Date First Posted: June 4, 2006
Log Entry Start Date - May 13, 2006
Log Entry End Date - May 19, 2006
Locations Covered - Cruising Tahiti to Raiatea, Society Islands
Present Location: Marina Apooiti, Raiatea
Latitude: 16 Deg 43.7 S Longitude: 151 Deg 28.5 W
Weather: Partly cloudy, warm, occasional showers
Distance covered since last entry: 137 nautical miles
Total distance traveled since departure from Antigua: 6,507 nautical miles
Commentary:
After
a final BBQ with our new friends who are the crew aboard Zulu, we headed for
Raiatea by way of Moorea. The picture at right shows Moorea on the horizon
as we leave one of the western passes into Tahiti.
Moorea
is only about 15 miles from Tahiti, so it makes it a short trip by boat.
In fact, most visitors to Moorea take a high speed ferry to go from and to
Tahiti. The island has some dramatic peaks, including one that has a
hole through the top, which can be seen from Cook's Bay. Geoff climbed
up one of the peaks when he was here before. Unlike Tahiti, Moorea is
relatively unspoiled in spite of having several resorts around its shores.
We’ve
spent the past several days in Cook’s Bay in Moorea. This is the bay where
the movie Mutiny on the Bounty was filmed, and it has some dramatic mountain
peaks surrounding a large bay. The water is deep so anchoring was a bit of
a challenge, but we found a spot near the Bali Hai resort, one of the oldest
resorts in the islands. We managed to catch up with a few boats from the
Blue Water Rally just as they were getting ready to leave for the islands of
Huahine and Raiatea.
We
visited the Richard Gump Marine Biological Research Station on Cook’s Bay
and met up with Pete Edmunds, our son’s lead professor and faculty advisor
at Cal State University Northridge where he received his MS in marine
biology. We had met Pete a couple times in California and spent a nice
evening at his house in the mountains after Geoff had completed his defense
of his thesis.
The
Research Center is part of the University of California, Berkeley, and
is shared by universities around the USA performing various forms of
research. Since Geoff was here, they have received a number of large grants
that have allowed them to build some new research and teaching facilities,
some that were just being completed. Pete said that Geoff had to work under
a tighter budget than is currently available and Pete was quite excited
about the future prospects for continuing his research and teaching here.
We
had Pete join us on Encore one evening and had a great dinner at a diner on
shore, our only time ashore at Moorea. We were happy to have caught up with
Pete as he was leaving in just a couple days. Before he left, we donated
Geoff’s windsurfer and sails to the center. We thought that the students
would appreciate having some additional recreational equipment to use, given
that they work a pretty hard schedule for the weeks they are at Moorea.
Unfortunately Geoff hasn’t been able to join us on Encore II for a couple
years, so we felt that donating the windsurfer was OK and to a good cause.
Pete
did give us a recommendation for a snorkeling spot, and with his
credentials, we figured he would know the best spots to go. We had a clear
sky and the sun right overhead as we snorkeled just inside the northeast
reef around Moorea. It was just like an aquarium, with bright white sand
down about 6-10 feet and coral heads all around us. It reminded us of
driving through Zion National park as we swam between the coral, with steep
fluted sides, and sharp shadows.
The
water clarity was fantastic. The colors and variety of coral and fish
were perhaps the best we’ve seen in years, and we could have spent hours.
We did see a medium size (5’ or so) black tip reef shark cruising by about
10-15 feet away. It didn’t seem to even notice us, and is a variety that
generally is pretty safe to swim around.
We
left Moorea for Raiatea late on Mother’s Day. Raiatea shares a coral reef
with Tahaa and together they look like a figure eight. The aerial picture
at right was taken from space and retrieved using Google Earth.
We only visited Tahaa the last time we were here, so we didn’t know what to expect at Raiatea, but we understood that Uturoa, a town on Raiatea near where we will leave the boat, is the largest town after Papeete in the Society Islands. It is about 100 miles to the pass where we need to enter the lagoon, and this is just too far to make during a day passage when there are only 11 hours of light, and we didn’t want to leave too soon and arrive before dawn. Our winds started out perfectly, letting us sail into our final sunset at sea. With a course of 283 degrees, we expected a fair wind somewhere behind us given that the trades are normally from the NE to SE. Given Murphy’s Law, I suppose we weren’t surprised then to have the wind shift to exactly 283 degrees, right on the nose. We had a full moon, and motor sailing into a light breeze and low waves made for a pleasant overnight passage.
When we arrived at Raiatea, we crossed into the lagoon surrounding the island and circled around to the northwest side where the boatyard Raiatea Careenage is located. We went ashore and realized that the yard was not really what we had in mind for leaving the boat for over two months, and the yard manager arranged for us to get a dock at the nearby Marina Apooiti. This marina is the base for a fleet of charter sailboats managed by the Moorings, one of the largest charter companies in the world. As a result, the marina is well maintained and has good facilities and a couple of restaurants.
We
literally wedged ourselves into the dock, helped by several fellow cruisers
and the marina and yard staff. It was a tight fit and the marina is narrow,
so backing into our slip was challenging. Later, the neighboring boats left
and we had more room. We had only one full day left to get ready to fly
home. Besides defrosting our freezer, we put all of the moveable items
stored on deck, down below. We met with the marina manager and staff from
the boatyard who would be watching our boat while we were gone. All in all,
we are quite pleased and lucky to have ended up here in this marina, and
leaving the boat in good hands. Almost on schedule, we had hard rains the
last night. It seems it always rains just before we leave the boat, soaking
last minute laundry we had drying outside.
While
our trip from home to here took us from January to May, our return flights
took “only” 30 hours. We started with a 5 minute ride to the airport on
Raiatea and caught a mid-morning 45 minute flight to Tahiti. From the plane
we had great views of the islands, including the north coast of Moorea shown
in this picture. We then had about a 12 hour layover in Tahiti waiting
for our overnight flight to Los Angeles. We took a bus back to the marina
where we had stayed before in Tahiti and enjoyed a visit with our friends on
Zulu and a long lunch at the nearby restaurant. Our flight to LA arrived
early in the day and we then waited for a noon flight to Detroit that
arrived at 8 in the evening.
When we arrived, Detroit was just ending a record breaking period of rainy weather, nine straight days of significant rain, followed by a week of unseasonably hot weather including a record high of 92 degrees before the end of May. This was warmer than we had in French Polynesia.
Now that we are home, Nancy is restoring her garden (it already looks great) and we’re collecting the items on our list to take back to the boat when we return the end of July. This will be our last website update until we resume our cruising. The next update may be just before we leave for Tonga in early August. Based on the advice from many other cruisers, we will probably change our itinerary so that we go to Australia at the end of this year, and wait to go to New Zealand the end of next year.
Go to Log 2006 Index
This site was last updated 06/04/06