Position: 09 degrees, 54 minutes South; 139 degrees, 06 minutes West in Hapatoni Bay

Charisma and Blue Rodeo anchored in Hapatoni Bay.

Wild growing bananas for the picking.

And of course, we need wild papaya

Not just fruit, but beautiful flowers for the picking

It’s morning and I’m sitting here in Hapatoni Bay, thinking this place is almost impossibly beautiful. We’re anchored in 30 feet of water so clear you can see the bottom. We’re about 40 yards from shore (a gentle sand wedge, choked down, chip to the green). It’s a little cloudy from the evening squalls, so the colors are subdued and the sun is not yet blazing down. The water in this delicate light is an emerald green right now. Closer into shore, it turns almost aquamarine as it gets shallower and you can see sand. Small waves are breaking on the volcanic rock boulders. At the surf line, the boulders are dark grey, almost black turning almost silver, the eye moves up onto the dry zone. Then the coconut palms line the beach and continue on up the steeply rising hill as the sea gives way to the mountain that is this side of the island. The slope is almost 50 degrees and the palms cover the first 100 -200 feet, so close together they overlap and you can’t see the jungle beneath or behind them. In this light the palms are shades of green, but around sunset and maybe 10 minutes before they turn many soft shades of burnt umber, sienna and many shades of light and dark green along with some yellows. Moving up the hill the palm trees give way to the forest canopy that soars 50-60 above the floor. “Floor” is relative as the slope at this point is rising almost to 70 degrees. We know from hiking a path cut along the side of the mountain that there are many banana, papaya and other fruit trees tucked in under the canopy along with a dense thicket of other jungle. (As I’m writing this, Ann is on the bowsprit almost shrieking because dolphins have entered the bay and a dozen or so are swimming about 50 yards upwind). This cover thins out about half way up the mountain as it turns vertical, grey to black volcanic rock towering above us rising to a knife edge ridge at about 700 feet. Vines and other hardy vegetation cling tenaciously to the crevices in the rock. Small white birds (parrots?) provide a sense of depth to the heights as they practice incredible aerobatics against the mountainside, doing loops, rolls and turns that would challenge the best stunt pilots. Above all this, the ridge connects for the last couple hundred feet to an almost pyramidal peak that completes the picture, jutting up about 1000 feet above us, the top scraping wisps of cloud as the squalls pass overhead. The mountain is sharply contrasted by the grey-white clouds with patches of intense blue as they rush overhead. Why they are in such a hurry I don’t know since beyond us lies thousands of miles of nothing but ocean.

So why are we leaving here? Because all of the anchorages are this beautiful and it’s time for the adventure to continue to the next village.

It’s evening now. Our friends from Blue Rodeo and Island Bound came over for cocktails and dinner of arachera beef that we bought in Mexico that’s been sealed and in the fridge, and fresh Wahoo that Island Bound caught a while back and froze. They have rowed back to their boats for the night and we now have time to reflect on a great day. Above is the morning’s description. We then left for our current location. Had some pretty windy squalls on the way here, but once here, we dropped anchor in good holding sand and immediately jumped in the water for a swim and some snorkeling. Then lunch and a nap. It’s a good day when there’re no boat projects (i.e. nothing broken to have to fix). Ann had a somewhat less relaxing day. She did laundry including the sheets. Not fun. But I cooked dinner for six, so on and on we trade chores.

We’re probably going to stay here and relax a bit for a couple days. The swimming/snorkeling is great, and it’s white sand, meaning better visibility. If the squalls quiet down a bit, we’ll go back South a mile and see the small town of Vaitahu. We meant to stop there today, but as we went by, we looked in and it was full of white water (meaning very windy, blowing the tops of waves off). It’s at the bottom of a long valley that comes down almost 1000 feet and the winds just scream down. It is also known as a difficult place to safely anchor in those conditions as the bottom is very steep, so hard to get an anchor to stay in place. If conditions calm, we may go. If not, in a day or two we’ll move on.

On the shortwave this evening we talked to our friends on Gato Go and they are in Hapatoni. They are planning to get in here tomorrow so we’re sure to wait. After all, it’s their turn to make dinner!

That’s the cruising life. Snorkle, sail, anchor, fix stuff, cocktails and dinners. Very social. 😉

P.S. Regular readers will recall that our radar went out in crossing the ITCZ. It has miraculously self-healed itself. I have no idea how, but over the last week, it started coming back online. Initially it showed weak images and the settings had to be set all out of normal. Then it got better and as of today all the settings are back to normal and it’s reading other boats, shorelines and even squalls. One theory was water incursion. However, I have not been able to find a junction that was wet. All connections are dry. I cleaned them with electronics cleaner just in case there was some hidden corrosion. The other theory was that the terrific storms we were in put out so much static electricity they overcame the magnetron or reset some of the software settings. If this theory were correct, then possibly turning the unit on and off multiple times of the last couple weeks has allowed it to “reboot” to the correct settings. In any case, we’re really glad to have it back, as radar is really useful in the Tuamotus, which is our next island chain in a couple weeks. They are mostly very low profile, hard to see atolls and radar can be a very valuable tool in navigation. I just wish I knew exactly what the problem was so I could feel we could rely on it down the road in the next storm. Oh well, time will tell.