Position: 18 degrees, 02 minutes south; 163 degrees, 11 minutes west

On our mooring at Palmerston

They have six moorings and a reef entrance that cannot be believed. The current is too high to get in with a dinghy so they pick you up. There are only eight moorings here.

A brilliant two and a half day sail culminated with sailing around the reef on the way to the anchorage and having three whales jumping for joy. There are five other boats here and they said they heard the whales singing last night through their hulls. Let’s hope for more of the same tonight.

At first when we got here I was let down a bit. It’s a poor place to anchor and their are only five moorings, so not a good way to start out to find out you have to anchor in the coral. There’s no sand whatsoever, so we’re trusting on benign weather to keep us in place and off the reef tonight. Looks like one of the boats is leaving tomorrow, and we have permission to take their mooring when they leave. This will leave us with a more trustworthy way to secure the boat. As if to punctuate the issue, when we got ashore the first thing we saw under the coconut trees is the hulk of a Valiant 42 shipwrecked here last year when they broke free of their mooring and was driven across the reef in 12 foot waves. What a way to start the day.

Backing up a tiny bit, we made landfall at 0200 last night. Since we didn’t want to come into an unfamiliar area at night, we hove to until dawn about 3 miles off the south end of the atoll. I had the night watch for that period, so I got to just sit and watch some of the most beautiful stars we’re seen on the trip. Then we saw the whales jumping which added a sense of joy to the early morning.

We didn’t know what to expect out of a place like this. As I’ve mentioned, there are only 60 people living on the atoll and half of those are children. They have purposefully shunned many “opportunities” such as an airport and pearl farms in order to keep their atoll pristine-which it is. We’re in the clearest 40 feet of water I’ve ever seen. It’s clear like a cold mountain stream, but it’s warm and incredibly blue (all the shades from ice blue to deep indigo).

But despite all the beauty-and there is a phenomenal amount of it-it’s the wonderful people here that I think we were all unprepared for. By the time we finished dinner with “our sponsor” (each boat here has a family who sponsors them and takes care of them while on the atoll) any care of how the anchor was or wasn’t working left. I literally don’t care. We’ll deal with it, but I want to spend more time with these amazingly nice, sincere and open people. Just walking around today, we were invited to sit down and eat lunch with one of the families. They treated us like long lost friends and we spent two hours under their rusted tin-roofed and rickety tree branch-made outdoor dinning table.

But…we’re exhausted not having slept since I don’t know when, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night for the description of the evening.

Thanks and good night!

Position: 18 degrees, 34 minutes south; 162 degrees, 36 minutes west

The big blue slide. Up to Palmerston that is. Last night and today have been some of the best sailing on the trip thus far. 10 knots apparent wind with a little over 5 knots of boatspeed. Long period 3 foot swells and blue sky with a few fringing clouds. Charisma is wing and wing and loving it. Gentle sounds of water gurgling past the stern. The only thing we don’t have (yet) is a fish! We’re towing the hand line though and I switched the lure from a hoochie to a rapala in hopes of attracting a tuna instead of mahi (not that I’m complaining about mahi mind you).

We had a spectacular tuna (canned, but good) salad for lunch with half a papaya and this afternoon I used the last of the mahi in the freezer and made a fish chowder to go with some bread we bought at the market day before yesterday that we’ll heat up for dinner.

Ann’s asleep on the foredeck. She went up there to catch the afternoon sun and do some reading, but not long after she went up there, I saw more zzzz’s than abc’s coming from that direction. Life is good out here on the blue Pacific Ocean. It’s even warmed up. The last two days have had SSE wind and the south component brought some chilly weather. We actually broke out socks, shoes and sweaters for night duty. But the wind has shifted and is now out of the east with correspondingly warmer temps. It’s very comfortable and not too hot.

So that’s our news for today. Boring day to read about, but great day to enjoy!

Position: 19 degrees, 41 minutes south; 161 degrees, 20 minutes west

We’re moving again. We left Rarotonga last night at 2100. We’re had about 10-15 knots of wind for the last 24 hours and have made about 130`miles. We have 140 to go as of 2100 Sunday night. This leg is about 270 miles, so figuring our average 120 miles/day we decided to leave at night so we can get into Palmerston, hopefully, Tuesday morning (we’ll probably heave to offshore assuming we get there in the early morning hours) . The GRIB files are showing the wind to be nice till sometime late Monday, but on Tuesday it’s going to shut down completely for a couple days. Nice for anchoring, not so good for sailing, so we hope to get there before that happens. Orcinius is coming too but since they are bigger and go faster, they were planning to leave Sunday morning. We’ll hope to catch up with them on tonight’s radio net and see if they did indeed leave.

Speaking of Orcinius-While planning their trip to Palmerston, they sent an email to one of the residents there and asked if they needed any supplies. Since Palmerston is a small atoll in the middle of the Pacific and there are only 60 people who live there, they don’t get a lot of supply ships that come through. They replied it would be nice if a “couple things” could be carried and would have some acquaintances drop them off at the wharf. One thing led to another and Orcinius is now carrying almost a ton of supplies-literally! For two days, folks would drive by the boat and drop stuff off. There’re some fresh veggies, eggs, apples, potatoes, other stuff in heavy sealed boxes and even a new flat screen TV set (they have satellite TV on the island). It was fun watching all the stuff get tied onto a halyard by John on the wharf and swung over to Ann in Orcinus’ cockpit. Lisa worked the halyard and helped unload in the cockpit. Then Ann and I helped form a human chain to carry the stuff down into the port side hull where John and Lisa stored it in the aft bedroom. It filled the bedroom.

This led to the Mysterious Banana Caper. We’re not really sure what happened, but part of the cargo was a huge stalk of bananas. Bananas are notorious for bringing unwanted bugs on board, so John did the logical thing-he tied the stalk to a line and tossed it into the water for the night. We all do this and it drowns any insects that might be in the stalk. The next morning while sipping her coffee, Lisa looked down and saw…the loose end of the rope. No evidence that there was ever even a knot! We looked around for a floating stalk of bananas among the boats at the wharf but no joy. Was it a banana heist? We’ll probably never know. One thing’s for sure though, the island spirit made sure they didn’t leave for Palmerston without a stalk of bananas. When we went to the Saturday Market, Lisa tried to buy a stalk to replace the one that “sailed away”. The vendor didn’t have a full stalk, only broken down ones like you usually see in the stores. But, when Lisa explained what happened and how they were not for her, but to bring to Palmerston, the vendor said, “Be at the wharf at noon”. Noon arrived and so did a whole, huge new stalk of bananas carried on a scooter. This nice person drove back to their farm that was “not nearby” and brought them at no charge!

Island charm, island kindness. One of the best parts of this trip is the truly wonderful people we are meeting along the way.

The market at "Raro"

What a nice place this has been! We had no preconceived notions of what this island would be like, so have been thrilled by how nice it’s been to be here. We’ve been here about a week now and it’s time to move on to Palmerston Island-our last stop in the Cook’s.

Today we did the check out routine. Go to the Harbormaster and check out of the harbor. Pay the fees for the mooring and whatever else they come up with. Then on over to Immigration where you get your passport stamped and finally onto Customs where you pay some more fees and get “approved” for departure. In our case, we’re departing; “For Niue via Palmerston”. While we were waiting Ann noticed that they were promoting $3 bills as a tourist attraction. We had heard they were unique and wanted to have one to bring home. So Ann asked one of the customs guys if they had any. His response was they were available downstairs at the bank, but he would go get some for us while we were waiting. Nice! We are now the proud owners of two Cook Islands $3 bills that we’ll frame when this trip is over. They really are quite unique and beautiful

An important footnote as Palmerston is in the Cook’s but doesn’t have a formal Customs and Immigration department. If we didn’t have the paperwork that specifies “Niue via Palmerston” they might try and charge more fees in Palmerston to exit the country (i.e. the Cook’s). You learn this stuff when you’re cruising.

The other highlight of the day was going to the whale museum. There’s a really spectacular museum here all about whales. It’s very interactive. They encourage you to touch stuff; pick up bones, etc. We both remarked how in other countries we have known, about half of the stuff would have been stolen in the first week of its being open. But we’re here in the Cook’s and no such thing happens here. (Actually there is some crime as evidenced by a hand painted sign nailed to a tree that we saw that proclaimed; “There is a thief in this neighborhood”. An interesting take on neighborhood crime prevention.

Tomorrow we will go to the Saturday market one last time (sadly). It’s a lot of fun and very vibrant and full of music, crafts and food/vegetables. We’ll stock up for the next leg as well as hit the supermarket to replace canned goods, beer and such before having to give up our scooter at the end of the day (sigh). These are a lot of fun as you really “see” the countryside when riding by scooter.

So, getting ready to leave one great place and looking forward to new adventures.

The local brewery

...and the local beer maker (they use recycled bottles and don't package their own

Our scooter

I say a restful day for Bob because I am writing the blog tonight.

Restful for both of us because we had a beautiful relaxing scooter around the island on the interior roads. These roads don’t have as much traffic and are where the locals live. This is such a beautiful island. We saw lots of farms – papayas, taro, bananas and who knows what else! So lush even though we’ve only seen it rain once. And from the interior roads the view up into the valleys are just stunning.

The other great part about the interior roads is you run across local craft shops. We wandered down one road that indicated ukuleles and crafts were available. We were treated to a tour (wander through his work shed) of the whole process. This artisan had carved ukuleles as well as coconut ukuleles and some beautiful carved bowls. He was so happy to show us the whole process.

Another road took us to an island brewery. Again, we walked right into the brewing room and were given a taste test. This brewer only sells his beer here and in Aitutaki because there are no additives or preservatives so if a shipment was held up in customs it could go bad waiting to clear. Meanwhile his sister was hand washing recycled beer bottles. She told me that they pay 80 cents a bottle. They can get the restaurants to recycle for 10 cents a bottle. A winning proposition! Don’t worry, the hand washing was just the first stage of cleaning. Bob bought 2 liters for the boat, both came in recycled containers- one an old Fanta bottle, the other an old Coke bottle.

We finally got to watch one of the big container ships turn around in this bay. We chuckle when we hear ships being directed to the “international dock” here in Raratonga. But they really are an international harbor and there are some big ships coming in. And these dock workers are amazingly quick at unloading and reloading the ships. Typically it takes two days; one to unload, one to reload. Today we watched the latest ship whip a 180 with his bow thrusters and a nudge from a tug and head out. All this less than 70 yards yards away. Very fun to watch, but sometimes closer than we would like.

And the Cook Island dinner show that we went to with Orcinius was also very fun to watch. Every island group has their take on the dancing and drumming. We were not disappointed. We got a great description of the different drums (there were about 7 different drums) and their purpose. Fascinating. This dance group included young children training to replace the older ones. One little girl was missing her front teeth but smiled all the while! And this dance troupe also contained the best male dancer in the Cook Islands- based on this year’s contest. Ironically he was blond and did not look very Polynesian. But he loved to dance and he showed it with his smile and his enthusiasm. Unfortunately we will not be able to share it with you as neither I nor Lisa from Orcinius brought a camera. Generally pictures at these dance shows don’t show much. Tonight we had front row seats and the dancers hung around to have their pictures taken with the audience. Oh well!

The start to the cross island hike

The track across (not including the bit where we got lost)

Big leaves!

Tricky trail (and slippery)

Halfway there!

At the top, now time to go down

Almost done

Took the "Clockwise" bus back

Yep, we did it. 7 hours worth which included getting lost and backtracking which took up about 2 hours of the trip. With the getting lost part, we climbed a peak not on the path, then back down and climbed the peak that WAS on the track, thus we climbed two of the peaks on the island. We also lay claim to being one out of only two groups who did the hike and we were the oldest who managed it. The other group was a newlywed couple from New York. We saw about ten others on the trail, but they all just did the out and back to the peak called The Needle. Wimps! The toughest part was the peak that we were lost on. Very steep.

We did have one incident. We’ll call it the Gatorade incident. I had a liter of Gatorade in my backpack with the lid on crooked and half of it spilled…right into my Nikon D2 camera. This could have a detrimental effect on the trip as the camera is now inop and it is the one with the polaroid filter which is so important in this tropical light. It’s just dead and the LCD screen has water in it. The only thing I could think to do is wash it with fresh water and then I’m going to set it out in the hot sun tomorrow and see if I can bake it out. If not, I guess we’ll turn it into an artificial reef. Since I have two lenses for it, I imagine I’ll have to get another body but who knows when we’ll be somewhere again where that’s possible. Oh, well. We still have the pocket camera which takes pretty good pictures so all is not lost.

Once we got down from the mountain/hike, we convenient found a little shack on the beach that sold BEER! So, we sat out back in the sand and enjoyed a couple cool ones while waiting for the bus. And, we took the Clockwise bus back. We really wanted to take the Anti Clockwise bus because it sounded cooler, but by the time we got down to the road there was only one more bus before the two hour dinner break, so we just grabbed the clockwise one.

What was the hike like? Pretty dense jungle much of the way and gorgeous view from the top at The Needle. Steep and slippery but not as steep or scary as the Bora Bora climb. There were only two ropes on this one and it was only 412 meters high. But there were some memorable areas in the interior when we were hiking through a fern grotto where the ferns were 8-10 feet tall!

At this point as I’m writing this, we’ve had dinner and Lisa and Ann look like you could tip them over if you touched them on the side with a feather. I think we’ll sleep really well tonight.

There are long two bus lines. "Clockwise" and "Anti-Clockwise" since there is really only one road around the island

Some of the scenery (in this case a papaya plantation)

Today, we were finally able to leave the boats for the day. Seems like the dredging is done and since we’re tucked into a corner of the wharf, we’re not in the way of any ships that come in. So we went for a scooter tour.

Did I mention yet that you drive on the wrong side of the road in the Cook Islands. So not only am I getting used to piloting a scooter, but doing it on the wrong side of the road. We really have to stay alert. Ann’s job is to say; “Left side!” whenever we enter the roadway. The good news is that like Aitutaki, 80% or more of the traffic is scooters. It’s definitely the preferred mode of transport by locals and tourists alike. You see moms with little babies in their lap, the gardener carrying a weed whacker while cavalierly steering his scooter with one hand and my favorite, the very large woman who tied a cord around her stomach and then around her six year old in the back because the six year old’s arms were not big enough to hang on to her very large mother. In Aitutaki our favorite scooter was the dad wearing a harness that allowed his son, about 3 years old and carrying a chocolate donut, to hang on with his available hand. We could only imagine the collision between the donut and dad’s back at the first stop!

After a leisurely breakfast, we mounted our trusty steed and headed out clockwise around the island. There is only one road and you either go clockwise or anticlockwise. There are a few radial roads than go in ½ a kilometer, but the mountain in the middle of the island is so high and rugged that it dominates and doesn’t allow for development. Thus, this is quite a beautiful and unspoiled island. Very mountainous and jungle covered.

It was fun touring the island. We stopped for a fish burger lunch and later on for a coconut milkshake. In the mean time we stopped at a few deserted beaches and just went for a walk down the sand.

Our other fun event was visiting a gent who we met at the wharf. His name is Colin. He was on a scooter with his grandson Colin and they were off to their farm to do some weeding and were just looking at the boats when we started a conversation (we, sitting in our cockpit at the time). Turns out he has a jewelry business that he runs out of his home on the other side of the island and invited us over to see it. So we stopped by. He has a gorgeous piece of land right up on the mountain on the edge of the jungle. We brought some crystals that we found in Baja that we were interested in what to do with them. He pronounced them as possibly amethyst and cleaned them in his ultra sound machine and they absolutely sparkle. Fun! We might go back later in the week with some other crystals we have and see what we shall see about them.

Tomorrow we’re going to hike across the island with Lisa from Orcinius. It’s probably a six mile, 400 meter height adventure. When we get to the other side we’ll decide whether to take the “Clockwise” or “Anti Clockwise” bus back to the wharf.

Simple Pleasures.

Here’s a night-time addendum: Ann’s listening to the evening radio net to see where our friends are. They are scattered all over this part of the pacific from Samoa (Blue Rodeo) to Suwarrow (Ladybug, The Rose and others), Aitutaki (Sockdologer) and Bora Bora (Bright Angel) and the fun part is we are talking to them on the shortwave (note to future cruisers-this is an important piece of equipment. You don’t have the same social contact on a sat-phone).

More locally, there’s a tugboat just across the small harbor and I can see one of the crew fishing for dinner off the stern of the boat. Also, the stars tonight are unusually bright and I’m looking out of the cockpit right up to the Southern Cross which is beckoning just over the top of the mountain we’re going to hike across tomorrow. A good omen!

Med-Moored with the big guys

Enjoying a Charisma from our spot on the quay

That about sums up today’s efforts. I got my Cook Islands Motorcycle license this morning and we now have a scooter for exploring Rarotonga. This is a bigger island with some actual traffic, hence the license, whereas in Aitutaki, 2 cars was considered a traffic jam. OK, the license was the good news, the bad news was that around noon, the Port Authority asked us to stand offshore while they did some final dredging in the harbor. We left around 1300 and didn’t get the all clear to come back in until 1630, so basically we hove to a couple hundred yards offshore all afternoon and got some reading done.

When we finally got to come back in the dredge was right in the way of our mooring spot, so we had to go around the dredge turn toward it, drop the hook right in front of it, pivot 90 degrees and back into our spot. The guys on the dredge were all watching intently to see if we would be able to accomplish it. I’m happy to say we’re actually getting competent at the med-moor thing and pulled it off (much to my surprise-I was expecting the worst). Ann is getting very good at the windlass and I seem to be able to harness the prop walk into something that gets us backing where we need to go. Of course extra hands on shore make it all possible. Very few monohulls do this maneuver with ease. The cats make it look easy though with their twin engines.

So that’s about it for this day. There’s still a possibility that tomorrow may look the same as the Port Captain says there’s a big barge they have to bring in and moor near us. However, Orcinius and we are hoping that we got the spots that are tucked in enough that we don’t have to move at this point. If we do, well that’s OK it’s sort of part of cruising-expect the unexpected. If we don’t, then we’ll hop on our scooter and tour the island (it’s very beautiful! We can see stunning jungle covered mountains from the boat). We plan to stay through Saturday unless the Port is so difficult to work with that we decide to leave. If it works out we’re going to do a cross island hike. You can hike from here to the other side and take the bus back. There are two bus lines here-the Clockwise bus and the Anti-clockwise bus. That’s it!

Here’s hoping!

One of our faithful readers, Elan Caspi who sailed down to Mexico with us on the Ha Ha last Fall and who has himself sailed to the Marquesas noted that I goofed on the Lat/Lon the other night (thanks Elan!). The correct Latitude/Longitude for our current location is as follows:

21 degrees, 12 minutes, 17 seconds south; 159 degrees, 47 minutes 07 seconds west

I accidentally transposed the seconds into the minutes.