Exploring Niue

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday trying to see all that we could with a rental car. This island is stunningly beautiful and when I can get a good internet connection (probably Tonga in a couple of weeks) I will upload the pictures we took. There are many caves along the coast and there are trails leading to a lot of them. We got some great touring info from Keith, the yacht club commodore, and following his advice certainly paid off. We got to the caves on the west coast at low tide and were able to wander around and search the caverns and look into the pools. The water colour was an almost too perfect shade of blue. We saw stalactites and stalagmites, some floor to roof, some just barely starting. The "new" ones look like eggs frozen in the rock, really amazing to see. We stopped at a place called Limu Pools to have a snorkel next. It is fed with fresh water and the ocean swell provides a mix of salt water as well. The two layers (fresh and salt) are quite distinct and the boundary between them creates a blur when you are looking through a mask on the surface. The fresh water sits on top and to get to the warm ocean water you have to dive down. A bit backwards from what we are used to. Just before lunch on Tuesday, we walked out to the Talava Arches on the north end of the island. You scramble through this low cave and using a rope (provided) you work your way down to the shore. There are two arches, one right on the coast and one inland. The inland one you really don't realize is there as it is very high. There was a small bar/patio at the head of the trail so we had lunch there and then went down a much shorter trail to the swimming hole. It's a chasm that has a narrow entrance from land with sides that are near vertical. You are protected from the ocean by a rock wall on the seaward side that lets some swell in but not much. The lagoon is fed with fresh water and is substantially cooler than the ocean.
Wednesday, the major excursion was to a place called Togo Chasm on the east coast. A good 30 minute bush walk brings you to the coast. The landscape is unique. There are rows of sharp uplifted limestone that march in parallel lines towards the ocean. This island is still rising and these represent some of the movement (I'm guessing here!) The government has made a path to get to the actual chasm which is an oasis of white sand, complete with palm trees, surrounded by vertical walls. Access to the bottom is via a long and large ladder. The ladder verticals are the size of telephone poles so it's nice and solid. We were glad we went on Wednesday and it did drizzle off and on on Tuesday and the ladder may have been a bit slick. Once you are in the chasm, you can scramble through a cave system to get out to the coast at sea level. We have never seen anything like it, and it is probably the most amazing bit of geography we have seen anywhere in the world. We toured most of the island roads and with only 1500 inhabitants; most of the place is pretty deserted. We did visit the Noni farm that is probably the biggest bit of agriculture on the island. Noni fruit grows naturally in the islands and is the juice is touted as a wonder elixir. You sure don't drink it for the taste, which is quite frankly, pretty bad. They are currently shipping between 10-15 tons of juice a month and are hoping to increase production. They have interest from Japan, China and Germany. The process is pretty simple, they hand pick the fruit which is about the size of a tangerine, wash it off and put the whole fruit in sealed barrels for 8 weeks. The juice works it's out of the fruit and they then press it and pasteurize it prior to shipping it out. They harvest all year and pick every two weeks. The kiwi couple who are managing used to farm in NZ and have been here for only 6 months. They have gone through 4 managers in 5 years, a pretty remote place to work. Tonight is sausage and beer night at the yacht club, and today is also the last day on the island for many of the tourists that we have met. The weekly flight leaves Friday AM anywhere between 04:00 and 5:00, depending on the arrival time. We have no set plans to leave so will get to greet the next lot of tourists arriving.

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And the Whales Make Free in the Harbour

The humpback whales are here! Each night we see them around the boats, yes around the boats. Friday night they were around Toketie and Madeline (a young American couple Jeremy and Megan). Saturday night they were around us. We were sitting below after dinner and we heard them blowing right next to the boat. Kind of freaks you out.
We went for a bit of a walk on shore on Sunday and explored a few of the sea tracks from the road down to the cliff edge. The last one we went down we sat and watched a pod of humpback whales slowly work their way north along the coast. I hope to see them during the day around the boats as the water is so clear you can see over 35 meters to the bottom. It would be fantastic to see them swimming. The whales continue to amaze us. Sunday night we listened to them underwater as they swam beneath the boat. They are calving here so lots of noise and activity.
We continue to have a great reception from people here. Sunday, we hitchhiked down to the south end of the island to the Washaway Café, the only self serve bar in the South Pacific. It is on the "Must Do" list here. Willie, the owner/cook/host is great. During a slow time he came over and we talked about the island, the culture, the people, what was happening and why. He had spent a number of years in New Zealand as a mechanic and came back to Niue recently. Like everyone else here, he has a number of things on the go to earn a living. He has the café that is open on Sundays, he is a fishing guide, and he is the local mechanic. His experience with cyclone Heta was a bit different. There used to be trees in front of the café that you could see through to the water. The cyclone wiped them out of course and now, there is a panoramic view of the shoreline and people can watch the whales from shore. Willie described it as a three million dollar view, courtesy of cyclone Heta. I call it urban renewal courtesy of nature's fury. We caged a ride back with an Australian couple who are here for a week on holiday that we had met the day before at the yacht club. Monday morning was laundry day. Part of the facilities provided by the yacht club is a shower/toilet block on the pier. It is kept immaculately clean and has this nice, large, stainless steel sink for doing your laundry in, a treat after doing it in buckets in the cockpit. Cathy and I spent the afternoon on shore walking around, arranging for a rental car and generally getting to know a few more of the locals. We went the local backpackers as they have a book exchange and met the owner Illa. Her family is from Niue but she was born and raised in New Zealand. Her father always wanted one of the daughters to return to Niue and a couple of years ago, Illa and her husband decided to do just that. They, again like everyone else here, have multiple jobs and are slowly making a living here. You won't get rich but everyone seems pretty content with things. We pick up a rental car today for the next three days to explore the island. There's a lot to see!

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Arrival on Niue

Around 05:00 we called Niue Radio to report our imminent arrival and the lady who answered couldn't have been more helpful. She welcomed us to Niue and asked us to call her back after 08:00 so she could arrange for customs clearance. We picked up a mooring south of the pier at Alofi at around 06:00 local time. David from Toketie was up and heard us call into Niue Radio and guided us to the mooring with his nice bright spotlight. That is the one piece of equipment we are lacking in board. Just after 08:00 we contacted Niue Radio again and they arranged for customs clearance for us at 09:00, on shore. Landing here by dinghy is a definite experience. They have blasted a channel through the narrow fringing reef and built a large pier. You take your dinghy in through the cut and let off your passengers on some rather slippery steps. You then go a little further in and there is this electric hoist where you attach your dinghy's lifting bridle to hoist the dinghy up onto the pier. If you don't, the surge would pretty much wreck it. Normally the swell is pretty low as it generally comes from the SE and the island blocks most of it. Just now there is a swell running here from a pretty big storm that is around New Zealand. Toketie came and picked us up in their dinghy and the 4 of us headed for shore. The passenger drop off was interesting. Cathy was first off and after waiting for the swell to lift the dinghy high enough, she got off with only a small scrape on her knee. Linda and I got off next then David took the dinghy down to the hoist. Luckily for us, Ernie, and 81 year old gentleman from the yacht club here (more on that in a bit) had come down to the pier to give us a hand getting in. We got the dinghy hoisted and just in time as shortly afterwards, a couple of big breaking swells came in through the cut.
Customs clearance was simple and easy, one form to fill out and then on to the police station for immigration. There, each person fills out an arrival declaration and your passport is stamped and you're here, simple as that. It was a lot different from Mexico ad French Polynesia.
We made our way to the local market and found some fruit and Roti (chicken and veggie wraps) and then on the yacht club to register for the moorings we are using. The Niue Yacht Club (NYC) is probably the only yacht club in the world where the resident members don't have a boat between them. As there is no harbour here, yachting is not a recreational pastime. We met the manager (Jim) and his wife (Mamata) and got checked in. Something about Jim seemed familiar but I was tired and didn't think any more of it. As we were sitting there in the shade, Keith, the yacht club commodore showed up. We talked for a bit then he offered to take the 4 of us on a brief tour along the waterfront.
Cyclone Heta devastated Niue in 2004 and most of the damage was around the main settlement of Alofi. Niue is the largest raised coral island in the world. It has a central plateau which his about 70 meters above sea level and the fringing area along the coast is about 30 meters above sea level. When the cyclone hit, the waves reached 32 meters and destroyed most building along the shore line. The fuel storage tanks by the wharf were damaged and one was knocked sideways off its base. Ernie, the gentleman who helped us with the dinghy hoist, had his house and workshop along the cliff destroyed. The waves literally removed everything. All that's left is the concrete pad with the highest remaining thing being the base of the toilet. It was scoured clean. As a result of Heta, many of the islanders relocated to New Zealand where they hold citizenship. There are only about 1500 residents left on the island. It's a beautiful place, remote and essentially unspoiled. Keith also took us along to the local jail (currently unoccupied) and gave a bit of a history of some of it's notorious inmates. There was one guy, a large Maori, serving time for assault, who was troublesome to the guards. Well one day, he just wouldn't do anything that he was told and picked up the guard and pinned him against the wall. He guard kicked him where it would hurt the most and then went to his truck and got his shotgun, loaded with light birdshot. Well the birdshot only made Maori angrier so the guard went back and reloaded with slugs and killed him. The guard was convicted of manslaughter (despite the fact that most islanders wanted to give him a medal) and served quite a long sentence. During his incarceration he created a beautiful market garden and landscaped the grounds which are really quite beautiful. Quite an interesting little tour.
We went back to the yacht club and had coffee and scones and just generally chilled out in the shade. I was just finishing my coffee when this tall guy comes in. I recognized him right off. Ian and I had worked together in Ericsson New Zealand during the mid nineties. He is currently working for a group that running the "one Laptop per Child" campaign in the South Pacific. The idea is pretty unique. MIT has developed, from the ground up, a laptop computer for 6-12 year olds in developing countries. It uses some pretty unique networking schemes and is also enabled for WIFI for internet connection. He is here with 500 laptops for the local school kids a pilot in advance of the South Pacific Leaders Summit that is on Niue this year in the middle of August. It's a fantastic program and I really hope it gains acceptance. Anyhow, Ian and I had a great chat and I got to do something that I had wanted to do since the last day I was with Ericsson. As I was leaving Ericsson on the last day in 1999, Ian came up to me and said "They really don't appreciate all that you have done here, but I do". I'm sure I said thanks at the time but I wanted to reiterate to him as it meant a lot at the time and still means a lot. He will be here for a couple of weeks and I am going to try and get together with him at lest once before we leave. As we were leaving I ran into Jim again and we got to talking about New Zealand etc and I told him about my encounter with Ian. He got this funny look in his eye and asked if I knew a guy named Dominique Jodoin. Well, Dominique was the reason we went to NZ in the first place in 1996. I then asked Jim what his last name was as we had previously introduced ourselves first name only. He replied "Jim Gill". My brain we thunk. I worked with Jim in the Asia region during the nineties with Ericsson and spent nearly a week with him in Beijing in 1999 during a user conference. So, within the first 4 hours of being in the smallest republic in the world, I met two people I knew, a very small world indeed
The rest of the day was spent wandering around Alofi and waiting for the tide to turn so we could return to the boats. It was quite the first day on Niue.

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The One That Got Away

Well, imagine our surprise yesterday afternoon when, after nearly two days with the line in the water, the fishing reel starts squealing. We rushed into the cockpit and about 200 meters behind the boat, I see this lovely fish jumping, trying to throw off the hooks. I ran up on deck, dumped the main sail and we quickly furled in the genoa. (Exciting so far isn't it). After about 5 minutes I managed to get the fish along side and I had hooked, what looked like, a 15 pound sailfish. I tried to net it and missed and just when I went to go a second time, the line broke! Oh well, Cathy did see it, and can, and will corroborate the story under oath if need be. It was hard to see the broken line and realize just how close we were to having fresh fish for dinner, lunch, breakfast, dinner, lunch, etc. We would have been eating the fish for 4 days. Unfortunately that was my last hoochie (plastic squid) and I don't have anything else to drag behind (except maybe Cathy). Perhaps I will find something in Niue.
We started to loose the wind late yesterday and by evening we were down to 4 knots or so. As we weren't going to make it to Niue Thursday anyways, we decided to just keep going at that pace. Again, unfortunately, the wind went lighter still and by 04:00 we were down to about 2 knots. The weather was not encouraging to stick it out as the forecast is for light variable winds for the next 5 days. We are basically in the middle of a high pressure system that is almost centered over Niue. We are running at low revs to try and conserve diesel as much as possible as it is around NZD 2.50 a litre to replace it. The motor was a bit difficult to start but has been running fine. I'm hoping that a good long run under load will clean it out. I just ran it up to full RPM and it didn't miss a bit so maybe the airlock is gone and we are back to normal. The problem is likely dirty fuel and getting air in the lines when changing filters, I hope!

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Wind and Sun and Fishing

Yes, I am fishing. I got the urge this morning to figure out how to get a line in the water from the comfort of the cockpit and after a bit of head scratching got it sorted out. Now all we need is a nice Mahi-Mahi for dinner (hahaha). So far my record fishing since we left Canada is fish 2, Brian 0. I did hear some sage advice from a fellow cruiser awhile ago that will help my fishing immensely. Apparently you actually have to put the hook into the water, go figure. I kept hoping for one to just jump into the cockpit and nicely expire. I'm not sure what kind of fish we can possibly get as we are sailing at 5-6 knots, it will have to a pretty quick one. We had a light wind day Sunday afternoon and night but winds started to fill in again yesterday and we spent most of the day under full canvas. We reefed down as it got dark to mizzen and genoa as the winds came up a bit. We still averaged between 5-6 knots so all is good. We are getting little anxious about the weather as it looks to start going light in the next day or two so we are trying to get as many miles under the keel as possible. At our current rate, we will make Niue at dusk on Thursday, not great but not too bad. We will able to contact Niue Radio via SSB when we get close and hopefully get assigned a mooring. The other idea is that we will get to Niue Friday morning, which either means slowing down on purpose or getting slowed down by the weather. Regardless we will get there when we get there. It turns out that the boats that went north to Suwarrov sailed through a shear line, with reported winds to 45 knots. They are still getting 30 plus knots around Samoa. There was a bit of damage reported from the boats, one cracked mast from a knock down, one broken boom and torn sails. We are sailing in almost ideal conditions here and are glad we decided NOT to go north to the Samoa's.

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Still Sailing

The winds are still 15-20 knots and the seas aren't too bad and we are still moving along between 5 and 6 knots. The only down side is the seas. They are FAR from regular and the swell period is quite short. We are taking them on the stern and it is eerie to watch sometimes as the swell comes up behind you at 3 meters and gently lifts the stern and passes under the boat. The wind steering does an amazing job surfing us down the waves and we have seen over 8 knots at times on the downhill slide. Every once and awhile we get slapped on the side by a cross wave and take water onto the enclosure. Are we ever glad to have the enclosure! We have had both side panels in since the first night and the cockpit has stayed dry despite some pretty good waves over the port side. The boats north us going to Suwwarrov and Samoa have been getting a lot more wind and have reported taking waves into the cockpit and flooding down below. We tend to leave the hatch boards in when it gets like this. I guess others will now too. The catamaran rush made it safely to Aitutaki last night and is waiting for good light to enter the pass. Alan has to be careful with currents as his power comes from a 9.9 horsepower outboard. He thinks it should be OK. Elyios is 175 miles from Rarotonga and after a rough first night are cooking along at 7 knots or so. When I spoke to them a couple of days ago, they weren't happy but conditions have moderated and they are making good time. The weather is really in our favour just now. The high pressure system south of us has nice, evenly spaced isobars where we are which means consistent winds at 15-20 which is what we are getting. With a bit of luck we will make landfall Thursday in Niue although we need to keep our speed up to do it. Still over 500 miles to go.

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Wind, Wind, Wind

As the saying goes, be careful what you ask for. We saw increasing winds from yesterday early morning and have been sailing in 25-30 knot SE winds for the past 26 hrs. We expect this to continue for the next day or two then ease back to 15 knots or so. We were running just aft of a beam reach with reefed mizzen and about half a headsail but decided to go more downwind this morning to ease the ride and dropped the mizzen. The wind steering is taking us along nicely and we are actually running quite flat just now. We are averaging 5 1/2 to 6 knots so are putting lots of miles under the keel. I am running a small controlled SSB net with Toketie, Rush and Elyios. We are all experiencing similar conditions. The difference is that Toketie is a 17 ton full keel steel cutter, Rush is a 35 foot catamaran and Elyios is 38 ft full keel cutter with a small child (2 year old) on board, makes for interesting choices. Everyone is OK, which is the main thing. The boats that headed north to Suwwarrov and Samoa are getting 35+ plus knots and at this point the swell and winds will stop people from getting into Suwwarrov as it's and Atoll and the pass will be treacherous in these conditions. We are running on course for Niue and if we continue at this rate will make it by Thursday AM next week at the latest. We are both getting lots of sleep as even sitting in the cockpit is a workout, not to mention the art of using the toilet in these conditions which I won't get into further. All movement is one hand for the boat and one hand for yourself. I had lots of fun this morning taking the mizzen down then going out to the foredeck to plug the hawse pipe (the hole the anchor chain goes through for you non-nautical types), and tie down the whisker pole. What's a whisker pole you ask, well, if you have a beard and the wind is blowing, you need to have this pole to hold on to on the boat due to the increased wind resistance on your face due to the beard. Not buying that explanation, OK, it's used to hold the headsail out when you are running deep downwind. Enough for now, must check the course and conditions again.

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Underway Again

The week has flown by so far. We spent half of Monday the 14th in the village of Vaitape watching the Bastille Day festivities. There was a parade, speeches, a traditional foot race, all kinds of fun. There must have been a couple of thousand people in the parade itself, not bad considering the total population of the island is only 5000 or so. There were more in the parade than watching although there was a great turnout. They had floats, they had groups marching but what they didn't have was marching bands. All the resorts participated and for the first time ever, I saw pastries on display in a parade. The Intercontinental Resort had this elaborate display of pastries carried by 4 buff guys. The pastries were carried like a sedan chair. The rest of the group from their resort were carrying small plates with cookies and pastries on them, but they weren't giving them away. It was a bit bizarre. The parade came down the road, looped into an area that had been set up for the month long festival (dancing, choral) past a reviewing stand with appropriate dignitaries, back out onto the road again and through the village. Once that was all done, the local politicians got into their act and the Mayor of Bora-Bora who also happens to be the President of French Polynesia, gave a VERY long winded speech that repeated itself quite a bit. One of the basic truths in this world is that politicians like to hear themselves talk and assume that everyone else does too. The foot race was spectacular. There were maybe 10-12 guys and they had to run a course that had to be a kilometre long, carrying a pole that was 6 feet long and maybe 8 inches in diameter that had fruit tied on to each end. Not just any fruit. They had a full hand of bananas on each end as well as several coconuts on each end. These poles were heavy. By the time they got back to the finish line, they were hurting pretty bad, but everyone made it back. I went down and watched them inspecting the poles after the race and it was taking two officials to pick up and inspect each pole. They then brought out the free beer and pastries for everyone which we took a pass on. The crowds were pretty thick as you can well imagine.

On Tuesday (my birthday), we were in town early and checked out with the Gendarmes and retrieved our bond refunds from the bank. We did the last of our shopping and were back on board by 10:30. A few more chores and a saltwater scrub and we took our last few French francs and headed to the yacht club to enjoy a nice cold beer sitting on the deck looking out over the anchorage. It was great. We had Ann and Barry over for dinner and also invited Glenn and Marilyn from another Canadian boat called Tin Soldier. Glenn and Marilyn only stayed for a drink but it was great of them to come over. Ann made me a birthday cake which was way cool and Cathy prepared an awesome roast lamb dinner. I'll likely always remember turning 47 in Bora Bora.

We pulled up anchor this morning around 09:30 and said goodbye to French Polynesia. We are heading for Niue and hope to get there in 8 days or so. It's just over a thousand miles. We motored for the first couple of hours and then the wind came in enough to sail for the next few. It died out and we have been under power for the past 6 hours. There are clouds forming as I write so I am hoping to see some wind in the next few hours. It will come!! I think we must have got some bad fuel somewhere as we have been going through fuel filters at a great rate. The engine quit about an hour and half ago and once again it was a plugged filter. I'm really glad we spent the money in San Francisco and got the dual Racor fuel filters. A flick of a lever and you are up and running on the other filter and then you can change the plugged one while you continue on your merry way. Hopefully we are getting the last of the gunk out of the tanks now.
Sunday July 13, 2008 Bora-Bora Yacht Club
We moved from Bloody Marys to the Bora-Bora Yacht Club on Friday. There are new owners and they are in the process of fixing it up. There are a few moorings here but we decided to anchor as they charge or moorings here. Moorings are 2000 CFP per night, about $25 dollars but we are trying to conserve a bit, and we have a perfectly good anchor. The weather has been a bit strange with fronts passing through bit not much wind, just occasional gusts. The boats that have left to head west in the past few days have had light winds if they went north towards Suwarrov and those heading to Raratonga are getting 20-25 knots from the SW, right on the nose!! We are looking at leaving here later in the week if the weather settles down they way it has been predicted to. By Wednesday/Thursday the easterly trades look to build back in and stay steady for awhile, maybe long enough to get us to Nuie. Not mush happening around here the past few days, getting the boat back in passage condition after 3 months of short hops. Nuie is 1050 miles so we are looking at 8-10 days depending on the wind. Better wind, faster passage, we'll just have to see.

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Bora-Bora Yacht Club

We moved from Bloody Marys to the Bora-Bora Yacht Club on Friday. There are new owners and they are in the process of fixing it up. There are a few moorings here but we decided to anchor as they charge or moorings here. Moorings are 2000 CFP per night, about $25 dollars but we are trying to conserve a bit, and we have a perfectly good anchor. The weather has been a bit strange with fronts passing through bit not much wind, just occasional gusts. The boats that have left to head west in the past few days have had light winds if they went north towards Suwarrov and those heading to Raratonga are getting 20-25 knots from the SW, right on the nose!! We are looking at leaving here later in the week if the weather settles down they way it has been predicted to. By Wednesday/Thursday the easterly trades look to build back in and stay steady for awhile, maybe long enough to get us to Nuie. Not mush happening around here the past few days, getting the boat back in passage condition after 3 months of short hops. Nuie is 1050 miles so we are looking at 8-10 days depending on the wind. Better wind, faster passage, we'll just have to see.

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Bloody Marys

We moved over to the main island of Bora-Bora on Monday and decided to try and get a mooring at a place called Bloody Marys. The restaurant/bar is a well known fixture on the island and they have put in moorings for use of their guests. The three Canadian boats arrived here together (Toketie, Cats Paw IV and Tarun) and there were actually three empty moorings. We went ashore and found Rick (owner or manager, not quite sure) he made us feel entirely welcome. He said the rules are simple; you can stay 4-5 nights on the mooring before moving on and eat, drink and be merry. He then went on to tell us that there was free water at the end of the dinghy dock and to use it as needed. So all they ask, is that you have a drink at the bar, or a meal, and feel welcome. We went in for a drink the first night and shared an appetizer at the bar, talked to a bunch of really great people and had a wonderful time. We decided we weren't going to spring for dinner as it is a bit expensive, but had a beer Tuesday night and lunch there on Wednesday which was quite reasonable. It is a bit awkward getting into town but you can generally get a ride hitchhiking or a longish dinghy ride if it's not too windy. We went for a long walk on Wednesday and found a dive place so Ann (from Cats Paw IV) and I booked to go for a couple of dives on Thursday. Cathy decided that she didn't want to dive with sharks so backed out. We got picked up Thursday morning at the dock at Bloody Marys and off to the dive centre. A very professional operation and we were on the boat by 08:15 and in the water for our first dive by 08:45. We did the first dive inside the reef looking for Manta rays and unfortunately saw only one but did see lots of fish and it was a great dive. We went back to the dive shop for a break and after being out for an hour we went outside the reef to dive with the sharks. They feed the sharks here to keep them around (I wondered if they fed them the odd diver but decided not to inquire too closely). There are Lemon sharks and Black Tip sharks here and they are pretty amazing. There was one pregnant female that was at least 3 meters long and we were told that she will shortly leave the area to give birth before returning. We saw a lot of sharks! They are magnificent underwater. Other highlights of the dive were large schools of fish and great coral. We saw one school of yellow-fin tuna but when I think about the ciguateria poisoning that you can get by eating larger reef fish, you kind of loose your appetite for them. Thursday night we went in to see the best male and female dancers for their month long Heiva festival. The place was packed and the dancers were stunning. Today we will leave the mooring and head over towards the yacht club and anchor for a few more days until we check out next week and head west, likely now for Niue but who knows!

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Feeding the Rays

Saturday morning we moved away form the town anchorage to the other side of Motu Toopua to try and find a quieter anchorage. We ended up in about 10 meters of water on a sand/clay bottom so nice and secure. We spent the afternoon snorkelling and generally relaxing.
Sunday started with chores, laundry, engine service, scrub the hull, you know the standard Sunday jobs. Mid morning we got a call on the VHF that the tour boats were arriving on the reef close to where we were anchored to feed the Manta Rays. Along with Toketie and Cats Paw IV, we a headed over to get a look. We anchored our dinghies a respectable distance away and after a warning from the guide not to swim with fins but to walk over only, we made our way closer to his group. The six of us stood off to the side and stayed in a group so we didn't interfere with the tour and watched as the guide fed the rays. They were swimming all around us, it was unbelievable. A 4-5 foot black tipped reef shark swam lazily by which was pretty amazing. We've seen smaller sharks around the boat but this one was a respectable size and we were in the water. We all stood there spellbound as the rays gently swam around us and tour group. After the guide had finished with his group, he came over to me and handed me a fish to feed the rays. I was blown away. Here we were taking advantage of his tour that he got paid for, and he is offering me the same thing that he gives his tour group. Anyhow, I held this small fish down in the water and this big ray, swam up and ate it out of my hand, quite gently really. After that they rays were all over us, swimming right up and rubbing against us looking for more fish. The experience was fantastic, and the generosity of the guide was amazing. Part of it, I believe, was due to the fact that as a group, we were careful to stay separate from his tour and were content to watch and not interfere. Feeding the rays, an awesome experience.

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Bora-Bora

On Thursday we sailed and motored up to Tapuamu Bay on the west side of Tahaa. We got there mid morning and decided to go snorkelling across on the reef. There were three Mmotus and you beached your dinghy on the middle one, walk along shore towards the outer reef, mask and fins in hand then drift back through the pass between the Motu's with the current. It was fantastic. Lots of life, anemones, fish, coral and shellfish. We spent about an hour there before heading back. The rest of the day was spent on fuel and cleanup. Friday we upped anchor early and headed for Bora-Bora, about 25 miles away. We pulled up sails in just after we got the anchor up and sailed about 2/3 of the way. Light winds but good seas. When we got the south end of Bora-Bora, we got great wind rounding the island and had Tarun up to 8 knots surfing the swells, very cool. The fun really began though as we got ready to tack into the entrance and we got hit by a big squall with 35 knots and a ship was coming out of the pass at the same time. Always nice to hit squalls with all your sail up. Got a bit wet but it passed within 10 minutes and we got in OK. We anchored north of the main township of Vaipae. The reason for the early departure was to get to the bank before they closed. We had to order/reserve New Zealand Dollars for the refund of our Bond when we leave. If we didn't, they would refund us in French Polynesian Francs which are pretty useless outside of here. The lady at the bank couldn't have been more pleasant, and the appropriate reservations were done. On the walk back to the dinghy, we saw then setting up for a big spectacle that night so we went and asked and found out that there was a choral group and a dance group performing. We bought tickets at 1500 CFP each (a total of around 40 dollars) and were treated to 2 ½ hours of performance. It was great. The costumes and choreography were stunning. The dance troupe had 40 plus dancers, 10 or so musicians, and 8 people singing, quite a troupe.

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Raitea

We sailed around the top of Raitea on Monday in a nice 10-15 knots. We ended up anchoring on the NW side of the island just outside of the boat yard. The only reason for coming here was to get our propane tank filled. I took the tank in and it took until the next day to get it back. They gravity fill them and it takes awhile. We did manage to get into the town of Uteroa for groceries on Tuesday. There is little or no public transport here and getting around either means LONG walks (5 km each way), a bit of luck hitchhiking (strangely difficult here), or shelling out for a taxi. We got a taxi. There is a public dock at Uteroa but the wind and tide can make it rough on the boat and difficult to get out of. After the expedition to town, we had a Canada Day pancake breakfast on Tarun with the other two Canadian boats that were here, Toketie and Cats Paw IV. Tuesday night we went over to Cats Paw IV for a Canada Day party, and I was persuaded to take my guitar along. I been writing lyrics about our trip to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald" and I finally played it through. We also managed to mangle our way through a couple of Stan Rogers songs, all very Canadian. Yesterday was an off day, recovering, and sleeping. Today, Tahaa, and a fuel dock before we leave here for Bora-Bora.

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