Position: 16 degrees, 37 minutes south; 152 degrees, 18 minutes west

Yup, we’re finally out of French Polynesia. I took the French flag and the Polynesian courtesy flags down today for the first time in three months. The next flags to go up will be the yellow “Q” flag and the Cook Islands flag as we enter the Cooks. Hopefully that will be in about 3.5 days at Aitutaki. I say ‘hopefully’ because it’s a tricky entrance. There’s a very narrow cut through the coral reef of something like 30 feet and the depth is approximately 6 feet. We draw 5 feet, 8 inches, so it will be close. Fortunately high tide is at 1200, so we’ll have the sun overhead to help us see the bottom. It’s a +0.68 meter tide so that will give a little extra room. Once inside though, the lagoon is very small, so if there are many boats there, we won’t have room to anchor. Lots of “ifs”. The last “if” is if we can’t get in, we’ll keep on going another couple hundred miles to our next stop at Palmerston Island.

It’s bumpy bouncy again, so this will be short as I don’t have my sea legs yet and it’s not easy to type and not get seasick, LOL.

This moonrise tonight was almost surreal. It was a full moon and came out of the clouds above Bora Bora. Just amazing. Breathtaking really. It was the biggest moon I’ve ever seen and it was red. Amazing. A great way to start another leg of the voyage.

It’s blowing about 16 gusting to 20, the seas are about 4 feet and we’re doing about 6 knots with just the jib rolled about 40%. The wind should increase some in the next day or so then ease as we approach our destination. We checked in on the Seafarers Net, which is a Pacific-wide Ham net dedicated to keeping track of boats who wish to be followed. Good safety net. If you google searfarers net, or possibly go to www.pacseanet.com you can find the report that shows where we are. I think there are two Charismas, so we go by Charisma San Francisco.

That’s it for now, I need some air. See you tomorrow.