Crossing the finish line with "C'est la Vie" and "Buena Vista". Moorea in the background

Anchored Moorea. Buena Vista in the background.

Charisma happily anchored in Moorea.

Had a great sail over from Papeete, Tahiti to Moorea. 20-25 knots and 6 foot seas made for a fast passage. Since it was a “sorta race” we had more sail up than if we were cruising. We saw speeds in the sevens and eights.

Notable about today was a passenger! One Sarah Rose, a freelance writer who is doing a story on one of the boats in the fleet. Since the boat wasn’t here (she’s meeting them in the Tuamotus-no names until the story is published), she was doing background for the story. She is a delightful person and Ann and I thoroughly enjoyed sailing with her today. She’s spending the weekend with everyone here on the Puddle Jump Rendezvous to get the flavor of cruising in the South Pacific. Best of luck Sarah, we know the story will be great!

Once here and anchored, we all went in to the beach for a cocktail party. A “meet and greet” to get the weekend started off, since many of us haven’t seen each other for some months now as we’ve been cruising through many thousands of miles of ocean and islands. Tomorrow is a traditional Polynesian lunch and games including the infamous 6 person canoe race. Two experienced Polynesian paddlers and four very inexperienced cruisers will compete for….something. I’m not sure what. Maybe just bragging rights which would be fine since that gives us something to talk about for the next six months as we sail on westward. My canoe team is the Bilge Rats. Ann is on, well we’ll have to tell you tomorrow as it’s a Polynesian name and she can’t pronounce or spell it tonight.

So, hopefully tomorrow will bring a new post about victory! If not, that’s OK because it’s amazingly beautiful here and we’re going to stay a few more days after the festivities end tomorrow.

Oh, and the wind screeching through the rigging just reminded me: this looks to be a wild and maybe somewhat sleepless night. There’s a storm coming through. We can see lightning offshore and the wind is gusting fiercely with a hint of the rain to come. The breezy weather and 60ish boats in this anchorage are already causing some havoc. Several boats have had to re-anchor in the dark as they anchored too close to someone else in the first place. I expect it will get worse as someone is almost sure to drag anchor and run down though the fleet of boats. I hope that boat is not us. I’ve set the anchor alarm even though I know it will wake me at least twice tonight with a false alarm. Ahhh, the cruising life. Today an Aussie told me the key to cruising: “Don’t wreck your house”.