Rain in Raiatea

Saturdy 8 July The last two days have been wet!! We left Moorea just before sunset two days ago, with unsettled weather, but with anticipation for further adventures in the Leeward Islands of French Polynesia. We decided at the last minute to skip Huahine. We have less then two weeks on our visa before we have to "officially" leave and have to therefore make some hard decisions based on limited information. So, we decided to go to Raiatea instead of Huahine. Raiatea is only twenty miles farther on and next door but right now every day matters.

It was not an auspicious trip though. I got seasick from the start and it only got worse. We left just as the sun was going down in to a really rough swell that on top of the greasy pork chops that were dinner, I got queasy and stayed that way for the 100 miles to our next anchorage. Overnight or two night passages are the worst anyway as you don't get a chance to get used to the routine of watch keeping and the noise and feel of the boat on the open sea. Neither one of us got much sleep and I lost my breakfast the next morning before we got there. The wind kept changing direction all night too and we had to jibe three times before we even saw land. This is harder than it might sound as we always keep a preventer on our main boom to keep from having accidental jibes, and our main boom is a pain to jibe as we don't have a traveler for the main sheet and have to move the main sheet block and tackle over manually between three hard points, and when the wind is fluky, as it was, it can be a hazardous operation. Changing the preventer means climbing out on deck in the dark and moving the tackle from one side of the deck to the other and running the sheet back to the cockpit. In the daylight with good weather and rest and a calm stomach, no problem. As it was I was hating life! This was our morning to be the Coconut Cruiser Net control so we had to both go down below and man the radio - Cindy taking notes on boats and their positions with me controlling the net and calling for boats. I got sick just after the net and that is where I lost my breakfast. I don't do well down below when queasy obviously.

But, we made it fine and came in through yet another pass through a fringing reef into the Baie Faaroa where we were the only boat anchored in the back of a large and deep bay. As usual, the scenery was spectacular and the water very calm, just what we needed after the passage. This was at about 10:00AM and it was raining off and on. We goofed off, listened to the roosters and rested then went to bed early. The next morning after sleeping in to 7:30, we waited for the rain to break and made a dash to shore to take garbage and pick up water for our sun shower bags at the charter boat dock. Then we went up the river at the head of the bay looking for the botanical gardens supposed to be there. The clouds moved in though and turned our adventure in to a drowning while standing up ordeal. We tried to hide under some trees on the river but finally just went for it going as fast as we could just missing the shallow bottom that we hit on the way in. The drowned rats got on board and changed clothes and prepared to leave.

We decided to go out of the bay and up north to the main village - Utoroa - with rain squalls coming over us in waves, and got wet (in our new dry clothes) again. We took the channel between the reef and shore and made it fine despite warnings from the guidebooks about coral heads using our new Furuno chartplotter and picking out each channel marker out from the drizzle and rain as we could. But, when we got to Uturoa, no place to anchor - so we went past the airport looking for shallow spots to throw the hook down. We finally made it next to a boatyard in the midst of some other boats in this year's fleet. The sun came out and Bora Bora made an amazing appearance about 20nm to the west. It is really spectacular with its mountain spires rising out of the sea so quickly. We will go over there right before our visa expires but first we need to get to Uturoa which we understand is far enough that we will have to hitchhike there being no regular buses out this far. That will make getting our laundry to a Laundromat a tricky deal but we'll manage.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com