The Kingdom of Tonga! It was a 10day passage from Maupiti to Vava’u in Northern Tonga – the longest passage so far. All the wind models indicated that we should take a broad northerly sweep to avoid high seas & strong winds further south. So with this in mind we set sail early morning, bouncing …
After spending such a fabulous time with Alice & Wil, it was time to look ahead to leaving French Polynesia and heading westward. There were a couple of reasons why we wanted to move reasonably quickly to Fiji (via Tonga) and leave the boat in a marina for a few weeks whilst we return to …
Our passage back from Tahanea to Moorea was a good one. Apart from some heavy rain showers when we passed north of Tahiti, we had a dry, calm and following wind trip. We even got to use our symmetrical spinnaker for the first time which went really well. 12 knots of wind behind us and …
Our first night’s passage out of the Gambier Islands on the way to Tahanea provided a real treat – a blood moon eclipse! And a very fine spectacle it was too as the night was cloudless & we were able to watch the whole eclipse right through to the finale, when the lunar surface became …
We had read about Hervé and Valerie in our cruising compendium and as I mentioned before, they are well known to the cruising community. They live with their son on the eastern side of Taravai, in a lovely cottage on the edge of the beach, which has been in Hervé’s family for generations. (Interestingly, this …
We were happy to finally arrive at the Gambier Islands. Not exactly by Christmas as originally intended, but nevertheless we achieved our goal of sailing to this remote archipelago! Better late than never! The Gambier islands lie about 1700km SE of Tahiti and consist of a single lagoon of 30km2 within which there are 5 …
I don’t think there are enough superlatives to describe the small atoll of Amanu, which so aptly fits the description of a South Pacific paradise. This is an absolute gem and we feel lucky to have been ‘stranded’ here whilst awaiting favourable winds to get us to the Gambier Islands. We have been here for …
Slow boat to Amanu As I write this we are dawdling along in very little wind, with mainsail & jib wing on wing, (ie on opposite sides) doing about 3 knots. Such a contrast to the strong winds we experienced in Makemo, where we tucked in as much as we could off the village to …
It was clear that after our haul out, with 2 nice clean hulls devoid of aquatic flora, that our speed through the water had significantly increased. Even just motoring around the lagoon we noted at least a 1 knot increase in speed for the same revs. So now that this factor has been eliminated, we’ll …
After Edward & Alicia departed we felt a little flat – I guess it just highlighted our isolation from all our family at the moment & we miss them all. Certainly a different experience with just Bill & I than the partially controlled mayhem that accompanied our circumnavigation with 3 kids 18 years or so …