Raiatea & Tahaa

We left our very comfortable anchorage in Moorea, sailing overnight to Raiatea & Tahaa, which are two islands that share the same protective reef. The sail was about average, with good winds but lumpy seas. We arrived to the SE pass of Raiatea and entered the lagoon having a beautiful sail through the lagoon with only our Genoa out. The lagoon is very deep with about 100 feet in between the reef and the islands. Rae made a great breakfast and we drifted along looking at several quaint villages nestled along side ruins of what was once the cultural center of Polynesia.

We are scheduled to haul out Nikita on Monday to apply new anti fouling, which is desperately needed. So we will hang around these islands for a week or so before moving onto Bora Bora.

A near disaster - I was running back and forth bringing some additional toys to the beach when someone swam out from a boat across the anchorage in front of me. I quickly decreased speed, not really close to the swimmer.... but the outboard engine flew off the transom. I had not tightened down engine clamps. In a somewhat surreal event I caught the engine in mid air, stopped the engine and secured the engine with out issue. We are in 100 foot water here so retrieving the engine would have been very difficult and ultimately not much would have been salvageable.

Jake has lost both his front teeth, he looks very different.

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Beautiful Moorea

We have been anchored in Oponohu bay Moorea for the past several days. The bay use to be home to a large Maori village, the ruins of which are preserved in the higher parts of the valley. We took a long hike one day, about 6 miles round trip which earned the ire of the crew towards the captain. However, the views and the forest, particularly all of the different tree types including pines, banyans and some sort of canopy tree that looked like it would be at home in Africa.

Yesterday we took the dinghy down to the western corner of the island where there are a couple of motus and an area where you can snorkel with sting rays and sharks. The sting rays come right up to you, attempting to brush against you in a search for food.

We have caught up a couple of boat projects, including repairing the wind generator and replacing the foot switches for the anchor windlass. Jake has completed first grade to school is in summer break mode for a while.

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Photo Albums

Three new links for photo albums have been added 1) Galapagos, 2) Marqueses, 3) Tuamotus - look to the right hand side of the blog. Haaa the wonders of a good internet connection. Enjoy!

Tahiti

We spent a very busy 8 days in Tahiti, mostly re provisioning the boat with food stuffs. We received a handful of parts, arranged a haul out for Raiatea (need new anti fouling) ate several meals in restaurants and caught up on the world via the internet. All in all very productive. We had been warned that Tahiti is very expensive. We did not find this the case noting prices on par with the Eastern Caribbean. Though you do spend alot of money because you are catching up on so many things given that the last 4 months were spent in such isolated areas. One however and that was eating out was very expensive.

The anchorages in Tahiti were marvelous, very protected and calm with crystal clear water. You do not feel like you are in a tropical paradise though as there are now so many people, cars and commercial development. All in all we were very happy to have all the services and happy to leave as well.

We are now anchored in Moorea..... definitely a tropical paradise under any definition.

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Tahiti

Umm, well it has been a while. Frankly a little too much fun being had in this part of the world. Well where to start.... the last days in the Tuamotus.

We stayed about a week in Taou, with Free At Last, our Australian friends we met in the Bahamas in 2008, making a 24 hour stop en route from Miami to Australia. We had a great if short reunion. We then enjoyed the family living in Taou having a potluck dinner with them and the other cruisers to celebrate the 4th of July. Alas we had run out of some very important provisions, namely beer so off we went to Tahiti.

The Tahiti leg is 250 miles so about 36 hours. The winds were good but the seas did no cooperate so not much fun. It was fantastic though to watch the sun rise as we sat outside Papette harbor, as so many vessels have done throughout history. During the transit we had a sailfish become very interested in our towing generator. I dropped a bare hook on a handline and got four hits with him but could not get the hook set.

On Sunday we will get to see the eclipse of the sun, or at least about 98 percent of one anyway.

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