairs veranda, and everyone wanders in and out on their way to and from their dinghys. You find lots of groups with one person on the internet and the rest hanging out enjoying a cool drink, or some ice cream, and chatting with all the other folks who are doing the same. Neiafu is a big gathering point at this time of year for cruisers who are headed to New Zealand for the cyclone season, so there are lots of reunions amongst boats that had been together before and now have caught up with one another again. We were particularly happy to see the crew from Seabright again. They had left the Marquesas before we did and we hadn't seen them since, so we promptly invited them over for dinner one night. We also got to meet a lot of boats that we had heard previoiusly on the Anzac net, but hadn't ever been in the same harbor with. It really was amazing how many boats were actually there. Everyone kept saying the harbor looked more like someplace in the Caribbean than the South Pacific.

We also went for a dive with the local dive shop during our fist week in Neiafu, and we really enjoyed the two they took us to. The coral here is excellent. We saw a few kinds we'd never seen before. One of which looks very much like fiddle head ferns, and another soft one that changes colors when you touch it. The dive guides were all Tongan, which was nice also. Everywhere else we've been the guides have all been European, and although we've really enjoyed the company of most of them, it was nice to see the locals getting involved and nice to chat with them on the boat also. The Honahlee gang came also, and they took the underwater photos shown here (well they will be shown here later - internet connection today is not allowing me to upload them). We went on two scuba dives and then the guides brought us around to Mariner's Cave which we snorkeled into. To get in you have to dive down about 6 feet and then swim about 12 feet horizontally through the cave opening to surface inside the cave itself. We all made it in, but I had to keep reminding myself that I could NOT breathe underwater, since we had just been scuba diving where I could. Swimming in was a bit scary because you swim from the bright sunlight outdoors into the darker cave, but once you're in and your eyes adjust there is a nice glow from below, sort of like being in a swimming pool with the light on at night, and on the way out is lit up beautifully.

After the dive, which was on Friday, we found that the part still hadn't arrived. I headed out to the boat for a nap, but Jeff and Fred decided to cheer themselves up by getting on another boat for the Friday night races. This is a weekly event put on by the local yacht club with a course laid out and prizes and everything. They guys went with Manix and Hannah on Ino and they had a great time despite the fact that they finished DFL - Dead F'ing Last. Apparently, Ino's anchor was stuck, and Ino does not have an electric winch, so Jeff and Fred were on the bow manhandling it up while all the other boats were crossing the starting line. They did eventually get underway and did go around the course, but didn't manage to catch anyone along the way, but apparently a good time was still had by all. An even better time seems to have been had later, at the yacht club, during, and after the award celebrations. Jeff and Fred closed the bar down along with the crew from Skylax, Ramproset and Peggy West, who they very much enjoyed hanging out with. I had a very nice, very quiet night on the boat (which I needed after all the socializing we'd already done all week), and then also enjoyed a very quiet morning on the boat the next day while the boys recuperated.

Niue, Oct. 4 - 10, 2008

First let me say that we LOVED Niue. It is ridiculously beautiful with magnificent caves above ground and below the sea, and the folks who live there are very nice to travelers. And they speak English! Niue is it's own one island nation, but has some ties to New Zealand.

We spent our first few days there trying to figure out what needed to be done to repair the cutlass bearing. We got a lot of help over the radio from Lou on Skylax who was in Tonga and went in and investigated the haul out situation there. We also got a lot of advice from various boaters who had heard about our problem over the radio. Fred put his scuba gear on, so he was able to take a longer look at the problem and get the measurements of the existing cutlass bearing, so we could begin our search for a new one. Some people told us that if our existing bearing was still good we should be able to slide it back into position and then retap the holes for the screws under water and be back in business. However, nobody could tell us how we on earth we could tell if the bearing was good while it was underwater on the shaft. So, after mulling over all the advice and info, we decided our best bet was to slide our existing cutlass bearing back into position and temporarily hold it there with hose clamps on the shaft outside the strut, and sail like this to northern Tonga where we could haul out and really get a look at it. This fix would allow us to run the engine in neutral to charge the batteries during the passage to Tonga and we could also put the engine in gear in the case of an emergency. So, Fred ordered a new cutlass bearing from a firm in New Zealand and asked them to ship it to Northern Tonga to a place that recieves mail for cruisers.

We were also invited to go diving with Randy and Hideko on Swingin on a Star. These two are a really nice couple who have a lot of extra dive gear on board for their guests to use, and who also have a compressor to refill air tanks. We had been acquiring dive gear as we went along, so Fred now has everything he needs, and we have three dive tanks, but Jeff and I are still missing some equipment, so it was great news for us that we could borrow what we needed. Unfortunately, when we arrived for the dive there was a bit of a mix up and we were short one piece of equipment. Jeff very generously offered to bow out, so Fred and I and some other folks went diving with Randy and Hideko, on what was my first dive without a paid-for instructor. It wasn't completely without an instructor, since Randy is a certified PADI instructor, but it was still the first time I'd gone diving without paying someone to take me, so I was pretty excited. We saw some sea snakes, which Niue is known for, and some cool coral arches, but we went the wrong way from the dive mooring, so we did not see the super cool cave we were trying to find. Such is the life of the independent diver, but the good news is that later in the trip we did hire a guide and he took all of us to that same cave, but more on that later. A few days later we borrowed gear from Randy again so that Jeff and Fred were able to execute the cutlass bearing fix themselves, so Jeff also went on a dive I missed, but I feel I definitely got the better of that deal. It was great news though to know that the boat was ready for the next passage, so now we could relax and enjoy the many cool sights of Niue.

We had dinner at the Niue Yacht Club one of our first nights in town also. That place is great. It's basically an ice cream shop and coffee shop that serves a limited but delicious menu also. It has picnic tables outside on a porch and maintains the mooring balls in Niue. There is not a single member who lives on Niue and has a boat, but they have a huge membership from cruisers who have come through and joined. They actually have more members than there are current residents in Niue. They say their talk about planning a coup one day is talk only, but I am not totally convinced.

One of the reasons we had been looking forward to visiting Niue is that the diving was supposed to be spectacular due to the strange geology of the island. It is a raised coral atoll, which means the entire island is an old coral reef that got raised up and now has a thin layer of dirt on the top in some places. When it rains the water filters down through this coral and enters the sea with almost no silt, so the water clarity near the island is incredible. Our mooring was in 100 feet of water and when the sun was out we could see the bottom, which is by far the best visibility I've ever seen. So, we booked two days of two dives each for Tuesday and Thursday. On Tuesday we went first to the cave dive we'd tried to find before which is called the Chimney, because it's a big vertical cave you swim through that is shaped a lot like a chimney. We entered at the top and swam down, down, down through this chasm until we reached the bottom where there was a little alcove with a bunch of enormous lobsters sitting on the shelves. They were almost scary they were so big! The cave had light coming in from both the top and the bottom, but we took dive lights so we could see all the fish that are in there hanging out in crevices. At the bottom there was a Land Rover which had washed in from the 30 foot high cliffs above us during a cyclone in 2004. It was a bit smashed, but the steering wheel still turned and when I kicked the tires they still had a bit of give even though they had seaweed growing on them. Our second dive that day was into another cave where you entered from the bottom and swam into an opening where you could surface inside a big dome that was inside the island. There was a very small opening at the top so there was fresh air inside to breathe and also a huge coconut crab - which was quite a surprise. Definitely an enjoyable day of diving.

On Wednesday we rented a car and drove around the island. We went to an amazing place called Tongo Chasm which you get to by heading towards the sea from the road on a path through the jungle with roots showing everywhere. Then the path opened up to views of the sea as we walked through an area of strange looking coral spires. After a bit of this, near the sea, we looked to the right and saw a small sandy oasis sunken down in the midst of a deep canyon in these spires. It looked from above like a perfect little tropical beach scene with coconut palms and boulders right in the middle of this canyon. Very odd and beautiful. There was a steep tall ladder that we climbed down to reach this little spot and we scrambled over the boulders and found a stagnant yucky patch of water, so we scrambled quickly back to get away from the mosquitos who love that kind of place. After we climbed back up the ladder we took a little spur path to an ocean overlook where we could see the waves pounding into this huge pool in the rocks.

We took a couple other sea walks down to interesting ocean views and then we went to Matapa chasm which had ocean water entering a narrow canyon area with tall walls on either side. This place was also quite stunning, but when we got in the water with our snorkels we found that is was quite cold and there weren't many fish and you couldn't get out to the sea, so back onshore we went and on to the next snorkel spot because by now we were quite hot and therefor only interested in places where you could swim. Lima pools was our next stop and it was quite beautiful. After Jeff jumped off a cliff into the water we discovered there was not much to see while snorkeling here either, but the water was warm, so we paddled about and enjoyed ourselves and admired the scenery for awhile.

Later we went to dinner at Gill's Indian Restaurant. Gill's has no printed menus, there's no need, they only have a few choices: Lamb, Chicken or Beef curry, mild or spicy. Well, there is something to be said for keeping it simple because the curries and the samosas we got there were delicious. After dinner we chatted with Gill (who waited on us himself) a bit and found out that he was born in India and moved to Niue from there. Lucky, lucky us.

On Thursday we went diving again, this time with our friends from Honahlee who showed up with dive hoods that were hysterical. One had a shark fin on top and the other had devil horns. They were hilarious but also practical in that it was very easy to tell who was who from afar under water, which can be a bit of a challenge when everyone has on black wetsuits. Our first dive was to a really interesting place where there were two caves next to one another with tunnels connecting them that you could swim through. This is very different diving from anything we'd done at other islands and we really enjoyed it. One of the swim throughs was pretty small though and Jeff said that as he was going through it he was afraid that he might need to be Pooh-beared out of it. Luckily that didn't happen. Our second dive was to a place called Bubble Cave where we came up inside a dome inside the island again. This cave was quite dramatic with stalagmites and stalagtites and a few sea snakes lounging around on shelves inside.

Thursday afternoon we went for another sightseeing drive and visited a few more caves. One of these had huge stalagmite/stalactite columns that were a creamy milky color. Jeff and Fred did a photo shoot here featuring John Hughes's Providence jersey. This is a jersey that Jeff stole from John in retribution for John having stole a favorite pair of shorts from Jeff after Jeff had loaned them to him when he was in need. for more details on the nature of the need please see John. Jeff takes this jersey on travels with him and photographs it on anyone he can talk into wearing it. One day we hope to create a coffee table book for John with all the photos.

PS - We are currently in Northern Tonga - Vavau group. We hauled the boat here and replaced the cutlass bearing - an adventure I'll write more about later. We plan to leave tomorrow for the middle Tonga group where we understand it's pretty remote (ie probably no internet). We'll continue from there to southern Tonga and then to New Zealand where we will leave the boat for cyclone season, December - March.

Palmerston to Niue Passage, Oct 1 - 4

We left Palmerston in the morning with no wind to speak of, but we knew some was on the way and had decided to motor towards Niue (pronounced Noo-way) until it arrived. We motored along for a day and a half until suddenly a strange grinding, rattling noise began. When we put the engine in neutral the noise disappeared. Put it back in gear and we had the noise again. Oh dear. We opened up everything below to take a look at the shaft and the shaft coupling inside the boat and all looked well in there. There was still very little wind so the sea was quite calm, so Fred decided to jump in the water and investigate the shaft and propeller. He found that the cutlass bearing had come loose. On the God Spede the propeller shaft is supported by an external strut between the hull and the propeller. The cutlass bearing allows the shaft to spin inside this strut. Fred found that the bearing had slid up the shaft towards the hull so the noise we heard was the shaft rattling around inside this strut when we put the engine in gear. So, no more putting the engine in gear until we could get that fixed. Fred came back on board and we pulled out Nigel Calder's book (which is our bible for boat repairs) and began reading what he had to say on the subject. It seemed that the prop would have to come off to replace the cutlass bearing, which meant that we would need to have the boat hauled out of the water somewhere to make the repair. Now, at home that would not be such a big deal, but here in the South Pacific places to haul out a boat are few and far between. We had no idea whether there was such a place in Niue or in northern Tonga, where we had planned to visit after Niue. We did know there is a Moorings fleet of charter boats in northern Tonga, so we hoped we could haul out there, but we weren't sure and began discussing how to figure all this out while we were in the middle of the ocean.

We knew one source of information would be the Anzac net. This is an SSB radio contact group we got introduced to in the Marquesas by other boaters who participated. Basically, everyone turns to a particular radio frequency once a day and boats on passage can check in and report their position and the weather there (it's very helpful to get these reports, particularly from the boats that are ahead of you). Also, if a boat was in some sort of trouble they can come on and request assistance from others who may be near them. We knew many people on the net were currently in Tonga and Niue and hoped they could tell us for sure about the availablity of services in those areas. Fred also sent an email to Tom asking him to look things up on the internet as well.

In the meantime we are bobbing around with no wind, but we knew from Susan, our weather router, and from the reports given by nearby boats that we would soon have 25 - 30 knots of wind, which is a bit more than we really like - 15 is my personal favorite number. So, since it would be dark soon, we went ahead and put two reefs in the main sail, which is the harder sail to reduce. We left the genoa (the headsail) at it's full size since it's on a roller furler system and is therefore easy to reef from the cockpit.

About midnight the wind picked up to 15- 20 knots and we were finally moving again. I came on watch at 3 AM and Jeff went down and wrote up his watch report then layed down and had just gone to sleep when the big wind arrived. It came so strong and so suddenly that I didn't want to turn the autopilot on to reef, so I called down to Jeff, and both he and Fred came up and tried to reef the genoa, but alas, for the first time ever, we had trouble with the roller furler so were unable to get the genoa all the way in. We could roll it up a lot of the way, past the second reefing mark, but that plus the double reefed mainsail left us with more sail up than we wanted for the wind which had come up to 30 knots with gusts to 38. We ran downwind with it for a bit hoping for it to calm down a bit, it finally did about a half hour later and Fred went up to the bow, which is quite an adventure in these conditions. He found the problem with the genoa reefing, but it seemed we'd need to unroll the sail completely to fix it and we did not want to do that, so we dropped the mainsail instead and sailed along with the small genoa only. This was close to the right amount of sail, but we were now moving right along in pretty big seas and felt that it was too much for the autopilot to steer through, so we were back to hand steering. And so began Mr. Toad's Wild Ride to Niue. Unfortunately, the wind continued quite strong for the next day and a half until we got into Niue. We had decided to stop there even though the news we recieved on the Anzac net didn't seem promising for hauling out there. We thought we could at least get a rest and see if there was anything at all we could do from underwater to improve the boat's situation and we were also loathe to skip Niue, which sounded quite intriguing in our guide books. We are glad we did stop because Niue turned out to be one or our favorite spots, but more on that later.

Luckily the approach to Niue looked to be easy enough for us to handle under sail power alone. Niue is a raised coral atoll, which means it's looks like a normal island from above (ie NOT a ring of little islands with a lagoon in the middle). It also does not have a reef around it, so there were no passes we had to go through. Niue's bay has a nice wide opening and no tricky parts, and because it is quite deep quite close to shore, they also have mooring balls installed, which would make our life much easier as we came in under sail. The only worry was that it was so rough we were still unwilling to try going to the bow to repair the roller furling, which we had hoped to do before we got there, so that we could sail in under the main alone. Since sailing in as we were would be a bit tricky, and since assembling the dinghy from it's ocean passage storage would be also be tricky with the big seas we still had even in the lee of the island, we decided to get on the radio and see if any of our friends in Niue could come out in their dinghys to give us a push onto the mooring. We talked to one guy and he apparently talked to some other folks as we sailed in, so when we arrived four guys in three different dinghys came out to help. We were quite grateful, but not all that surprised because we've seen that cruisers really come to the aid of one another down here because there just is nobody else to call. We tied the dinghy with the biggest motor onto the side of our boat and using his power and a push on the bow from another dinghy we were able to come up into the wind, which was quite strong still even though we were in the harbor, and unfurl the genoa completely and drop it onto the deck. Then we got pushed up to the last empty mooring ball and the third dinghy handed the line from it right up to us. Hurray - we made it in without a struggle - with a little help from our friends. Big thanks to Randy from Swingin on a Star, Jeremy from Thulane, Steve from Independent Freedom, and Manix from Ino (who we hadn't even met yet)!

Palmerston, Sep 29 - Oct 1, 2008

Palmerston, Sep 29 - Oct 1, 2008

We had a fairly uneventful sail to Palmerston which is an atoll in the middle of nowhere. It is part of the Cook Islands politically, but geographically it's out there by itself because the other Cook islands are in two groups, both about 200 miles away. Unlike the other atolls we had been to, there is no pass through the outer reef big enough for sailing boats to go through. The outside edge of the atoll drops off into deep water very quickly, but some mooring balls have been placed on a thin shelf outside the atoll on the west side of the island. This means that boats on these moorings are protected from rough seas from the east, but are exposed to any weather from the west. Mostly the trade winds here are from the south east, but when fronts come through the wind can shift to the west, so boats who stop here must keep an eye on the weather and be prepared to leave if a front approaches. Also, the mooring balls are sometimes full when you arrive, in which case you need to keep going because there are coral canyons on the sea floor here that can make retrieving your anchor impossible. So stopping here is a bit iffy since the moorings may be full if the weather is good, or you may not be able to stop at all if the weather is bad.

A front came through the area while we were on our way from Bora Bora to Palmerston, and we heard on the radio that many of the boats that were ahead of us that had planned to stop at Palmerston were going to continue on instead. The front was predicted to have passed the area by the time we got there, so we thought it might work out well for us, since the weather should be OK when we got there, and the moorings would not be full. On our last day in to Palmerston the wind died completely so we began motoring and hoping that we could reach the atoll with some daylight left, but towards the end of the day it became obvious that that was not going to happen. It can be quite dangerous to approach these atolls at night because there are errors in the charting for some of them, so you can't rely totally on your electronic navigation equipment, and the water is so incredibly deep until so very close to the shore of these atolls that your depth finder doesn't help that much either.

Once we realized it would definitely be dark before we got settled on a mooring ball, we decided that we would only stop if there was another boat moored there that we could raise on the radio and ask to turn lights on for us to steer towards. In this case we could have swung around the island wide to the west and come in with no hazards between us and the other boat. We began calling for any boats moored there when we were around the corner still, so we couldn't see that the moorings were all empty - there were no boats there. However, a gentlemen who lives on the island, Bob, answered our radio call and said he could guide us onto the mooring balls by radio. Apparently the people who live on Palmerston use the VHF as their local phone system, which makes a lot of sense - there certainly isn't any other maritime traffic they would be interfering with!

So Bob was talking to Fred on the radio telling Fred when to turn and when to start slowing down, etc. He told Fred that the moorings were about 50 meters away from the reef, but this message didn't get passed along to Jeff who was standing at the front of the boat peering into the darkness trying to spot a mooring ball, so Jeff almost had a heart attack when he saw breakers much much closer than he thought they should be. As Jeff was shouting for Fred to turn around NOW, Bob came back on the radio and said we were in the right spot, and luckily, while we were turning, we spotted a mooring ball and we all breathed a big sigh of relief.

After we got the boat tidied up, Jeff made dinner and we sat down and watched an episode of The Wire (we watch DVDs on the laptop) and then, because the wind still hadn't shifted all the way to the east, which it was supposed to have done earlier in the day, Fred volunteered to stay up and watch another movie and keep on eye on things until it did shift. This is called an anchor watch, and was necessary because the mooring was sooooooo close to the reef that if anything on the mooring system or our line to the mooring had broken, then we would be blown onto the reef in a very short amount of time. The wind finally did shift during Fred's late night movie and he wound up going to bed around 2 AM. Therefore, he was not all that thrilled when our new friend Bob came out to visit us at 6 AM the next morning, despite the fact that Bob was a nice guy who spoke English. English! We had finally left French Polynesia and reached some islands where the official language is English. Hurray! Bob invited us to his house for lunch, which we understand from other cruisers is the normal thing here. There are about 50 people who live on Palmerston Island, and about 30 of those are children, so I guess the grownups get pretty excited to talk to someone other than themselves. We declined on lunch, wanting to just rest up and get a few things done on the boat. We were glad about this decision later, after we talked to other cruisers who did go ashore for lunch. Some said they really enjoyed the island visit, but others said they felt like they had been kidnapped because the locals take you in through the reef to the island on their boats, since getting even a dinghy through the passage in this reef is tricky, and lunch apparently turned into an all day affair, so they didn't get back to their boats until 4 PM, which was not at all what they had expected.

Instead we had a nice day doing some projects and giving the boat a good clean and then we went for a fabulous snorkel outside the reef. The coral there was really nice and there were interesting canyon formations underwater. These canyons are a big part of the problem with anchoring here, but they also seemed to be home to some big beautiful fish. We also saw the biggest turtle of the trip here. Then, we got back to the boat and Jeff went below to make some lunch and while Fred and I were adjusting some things on deck they heard a funny sighing sound and looked up and saw a huge whale about 50 feet away from the boat. It was already diving down by the time they looked up, so they saw the back and the tail only, but I thought I saw it swimming right under the boat. Fred belatedly had the good idea to put his mask back on and jump back in the water, but the whale was already gone by the time he got in. He wasn't sure whether to be sad or relieved, since he was the only one that had gotten in, and therefor would be the whales only target if it did not care for swimming buddies. The whale surfaced quite a ways away, so we didn't get another good look at it, and even though I stayed on whale watch in cockpit for the remainder of the afternoon we didn't see it again. Other folks who were there a few days later told us they got to watch a whale feeding it's baby (calf?) for quite awhile, so of course we were jealous, but they also had a small cruise ship stop while they were there, which they didn't enjoy at all, so in cruising also you win some and you lose some.

We did have a nice chat with Bob and his wife, whose name I just can't remember, when they came out again later that afternoon. We had invited them over to say thanks for helping us get in the night before, but when they arrived they told us that they were not allowed to come aboard since we had decided not to check in with customs and immigration while we were there. We hadn't done that since this was the only Cook Island we were stopping at and we were just there for a quick rest and did not intend to go ashore. We still had a nice, although short, chat with them while they sat in their boat and we sat on the side of God Spede looking down on them. They brought us some coconuts and we gave them some soda. They told us that they eat mostly fish and lobster, which they said were ridiculously easy to catch there, and which they are sick of - what they really like is canned corned beef - did we have any extra? They also told us that the island was out of tobacco because the supply ship only stops by on an irregular basis and it had been awhile. We wondered later if they were able to buy any smokes off the cruise ship when it came by a few days later.

As we were leaving Palmerston the next morning, Bob called on the radio again to say he was out on the reef fishing and if we could wait a few minutes he would bring some fish over. He brought four parrot fish and filleted them for us in about two seconds flat. Eating parrot fish is new to us, it doesn't seem to be done in the Caribbean, and we're not sure if that's a cultural bias or to avoid fish poisoning which there is none of on Palmerston. Jeff cooked it up for lunch in a delicious lemon butter sauce and we thought it was much like snapper in both taste and texture.

Bora Bora, Sep 16 - 24

We were very excited to arrive in Bora Bora. First of all, it's one of the few islands we had heard of before this trip, and, well, it's Bora Bora - paradise - right? Well, it certainly was beautiful, and we had some good times, but we had some bad also.

The first night we were there we picked up another mooring ball operated by a restaurant called Bloody Mary's. The moorings are free to patrons of the restaurant so we thought we'd go in for dinner, but we didn't know quite what we were in for. This place looked more like I'd expect a Polynesia themed restaurant in Hollywood to look, than like any other restaurant we'd seen in French Polynesia before this. It had a sand floor, and a big wooden bar with stools that looked like beautifully varnished tree trunks. It had a palm frond roof that came down so low you almost didn't notice that there were no walls on either end, and there were amazing rock pile sinks in the bathrooms. The gentlemen's sink had a very unusual wooden device that you had to pull to turn the sink on, but I can't go into more details because we are trying to keep this blog down to an 'R' rating.

We were starving when we got there and were surprised to hear that they were fully booked for dinner, but they told us we could partake of the appetizer menu at the bar. So, we plunked ourselves down on some tree trunks and proceeded to order a couple appetizers and some drinks. Fred continued with his island Maitai taste test. He's become something of an expert on them here in French Polynesia. It's not clear whether his favorite part is the drink itself, or the colored sugar they sometimes put around the rim, or the pineapple and crazy straw it's sometime garnished with, but it is clear that Fred likes them. We had planned to eat multiple rounds of appetizers, but we were shocked at how small the portions were for the price. The priciest was the chicken wings. There were four small wings on the plate which cost 1500 Polynesian Francs, which is about $19 USD. Yikes! We decided quickly that we couldn't afford to eat any more apps, however we did not seem to be detered by the prices of the drinks, and we continued to hang out and enjoy them. There was a continually changing set of people seated at the bar next to us because the hostess sent everyone over to the bar to get a drink before seating them. We chatted for a bit with a couple different groups of people who were staying at hotels, including a nice couple from New Jersey. Later, a young sailing couple from Canada whom we had met briefly before showed up at the bar also and we got to trade sailing stories with them for a bit. Eventually, we all decided to head back to the boat and chat more there. When we got the bill we were a bit shocked to see how many Maitais were on it. We actually wondered if there could be a mistake. We had definitely been there for awhile but Fred didn't look like a fella who'd had THAT many drinks. Well, he didn't until we began the walk down the dock to the dinghy. As we reached the landing where the dinghys were, one of our new sailing friends said something funny and next thing we knew Fred was laying on the dock laughing. Yep, just laying there on his back laughing with his feet in the air. Then, after he recovered from his laughing bout, he climbed into the dinghy, sat down on the pontoon, and leaned back, but since there are no seat backs on a dinghy pontoon he kept leaning right into the water. It was just like the water entry for scuba diving except that he was dressed in island formal wear - his dress shorts and a hawaiian shirt - instead of scuba gear. At this point Jeff and Angie began to think the Maitai count on the bill was probably correct after all. And our new sailing buddies, who had walked down the dock with us, had a new story to add to their repertoir.

The next day we went for a fantastic snorkel around some very large coral heads near the south west side of the island, then we motored up the lagoon and picked up another mooring at the Bora Bora Yacht Club so we could be closer to the town and get some errands done and do some scuba diving. We also had nice barbeque onshore with some other cruisers while we were there.

A few days later we had finished our town stuff and we headed over to the east side of the island, again staying inside the lagoon. Over on the east side sailing was a bit trickier because there are large areas of the inner lagoon that are quite shallow and the area is not charted all that well. With Jeff on the bow conning us through the really shallow spots we made it through OK all the way down the east side of the island until just before our final destination when the bottom of the boat kissed some sand as we went through one particularly narrow and shallow spot. After we were anchored in the truly lovely bay this spot led to, Fred and Jeff got in the water to check out the boat and found that we'd lost a bit of paint on the keel, but there was no real damage. Unfortunately, in order to leave the bay were were in, we would need to go back out through the same spot, so we dinghy'd over the next day to scope out the best route through it, but we couldn't find any way to go out that looked any deeper than where we came in. Let me make it clear that the chart does NOT show this place to be anywhere near this shallow, and we'd been encouraged to go here by some locals after we told them the boat draws 7.5 feet, so this was quite a surprise to us.

We spent the rest of the day anchored where we were and did some lovely snorkeling on the next motu. We took some stale bread with us (on the advice of some locals) and we were practically attacked by hordes of colorful fish coming after it. It was fun but strange to have them swimming right up to you. It felt a bit like swimming in someone's aqaurium. The water in this area was extroardinary. On the dinghy ride from the boat to the snorkeling area, we crossed at least 5 different shades of blue, and they didn't fade into one antother, instead there were very clear lines where one shade ended and another began. We'd not seen anything quite like that before.

The next day we left on the high tide but we still kissed the sand again getting out, but no worse than before. Whew. We thought we were in the clear then, but later in the day we managed to hit a single, solitary, little coral head that was sitting in about 14 feet of water. Jeff was standing up on the bow pulpit at the time, like he normally does whenever we are navigating through coral (his nickname is Eagle Eye, so who else are you going to put up there?) and he thought he had guided the boat around this coral, but we hit it, and the boat came to an abrupt halt, and suddenly Jeff was no longer standing on the bow pulpit - he was being launched into a sumersault into the water. Time slowed down enough for him so that he was able to watch his feet get farther and farther from the boat as he parted ways with it. We were going slow at the time in about 14 feet of water, so his landing was fine, and he didn't get run over by the boat even though he was swam right in front of it to retrieve his shoes that had floated off his feet. So all was well with him but we were all a bit rattled for the rest of the journey up the bay. After we got the anchor down in a safe spot Fred and Jeff dove on the boat again, and unfortunately this time they found a golf ball size divit in the fiberglass on the front of the keel that will need to be repaired at the next haul out, but we were all thankful that the damage wasn't any worse than that. We thought later about the excursion boat that was motoring near us at the time. There was only the boat driver in it, no passengers, but any of you who know Jeff can imagine the show that guy got watching him get launched into the air. Jeff said that if he had known the jolt was coming he could have gotten into a tuck and pulled off a one and a half before hitting the water, but Fred is NOT interested in repeating the scenario to see if he can actually pull it off.


We spent the night at that spot which was a lovely anchorage on the west side of the lagoon near a motu where some people appeared to live in ramshackly island style homes. These are quite a contrast to the luxury hotels that are only a few motus over, but it's nice to see that some of the locals still own and get to enjoy some of the beautiful spots on the island.

The next day we went back to the Bora Bora Yacht Club moorings and stayed for a few more nights while we reprovisioned the boat, made phone calls, did our banking and cleared out with customs. We also had a marvelous dinner at the yacht club one night. The yacht club, by the way, was not a big fancy building, it was a little open air restaurant at the base of the dinghy dock. There are no local boats that belong to the yacht club, it exists to take care of cruising boats and charter boats. The current owners are a young couple who've had it for a couple years now, and everything they've redone is really nice. The husband is from Tahiti and his wife is from Orange County, California. She came in on a cruising boat one day and decided to stay. Then her visa ran out and the moved to California for a bit and now have returned to Tahiti. The husband is the chef, so he and Jeff had a lot to talk about. From these conversations Jeff recommended that we eat there and we are really glad we did. It was island food with a French influence, done really really well.

Raiatea and Tahaa, Sep 13 - 16, 2008

We had a nice, easy day sail over to Raiatea and picked up a mooring ball in Faaroa Bay. A mooring! We haven't seen one of those since leaving California. Picking up a mooring means you don't have to anchor - you just attach a line to a floating ball that's hopefully attached to good ground tackle. It's usually a safe bet that moorings are maintained well anyplace where there are charter boats (the charter companies see to it to protect their floating investments), and there are a lot of charter boats in this area, something else we haven't seen for awhile. These boats have nicely groomed people aboard as opposed to the cruiser boats that usually have lots of gear lashed to the rails and laundry drying on the lines and grizzled looking characters aboard - you know, like us.

It rained most of the night and more the following morning, but finally stopped long enough for us to take the dinghy up the river that empties into this bay. A jungle cruise of sorts. It was quite scenic even though there were plantations on each side, so it was a civilized jungle cruise, but it was still interesting to see the interior of the island. One small drawback of arriving somewhere by boat, is that you don't have access to a car unless you rent one or take a guided tour, so sometimes all we see of an island is the view from the water, so it's a nice change of pace to see the interior. There were some nice flowers growing along the banksof the river in some places and one stretch where the trees on either side met above us and formed an arch of sorts. Angie sang a bit of the "It's a Small World" song and Jeff took a lot of nice pictures while Fred navigated the dinghy through the shallow parts, and a good time was had by all. We made it back to the boat just in time to avoid the next tropical downpour.

After the rain and our lunch were finished we motored up inside the lagoon to the east side of Tahaa. Raiatea and Tahaa are two seperate islands that are close together and are surrounded by one reef that goes around them both, so you can do lots of inner lagoon sailing here, which we became quite fond of. It's nice to get all the tradewind breeze yet be sailing in water that's smooth like a like. Oh, and, as an added benefit, there is gorgeous scenery to look at while you do it. Things really could be much worse, and today luck was really with us because the clouds parted and sunlight came streaming down just as we arrived at our afternoon snorkel spot near a pass into the lagoon. We snorkled a little ways into the pass going around a really large, abandoned fish trap of some sorts. It was nets with buoys that were half sunk and was a bit eery looking. Then we came to spot where there were at least four and maybe six different Tahitian eels. Jeff kept seeing them and pointing them out, but he kept pointing in different directions and Fred and Angie weren't seeing the eels at first and began to think he was putting them on, but they were finally spotted by all. THen we followed a turtle into the deep part of the pass. Later we saw a lion fish out swimming around. This was a first for all of us. We had only seen them hiding in crevices before.

We anchored for the evening at the very end of Haamene bay, which was long and skinny and quite protected. We were about the only boat there and were about 100 yards away from the town dock which made it quite convenient to go in the next morning for more baguettes and phone calls. Next we did another lagoon sail around the north side of Tahaa where we wound up having an awful snorkel at a place called the river of coral. The guide book raved about this place, but clearly something bad has happened there recently because we saw more garbage than live coral, but hey, it's not a perfect world now is it. We left there and headed to the Taravana Yacht Club where we got another mooring ball and had an excellent dinner ashore at there restaurant.

The next morning we left for another short day sail to Bora Bora. It was quite pleasant despite the fact that we had to leave the lagoon playground we'd been enjoying.

Huahine, Sep 10 - Sep 12, 2008

We arrived in Huahine at 9:30 AM. We decided to anchor just inside the pass offshore of Fare, the main village on the island. There were four other boats already in this area, one of which was Plan B, a large catamaran with a nice family aboard that had been part of our Moorea gang and had also just arrived in Huahine. Graham, the father of the family, soon came over to our boat and told us the not very nice story of their arrival. Seems one of the other boats there had a grumpy fellow aboard who thought that Plan B had anchored to close to his boat. He chose to make his opinion on the subject known by screaming over unhelpful comments and using language Graham thought his 7 year old daughter did not need to hear. Let me add here that anchoring a boat isn't quite like parking a car, you don't always end up exactly where you think you will because the boat is still drifting around while you are lowering the anchor down to the bottom, and how much it drifts depends on how deep the water is and how hard the wind is blowing and if there is any current. You could stop the drift by putting the boat in gear, but you want the boat to drift some so your anchor chain doesn't just pile up onto itself, so you drift a little bit anyway. And, at least for us, the wind usually decides to clock around some right when we are anchoring, so you don't necessarily drift in exactly the direction you thought you were going to. So, it's a fairly common occurance to wind up a bit closer to someone than you intended. Graham admitted that he was closer to the other boat than he meant to be, and said that if the fellow had just been a bit more civil he would have moved. But once the screaming started Graham decided that he liked his spot just fine (he only planned to stay there a few hours anyway). However, he really didn't want to argue with the guy, so he just pretended he didn't speak English. He said he was Russian. He thought there'd be a slim chance the guy knew how to speak Russian and he was right. The grumpy guy probably didn't believe the no English thing, he was yelling about the boat being a US boat (which it says on the back of the boat for all to see), but Graham just kept saying "I don't understand - no English" over and over again with his best fake Russian accent until the guy went away. We're all laughing at the story and thinking this is a clever way to avoid a confrontation with someone who clearly wants one, until the next day when Graham is on the radio broadcasting in English on the public channel. We got on then and said, "hey Plan B, sounds like you speak pretty good English after all", intending to make Graham sweat a little. He handled it pretty well, so we came back on pretty soon and tried to explain that it was us, but somehow Graham thought the grumpy guy had caught him until days later when we saw him in another bay and could explain the whole thing in person.

After the anchoring drama and an egg bacon and cheese sandwich breakfast, we wound up sleeping most of our first day in Huahine because we hadn't slept much the night before. We went into town early the next day and got some more baguettes and some fresh produce and then pulled up the anchor and headed south inside the lagoon along the west side of the island. We wound up stopping near this lovely little beach where another boat, Kaama, that was also in our Moorea gang, was already anchored. They'd been there for a couple days and had met the caretaker of the beach. It seems that there was once a small resort behind the beach, but it was wiped out by a big storm in 2000. After that the president of Tahiti bought the property and hired Siki to be the caretaker. Nice job if you can get it! Siki was very nice fellow, and I wished our French was better so we could talk to him more, but he did manage to give us a bit of the history of the place. The only remains of the resort were the skeleton of the kitchen, some really nice plantings, and the pool and spa areas which were half filled with swampy water, but still managed to look good. We also hiked up to an overlook point where we could look down at the boats, the water, the reef and over to the next island (it's always nice when you can see the next one - that means it's a short sail to get there!)

Siki also offered to show us how to cook breadfruit, which was something we'd seen for sale at some of the produce stands but hadn't tried yet. Well, Siki didn't get his breadfruit at no stand - no sir. Siki took us over to the next bay and then proceeded to cut a 12 foot pole about 4 inches in diameter which he leaned up against the breadfruit tree and then shimmied up using his feet and hands to reach the lower branches of the tree. Then he did what looked like a fun tree climb to about 30 feet, then he kept right on going to what looked like a scary tree climb to about 60 feet. Then he began pulling branches down toward him with the hooked stick that he had carried up with him. He used that to get the breadfruit close to him, then plucked them and tied them onto the other end of his stick with the piece of bark he'd peeled off it earlier. Needless to say, we were pretty impressed. After gathering the breadfruit, we trooped back to the main beach and Siki built a fire with some sticks and coconut husks and then got some small coconuts and split them open in about two seconds using a sharp stick he had hidden in a bush. Next he showed us an ingenious coconut shredding device that you put on a bench and sit on and the grater wheel sticks out in front of you between your legs. You put the bowl on the ground in front of you and start grating. We all took turns and the only tricky part was not kicking sand into the tupperware bowl during the personnel switch. Next Siki cut a few slits in the outside of the breadfruit with his machete and put them onto the fire propped up by more coconut husks. While they were cooking, Siki extracted the coconut milk from the shredded coconut by putting it all in a ball in a clean cloth and then twisting it over the tupperware bowl. After the breadfruit had cooked long enough it came off the fire and it's pulp went into the same cloth and then Siki beat it with a stick for a while. The final presentation was pieces of the mashed breadfruit in the coconut milk inside the coconut shells we had scraped clean. The texture was different enough that I can't think what to compare it to. The flaver was not strong but odd. But a little of it was quite filling, so I can see how it would be popular, particularly if you were living off the land, and while I'm not sure I'd climb a tree that high for that same dish again, I'd definitely like to try it prepared some more ways before we leave the islands.

We left the next morning for Raiatea.

Moorea Aug 26 - Sep 9, 2008

When we first arrived in Moorea, we anchored in what they now call Cook's Bay. This was a very deep bay with striking rock formations around the inside edge. In fact, we thought just about everything we saw in Moorea was quite pretty and it wound up being one of our favorite stops so far. While we were there, we went on a very enjoyable island driving tour. We were picked up by a nice guy in a truck with benches built into the back and a canopy that he removed so we could stand up for better viewing in the interior parts of the island. Standing up was not allowed on the blacktop roads around the edge of the island. We really couldn't see what the difference was, but he was a nice guy, so we were happy to comply. He made lots of stops and pointed out many different kinds of fruit trees growing along the road and in people's gardens. We also stopped at a pineapple plantation and at the agricultural school where they grow LOTS of different flowers, fruits and some vanilla. There were also stops at some breathtaking viewpoints. We'll put up as many pictures as we can, but it's tough to do the place justice, so if anyone wants to see more our tour guide recommended two movies that were filmed in Moorea - the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty with Mel Gibson, and Love Affair with Warren Beaty. The guide also made us a little snack of pineapple and grapefruit using leaves for a platter and flowers for decorations which looked so good we took pictures of it - it could have graced a fancy buffet anywhere, except for the fact that the platter was in the back of the truck.

After spending a couple nights in Cook's Bay we got tired of the gusty winds and the murky water inside this bay, so we moved the boat around to a stunning anchorage just outside the mouth of Opunohu Bay. Opunohu Bay actually used to be called Cook's Bay, and is in fact where Captain Cook anchored when he was there, but apparently they decided to change the name because that bay is now in the midst of a reserve area and they wanted to funnel most of the visitors over to the other bay. We're glad the trick didn't work with us because our new spot was quite beautiful. The boat was in about 20 feet of water and we had wonderful views over the reef out to the ocean as well as a good angle on the sunset and a nice view of the public beach we were anchored off of. The water was so clear that on calm mornings you could see the ridges in the sand below us. the boat. It sometimes seemed as though there was no water and we were just levitating above the sand. Tres magnifique! We could also snorkel right off the boat in this anchorage, which is one of our favorite things. We saw an octopus, eels, eagle rays and tons of beautiful fish, but, just in case you think it sounds too good to be true, I will confess that the coral itself was not in great shape here. We were told by the dive guys that three years ago the coral was amazing and then an infestation of these huge starfish called Crowns of Thorn appeared and these creatures killed all the coral despite attempts by the dive guys to get rid of them. There are still quite a few of these starfish there, and let me tell you, none of us had ever seen a starfish that looked like that before! They are huge! And ugly. What a shame.

Once we got to this new anchorage, some other cruisers told us about a nearby stingray swimming site. Apparently excursion boats have been feeding the rays in this spot for so long that they are now quite tame. We were told to take stuff to feed them, but we didn't have anything we thought they'd like, so we headed over in the dinghy empty handed. We motored for about a half hour and were trying to figure out just exactly where the rays were supposed to be when we saw a few excursion boats heading our way and thought we'd just follow them. They came right over to where we'd been motoring around and seeing nothing, but since they had food for the rays there were soon rays everywhere. We got in the water, which was about chest high, and they swam right up to us. Some of the people from the excursion boats who were holding pieces of fish were basically being hugged by them. This amount of contact was a bit much for Angie, who only wanted to see and not touch 'em, but Jeff, Fred and Aimee all felt them and said they were soft but a bit slimy. Yuck. Most of the rays were about 2-3 feet wide from tip to tip, but a few of the bigger ones were 4-5 feet across. After the feeding was over, we got back in the dinghy, and the rays were swimming all around and underneath it, and just that part alone was well worth the long dinghy ride to get there and back.

We wound up staying in Moorea about a week longer then we originally planned because, on the day we planned to leave, the weather became bad for sailing, and stayed that way for quite some time. Luckily for us, this did not mean the weather was bad for hanging out in Moorea, and it continued to be beautiful there, although it was a bit gusty at times in the anchorage. We were not the only boat waiting out the weather in this wonderful spot. Early on in our stay one of the other boats organized a barbecue on the beach we were near, so we got to meet all our boat neighbors (and they were a particularly nice bunch) and this kicked off a daily meeting on the beach for "sundowners and nibbles" which included play time for the kids and chat time for the grownups. Unfortunately, we missed some of the sunset gatherings when first Jeff, then Angie and later Fred came down with a nasty head that moved right down into our chests and stayed there for awhile. Luckily Aimee managed to avoid the cold because, unluckily, her visit ended around this time and her long, long, long flight home would only have been made worse by the sneezing and coughing it produced.

Despite how much we liked Moorea, we eventually became eager to move along since our visa for French Polynesia would be running out soon and we wanted to leave ourselves plenty of time for some other islands, particularly Bora Bora. Our weather router's estimate of the good time to leave kept getting pushed back by the changes in weather, but after a couple other boats in our group left Moorea and reported back that the seas were uncomfortable but not as bad as the weather predictions were indicating, we decided to go ahead and leave too since our next leg was a short one. We estimated it would take between 15 and 20 hours to get to Huahine, so we left Moorea at 4 PM, along with 3 other boats, for an overnight sail that would allow us to both leave the pass in Moorea and arrive at the pass into Huahine with good light to help guide us through the entrances in each reef. Well, now we have a good idea as to what our weather router is trying to protect us from, because although the seas were not as rough as any of the forcasts would lead you to believe, they were in fact rough enough to make the trip uncomfortable. What happens when it's rough like this is that every single thing inside the boat wants to fly around unless it is put away properly. It also means that anything you want to put down for just a minute will go flying or sliding away, and you need to hold onto something any time you are standing up, so it becomes a challenge just to get a water bottle out of the fridge when you're thirsty - forget about trying to cook. In this case we knew what we were in for, so Jeff cooked our supper ahead of time and it was just a matter of putting it bowls (and trying to get them to the crew behind the wheel without spilling) so we did manage to have a nice dinner despite the conditions. Nobody managed to sleep much however, it was just too rolly, so even after trying to wedge yourself into your bunk with pillows on each side, everyone was still rolling a bit too much to get any long sleep. But it was just one night, and we made it into Huahine just fine, so no harm done, and we have more appreciation now than ever for Susan, our lovely weather router, who works to keep us out of that rough stuff - Thanks Susan!