Vavau Villa – Home of Queen Vanilla and Spotty So the next morning we languished on board pottering over the endless jobs while watching the tide slowly rising. There is a new bird to add to our list, a Noddy, brown or black and we have the black ones around here. They are like skinny …
Month: May 2018
18:39.61S 173:58.99W Tonga Vavau The scenery of the River Dart with the sounds of the Amazon. It is so still here. In our mooring field there is no swell and no waves as we are almost surrounded by land and it is windless for the time being. There are spells, even during the day, when …
19:03.30S 169:55.45N. Basking with whales Following the gale the winds remained in the high twenties giving us nice daily mileages but as we approached the biggest lump of limestone rock in the world that is Niue we realised we needed to slow Zoonie down to make a first light approach, and we are glad we …
17:08.09S 153:51.45W One day out from Bora Bora While waiting for our clearance document to come by email from Papeete in Tahiti we contemplated the next stage of our journey as Zoonie sat at anchor under the towering Mt Pahia and an invisible caged bird made a sound somewhere between the rusty hinge on a …
16:29.35S 151:45.16W Over the reef around Bora Bora. The next day was Sunday and we walked the 2.2km along the shore road, puddle dodging, into the town Vaitape to find most people just leaving their church service amidst much bonhomie. “Ia Orana” is the French Polynesian for “Hello” and we made ourselves use it in …
17:35.18S 149:36.93W Tahiti and following on in Cook’s Wake. We started by taking our life in our hands walking toward the oncoming traffic on a busy dual carriageway, (haven’t seen one of those since Bahia) for 10 minutes, to the Carrefour supermarket. Enterprising farmers set up their stalls along the road side to sell fruit …
9:54.47S 139:06.29W Baie Hanamoenoa on Tahuata south of Hiva Oa. It took only two hours in a moderate sea to arrive at the most beautiful bay with crystal clear water and a white sandy bottom. The world sailing couple Eric and Sue Hiscock of Wanderer fame reckoned this is one of the three most beautiful …
8.48.3S 139:01.73W Baie Taahuku on Hiva Oa. At 3.20am in the moonlight we could not miss the monolith of Hiva Oa, every lungful of breath smelling of flowers. The anchor went down next to our friends Torsten and Hille’s yacht Infinity, a 40 foot Halberg Rassy. We became friends during the ARC Portugal Rally in …