Astra Blog: Rarotonga, Cook Islands to Palmerston Island 13.09.08 – 15.09.08

At 1600 we departed Avatiu Harbour, Rarotonga in company with Zulu a Canadian yacht which we met in the Society Islands.  There had been some slightly drunken chat the night before about having a bit of a race.  Zulu got a bit of a cheeky head start while Astra’s crew were still trying to put the tender onboard.  But only half an hour behind at the start, Astra reaching at 9knots in 20-25knots of wind soon managed to close the gap.  This was helped slightly by the fact that Zulu’s chart plotter was down and they were in fact heading more towards Japan than Palmerston.  Once the correct course to steer had been kindly given to them by Astra, both teams had an absolutely cracking sail.

We were in sight of one another for the first night but then Zulu who were suffering from technical problems (their chart plotter had decided to stop working again) had to slow down a bit!  This meant Astra continued to open her lead and true to form we arrived in the dark at 1am!  We were met at the moorings by Edward and Simon Marsters our hosts and Zulu arrived a little later at 4am and were welcomed in by Jeremy and Ash.