Au Revoir French Polynesia, nearly saw you Tonga, and Bula Fiji!
Tuesday 23 August – well the best laid plans…. we had decided to leave this afternoon so Geoff and I went to the Gendarmerie to get our clearance papers, usually an easy formality.
Geoff was given a sheaf of forms to complete and then we were told that they had to be sent to Papeete to be signed off and that it would not be done until the next day…….after all this is France! So we made the most of one more night and had a lovely evening sitting on a bar leaner on the side of the water at a little tapas bar – Happy Hour first and then a delicious selection of charcuterie and crudities, and a plate of French cheeses and bread. A little bit of entertainment too when a small fishing boat pulled up alongside whilst one of the fisherman hopped out and brought in a huge tuna for the neighbouring restaurant’s chef!
Wednesday 24 August – back to the Gendarmerie to be given the bad news! The person signing us out was not working today and naturally there was no-one there to cover for him! I did my best (and this was no mean feat for those of you who know Geoff, to keep him calm!!!).
After a lot of arm waving (and other suggestions by Geoff!) Davide and Roman, the two gendarmes on duty, agreed to email us on Thursday as soon as the clearance came through, to save a possible wasted journey in on the dinghy and also me spending more money, as every time I went into the town I couldn’t resist the supermarkets and topping up on all the French delights even though they cost the earth. We spent the day pottering on the boat and Bryan helped Geoff get a lot of little jobs done which was very satisfying.
Thursday 25 August – good news and bad news…. we have an email to say our clearance papers are ready! Bad news….Geoff has just seen on Noonsite that yachts are not allowed into Tonga! This means a whole change to our plans and that we will now head straight to Fiji. Geoff jumped on the website to see if there were any advance papers required….lucky he did. He spent the next while downloading and printing forms whilst Bryan and I jumped into the dinghy and collected the clearance papers before the Gendarmerie shut for lunch! We also took the opportunity to pop into the post office and ask if there was any way they could help us with the Fiji documents as they would need to be scanned and emailed and there were far too many attachments for Geoff to do on his phone with the hopeless internet. The lovely lady said she would happily help us (and yes, I did manage to squeeze in one more supermarket visit!).
Back on the boat Geoff was frantically completing forms whilst I was putting together passports, vaccination documents, insurance policies, sticking a photo of the boat on the form and running through the checklist so we could get back to the post office before it shut at 3.15pm.
Back in the dinghy, we arrived there at 3pm. Our lovely friend calmly scanned, downloaded and put the documents onto an email and asked if we would like to add a message. Having good typing skills I told Geoff I could do it quicker, completely forgetting that we have a Qwerty keyboard and in France they have an Azerty keyboard, so the keys are in different places! Two sentences took me ages, the delete key was very busy going backwards and correcting, in the meantime the shutters were going down on the windows and door! We finally got it all done and our friend sent it all off to Fiji for us – we were so thankful to have such a friendly, helpful lady!
Friday 26 August – 8.00am and we’ve let go of the mooring and are off. The passage to Fiji will be about 3 days longer than to Tonga – luckily I had been into that supermarket so many times we have food coming out of our ears with a full freezer, fridge and cupboards!!!! One last bit of magic - as we sailed away from the beautiful twin peaks of Bora Bora we were farewelled by a whale languidly swimming past us – it must have been 10 metres long, what a perfect finale to a fabulous two months!
On our sail out we passed Maupiti Island where we had originally intended to stop, but having been delayed so much and looking at the reef and crashing waves surrounding it, we decided to give it a miss. So onward we go, cruising the blue Pacific.
Monday 29 August – well, it’s been a bit frustrating since we left as there has hardly been any wind and except for about 3 hours, we have motor sailed along at around 6 knots! Lovely and peaceful, but we’re going nowhere fast! Whilst I was on watch early this morning we did pass Aitutaki in the Cook Islands – about fifteen miles away so we are making some progress at least!
Tuesday 30 August – well, we’ve had a bit of excitement this afternoon 200 miles WNW of Aitutaki lies Palmerston Atoll which has about 6 motus. We’d seen it on our charts and wondered which country it belonged to, turns out it’s part of the Cook Islands. As it was on our route, we thought we would sail closer to it and have a look, it’s surrounded by reefs so we had no intention of stopping. As we got nearer to it, there was a Rarotongan Naval ship on exercises close by which made contact with us to ask our intentions, we told them that we were just sailing by and asked about the inhabitants, we were informed that they had still not been fully vaccinated against Covid so we could definitely not stop.
The Islanders are all descendants of one patriarchal figure, Bill Masters, a Lancashireman who settled on the island in 1862 with three Penhyrn Island wives. (Penhyrn Island is in the Northern Cook Islands). He fathered 26 children, divided the island and reef into parts for three families and established strict rules about intermarriage! Today his families still live and control the island and are scattered among the other Cook Islands and New Zealand.
As we sailed by we had a good look through the binoculars and could see a big satellite dish, some bures, a tractor being driven and a few aluminium boats – definitely an exotic, isolated island in the South Pacific, looks and sounds dreamy but I think I would be bored to tears living there after about 5 days!
Wednesday 31 August – we are desperate for wind, we are getting through our diesel and we knew we couldn’t carry enough to get us all the way to Savusavu in the first place. All Geoff’s weather websites are putting out warnings about the lack of winds and advising yachties to ensure they have enough diesel on board. That maniacal supermarket visiting of mine may come into its own after all if we run out and end up drifting around for weeks!!!!
Another bit of excitement today, but one we could all have done without! It was overcast and we could see rain over the bow. Furling the screecher requires a bit of attention as the leech does not roll until the last 2 metres of sail and if it’s blowing it doesn’t roll and ends up flapping in the wind which will eventually destroy it. We had a reasonably sudden increase in the breeze as Geoff and Bryan were trying to furl it, they were unsuccessful so the only course of action was to drop the whole thing on the deck and tie it up and deal with it after the rain and wind had abated. The heavens had well and truly opened by this time, Geoff yelled at me to get a life jacket on come up to the bow to help them.
We got the screecher under control on the deck and to ensure it wouldn’t blow over the side Bryan and I were lying on top of whilst it was billowing up all around us and Geoff was trying to tie ropes to it to attach it to the deck. All three of us got absolutely drenched by the rain – what a funny sight we must have looked.
Thursday 1 September – a glorious sunny day today, perfect weather and calm seas, a little too calm though as we are still waiting for some decent wind and are still motor sailing. We have sailed past Niue, although too far away to see it and I have done some laundry – all blowing nicely in the South Pacific breezes!
Friday 2 September – we’re still chasing the elusive wind. The good news is that it is not a glorious perfect weather day like yesterday, but rather a very grey day and as I’m writing this, it is pouring with rain and very humid, so we are hoping this will eventuate in more wind. Fortunately, unlike our previous long sail with Mike and Sheryl, we have no deadlines or flights to meet for Bryan, so we are not panicking and will just have to wait for the wind so we can sail in. If we had been going to Tonga as per our original plan we would have been almost there and had no diesel worries at all!
Saturday 3 September – great news! The wind came up overnight and we have been able to switch off the motors and are sailing along very nicely – back into sunny blue skies and cobalt blue seas. 3pm and we are just sailing past Fonualei Island in Tonga. Pity they won’t let us stop! It was all going along so nicely and then that darned screecher started spoiling the peace. The sailmaker had not fastened the top of the sail to the luff wire and he sail started sliding down the wire. We couldn’t roll it in this condition so had to drop the whole sail on the deck. I remember lying on the sail trying to weight it down and feeling the wind get under it and throwing me around on foredeck, it was kind of scary. Anyway, Geoff and Bryan got the sail under control with my help spreadeagled on top of it! We retied the head to the top of the luff wire, rehoisted it and we were again off down the course at a good clip.
Sunday 4 September – a lovely dawn, we have noticed the change in timing of sunrise and sunset. We had our dinner last night during sunset instead of in darkness, and this morning it was much darker when I got up for my second watch. We have some lovely breezes today and are going along very nicely with no engines on – perfect sailing weather. Geoff and Bryan have been working on the starboard engine for a good part of the afternoon and I have read three books in the last three days, other than that there is not much to report. We hope to be arriving in Fiji in tomorrow, Monday for us but Tuesday for our arrival as we will cross the international dateline.
Monday 5 September – annoyingly that fickle wind died sometime during the night so we are motor sailing along but it’s very slow going, ten nights in now and still hoping for an arrival today, maybe not in Savusavu but on Taveuni Island. It will just be nice to get off the boat, I have drunk too many cups of tea and eaten too many biscuits – it’s definitely time for me to get in some brisk walking and exercise!
The heavens have opened and we have all the pots out for the leaks in the cockpit, it’s just grey seas and grey skies with sheeting rain outside. 9.45am - the rain has stopped and Lookout Reef is just to our right – we are honing in on the target! 11.30am and we’ve just crossed the International Dateline, so Monday has quickly morphed into Tuesday and we have gone forward 22 hours, the same time as New Zealand so that will make life much easier.
We are now sailing past the biggest island in the Lau group of islands on our port side – Fiji here we come! 8.00pm on the dot and we have anchored in Vuna Bay, Taveuni Island for the night – 10 nights at sea, it’ll be so nice to have a full night’s sleep, no watches for us tonight, just a few nice celebratory glasses of good wine with dinner.
Wednesday 7 September – up early and Vuna Bay is looking very peaceful with calm seas and some lovely boats moored – we’re off across the Somosomo Strait to Savusavu so we can clear into Immigration and finally disembark. It’s about a 5 hour sail so we will be there by lunchtime. Bryan needs to find out about connecting flights to Nadi so he can hopefully link up with an Air New Zealand flight tomorrow, and I hope to be able to send this very long blog!
