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!

Tahiti Aug 21 - Aug 26

We departed Rangiroa on the 18th in the early light for a day sail over to Tikehau. The weather was perfect as was the wind. Unfortunately, the wind continued to pick up after our arrival and the anchorage in tikehau was less than ideal...in fact it was downright bumpy. We had planned on going for a scuba dive in their pass which was supposed to be quite nice, but when we went ashore on the 19th to sign up for a dive we found that the small resort where they were supposed to be seemed to be pretty much empty. We met the lady who ran the place on the beach, and she was quite nice and explained to us that their dive boat had broken down and now the only dive guys on Tikehau were at the big Pearl luxury resort hotel, which was quite a ways away. On our way back to town the small resort's dog followed us the entire way (about 10 mins), even after the resort owner came and tried to get him in her car. She explained that he thought we were her guests and so was escorting us. Everyone in town seemed to know the dog and all the kids seemed pretty excited to see him. I wanted to ask her why she seemed to have no other guests for him to escort, but couldn't figure out how to ask that politely. We also encountered two broken pay phones on Tikehau. One right near the dock and one right out in front of the post office. This seemed pretty strange given that EVERY Post Office in French Polynesia has at least one pay phone outside it, and every single other one had been in working order. We wandered into the store, killing time until 5PM when we could pick up the baguettes Fred and Aimee had reserved for us that morning, and the lady in the store said the closest working pay phone was at the airport - out past the seemingly deserted resort we had been to earlier. All this seemed a bit contrary to an entry in a guide book that said Tikehau was prospering in recent years because of it's desirable location on the route between Rangiroa and Tahiti. After we got back to the boat and found the anchorage still quite rough we decided to leave the next day for the big city in Tahiti.

Tahiti Aug 21 - Aug 26
On august 20th we departed Tikehau bound for marina taina just outside the capital of French Polynesia and the closest thing we will see to a city until our arrival in New Zealand. Our stay in Tahiti was fairly brief but productive. We sailed overnight and arrived in Tahiti midday on the 21st. For the first time since leaving San Francisco we were able to find an actual grocery store (all of the other islands have smaller Vermont country store type places called magasins). Here in Pape'ete there was a Walmart style store and it was initially a bit daunting, to be honest. We can see now why immigrants from other countries are sometimes overwhelmed in US supermarkets, but we quickly adjusted and proceeded to pack the boat full of all of life's necessities - food, beer & wine.

Another treat in Pape'ete was the market. This is where locals gather to buy and sell fresh produce, eggs, fish, meat and local handiwork. We took the opportunity to fill our vegetable hammocks which were quite empty after our stay in the Tuamotos where, since they don't have much land, they don't grow much stuff. We also got some delicious cooked pork from one of the Chinese vendors (Celestial's for any of you Deadwood fans out there) and took the opportunity to sample one of the dozens of varieties of strange, local fish that were on display. These were the kind we see in the lagoons, and will hopefully be catching or spearing later on, but we haven't ventured there yet for fear of fish poisoining which has been present in many of the lagoons we've been in so far. We did try to memorize all the fish at the market so that we'll know what to try to get in the future.

As there were a few things on our repairs list that we wanted to take care of in Pape'ete we chose to take a slip at the marina...something we also had not done since San Francisco. We had read that the country of French Polynesia has been marketing to the megayacht crowd these days and were not dissapointed as far as classy boat company goes. There were two giant, beautiful sailboats (both well over 100ft) as well as a huge motor yacht. This was also our first look at the european style marina which employs a totally different docking style to what we are accustomed to, but our anxieties about dealing with this new style were short lived as the marina told us we would be tying up the way we are used to - apparently all guests do, only the permanent boats do the "med" style anchoring, which was good news since we weren't sure how we were going to get on or off the boat if we docked the other way. The marina bathrooms also left a bit to be desired. I had been looking forward to a long, long, long hot shower (something we just don't ge many of on the boat), but the marina showers, which were tyled and styled nicely, had only one button to push and it produced cold water only AND if you went in the evening you got to share the bathroom with giant roaches - YUCK. Needless to say we all showered only in the daylight hours after that grim discovery.

By the second day in Pape'ete we had completely fixed a problem with our refrigerator; had our propane tanks refilled; and were well on our way to solving our rigging problems and our self steering problem thanks to a few of the locals Michelle, Mike and Patrick who were extremely knowledgeable and actually showed up when they said they would prepared to work on the projects they were helping with. How refreshing! And what a load off our minds that they not only tuned up our rigging but were able to explain why it broke in the first place and help us fix the cause of the problem. Hooray!

We also managed to squeeze in a bit of fun amongst all the work in Pape'ete. We had our best restaurant meal of the trip so far in a wonderful French place called L'o a la Bouche. Delish. We had Chinese food another night, which was also a big treat. There was also a bar at the end of the dock with a happy hour each evening where all the cruisers tended to gather. It was fun to go there and we made some new friends. We went out on the town Friday night with a gang of folks and had some pizza. After the pizza we listened to a local band and did a bit of dancing on a teensy tiny dance floor. Then we moved on to a "club" which was surprisingly like a "club" in the US - the lights were low, the music was loud and there was a big big dance floor. We didn't stay there long, but we came to regret that the next day when we heard what went on in our absence. The next day, one of our new friends, Paul, asked us if we had seen another new friend, Sam. These guys are young gents who are crewing on sailboats with people they didn't know before crossing the ocean with them (a fairly common practice). Paul said he and Sam had brought two sisters home with them from the club, but in the morning Paul found Sam's girl sleeping on the dock, and invited her in for breakfast, but he was curious as to what happened since last he'd seen them, Sam and his gal had been getting along quite well. After escorting the girls to a taxi, Paul found his answer when he saw Sam walking up the dock with his head hanging low. Apparently the word "sister" was used loosely, because the beautiful young gal Sam took home, was equipped with a man's plumbing! Oh, how we wish we hadn't gone home before the guys met the "girls"! ("Sam's" name has been changed to protect the no longer innocent).

PS - We've finally been able to add some pictures, and we've put some on the older blog posts also, so if you're interested you can check those out for more pics.

Tikehau, Aug 18 - Aug 20

We departed Rangiroa on the 18th in the early light for a day sail over to Tikehau. The weather was perfect as was the wind. Unfortunately, the wind continued to pick up after our arrival and the anchorage in tikehau was less than ideal...in fact it was downright bumpy. We had planned on going for a scuba dive in their pass which was supposed to be quite nice, but when we went ashore on the 19th to sign up for a dive we found that the small resort where they were supposed to be seemed to be pretty much empty. We met the lady who ran the place on the beach, and she was quite nice and explained to us that their dive boat had broken down and now the only dive guys on Tikehau were at the big Pearl luxury resort hotel, which was quite a ways away. On our way back to town the small resort's dog followed us the entire way (about 10 mins), even after the resort owner came and tried to get him in her car. She explained that he thought we were her guests and so was escorting us. Everyone in town seemed to know the dog and all the kids seemed pretty excited to see him. I wanted to ask her why she seemed to have no other guests for him to escort, but couldn't figure out how to ask that politely. We also encountered two broken pay phones on Tikehau. One right near the dock and one right out in front of the post office. This seemed pretty strange given that EVERY Post Office in French Polynesia has at least one pay phone outside it, and every single other one had been in working order. We wandered into the store, killing time until 5PM when we could pick up the baguettes Fred and Aimee had reserved for us that morning, and the lady in the store said the closest working pay phone was at the airport - out past the seemingly deserted resort we had been to earlier. All this seemed a bit contrary to an entry in a guide book that said Tikehau was prospering in recent years because of it's desirable location on the route between Rangiroa and Tahiti. After we got back to the boat and found the anchorage still quite rough we decided to leave the next day for the big city in Tahiti.