Wow, seems like just yesterday we got here. Oh well, time to say; “au revoir” to French Polynesia and move on to the Cook Islands. They promise to be more primitive with longer passages in between. We’re looking at Aitutake, Palmerston and Niue. Maybe Raratonga but have heard there may be issues getting in there. For some unknown reason they have chosen the height of the sailing season to dredge the harbor. There have been rumors that it’s closed and we’re trying to ascertain first-hand knowledge. Anyway, for now we leave tomorrow and go to Bora Bora for fuel, then maybe a little island called Maupiti, which is a bit west and north of Bora Bora and then we’re off on a 500(ish) mile leg to one of the Cook islands depending on weather and what we find out about Raratonga. Just for information, Charisma averages about 120 miles a day in normal winds (10-15 knots). So long trips ahead.
Today along with getting our official clearance out of the country, we also bought some more groceries (important stuff like papaya, beer and rum) and Ann’s now doing laundry at a machine we found in the boatyard. By the way, we hitched into town again. Once again, it took about ten cars before a nice Frenchman in a Citroen kind of small panel-van picked us up. He didn’t speak any English and our French is still on the beginner side, but we had fun communicating with the few words we could all muster up. Fun.
By the way, Gato Go (Craig and Bruce) showed up yesterday. We haven’t seen them in quite a while so we had them over for cocktails and dinner which then led to games and how do I say this- lots of drinking. We went pretty much through a 3 liter box of wine and at 0030 they poured into their dinghy for the 100 yard ride back home. Lots of fun but minor hangovers for most this morning. Great to see them and catch up. For future cruisers-getting to know people as you sail has been one of the most fun parts of this trip. Always, always, get to know the folks in your anchorage. Many are great people and you will likely be seeing them for months if not years as you move along. One thing that’s useful is to make boat cards. They are just like business cards but have your personal and boat info on them. That way you can easily pass your personal email, boat email, cell phone, blog, etc. Almost everyone has one that they will give you when you meet.
Well that’s it for now. A slow day, so I’ll add that for dinner, we bought duck legs already spiced and marinated ($2 each for very large legs) that I’m going to roast and broccoli since we’ll not likely see that kind of veggie for a long while.