Despite neither of us having any particular desire to visit Bora Bora, having heard nothing good about it, we had to stop there before heading out to the Cook Islands. Tahaa had not had any internet access and there were important e-mails to send, so we were going to drop in, do our e-mails and leave....well that had been the plan.

But when we sailed into the anchorage Sternchen, Ghost and Delos were there already, so we did a little catching up.

 What was Bora Bora like you ask???Was it the paradise it is hyped to be??? I haven’t a clue.

In the 2 days we were there I want ashore to the supermarket once and that was that!!! Just as well I had no interest in touring the island.

The problem with Bora Bora is that all the wonderful pictures you see are of the big resorts. Yes there are motus (islands) scattered around the lagoon, but the beautiful part of the island is cluttered with cheek to cheek resorts, all hogging the waterfront.

Also, unless you wanted to buy pearls (the main street in town was filled with their stores, primarily for the cruise ships) there wasn’t much else there as far as I could see or had read and I had got my pearl and vanilla fix already.

I suppose I am being a little unfair, seeing as I never managed to get ashore to get the full picture. But I was also suffering from Island overload, an overdose of paradise.

 So many islands and they were all starting to blur into one.

We set sail for Rarotonga in the (loose) company of Sterchen and Solar Planet. The passage was a good one, the first 2 days were a cracking sail, with the seas relatively calm. The third day the Pacific was back to her old self, confused with big, but short swells, throwing us around like a cork. The fourth day we were back to motor sailing. 4 days and nights later we sailed safely into Rarotonga.

Remember I was saying about all islands blurring into one, well upon first sighting land, I had to do a double take. If I hadn’t have known differently, I would have sworn we’d taken a wrong turning somewhere and were back in Hiva Oa in the Marquesas.

The harbour is quite small and visiting yachts have to anchor, then tie up to the wharf, stern to. It was a new one for us. As we had to reverse in and Beaujolais is not an easy boat to reverse, Roger told me to drop the anchor and he took the helm....bad plan. I am not made of the stuff of other wives (most boats normally have the wife dropping the anchor and the husband on the helm....shouting abuse, but Roger in his wisdom puts the brawn up on the anchor which is the logical thing to do) and struggled to pull the chain up out of the locker. So we reverted back to our normal anchoring procedure and it went like a dream. A very dignified affair, but then that’s Beaujolais all over.

A small aside, many cruisers have actually bypassed the Cook Islands completely because of the customs requirements. They confiscate all fresh meat, with the exception of New Zealand meat. At least that is what is being bandied about on the net. I will write a blog for cruisers on the actual clearing in process once we have cleared in, which is likely to be Tuesday, being that today is Sunday and tomorrow is a national holiday.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, no sooner had we tied up than I set about making lunch and, of course, putting the kettle on.

 Well that was the intention, but the water pump, which had not been shutting off properly for a few days now, had finally shut off.....permanently.

 So much for the Hollywood shower I had been promising myself!!!

 The fridge pump had also shuffled off its mortal coil and was pushing up daisies. So here we were again, travelling to another exotic port to do boat maintenance!!!!!!

It was then that I knew I had made the right decision. With my leg in a brace I am struggling to get around the boat and in doing so am putting more strain on my other leg and back. The next part of the semi-circumnavigation involves a lot of long sea passages, so after much soul searching I had decided it was time to get off.

It was one of the hardest decisions that I have ever had to make. Deciding to sell up and move to Australia was a piece of cake in comparison. One minute I would think ‘no, you’ve almost made it, stick it out’ then my leg would give me so much pain I would find myself thinking ‘this is no good’. I would also ask myself why I felt the need to carry on when the cons were outweighing the pros? I have to say though, after having been in Rarotonga for a week I find myself thinking ‘this is what i expected the Pacific to be like, open, warm and friendly people, beautiful SANDY beaches etc’ if this is what the rest of the voyage is going to be like, I can safely say, in my opinion, I will be missing the best part of the Pacific. Ah well!

Part of me felt I was welching on my deal with Roger, to sail to Australia with him, letting him down. Also letting myself down, giving up.

The other part would be spoiling it for him as I was miserable when I was hurting.  Also I was putting more of the workload onto Roger and more strain as he tried to make it easy for me. I also didn’t feel competent to deal with an emergency at only 50% fitness level.

Then there was the part of me that doesn’t like to give in, but the other part of me told me to be sensible.

There was the part of me that didn’t want to miss out on Tonga and Niue, the other part of me then said, they’re the same as all the other islands, beaches, swimming, snorkelling and diving. It’s not as if we did much sight-seeing as I can’t walk the distances to see the waterfalls etc. So what was I really missing out on? Plus we could always visit them from Australia relatively cheaply.

 I know I will miss sailing into Bundaburg with Roger, not being part of that, but that’s a small price, after all it was never my dream or my ambition, so I don’t think I have failed.

Sure everyone will say ‘what a shame after you have travelled so far (about 9000 miles I think) but I was never out to prove anything, just to be part of and share my husband’s dream and 3 months out of a 4 year dream isn’t going to change anything.

One by one I worked through all the thoughts that were whirling around in my head. It was an awful strain on me. I also had a deadline to consider. Rarotonga was the last place I could fly home from relatively cheaply and that Darryl could fly in to take over.

Plus Darryl needed as much notice as possible to get his affairs in order. When I had gone to the States he had offered to fly out and crew for Roger to get the boat safely to Oz.

 I tried to be very honest with myself about my motivations and justifications, but the bottom line was that I was jeopardising my physical well being and it was too high a price to pay.

As I sat in the cockpit with Roger, once again, back in the engine room, I actually felt a wave of relief, albeit selfishly, that I was going home to my creature comforts.

Cam, Darryl’s boss has given Darryl a 3 month sabbatical from work and Lynne has very kindly given him leave to go sail the Pacific with his buddy Roger!

I am really pleased, because I know Darryl wants to do this, whereas I am now at the point where I don’t want to do it and I don’t want to spoil Roger’s dream. Plus it will give Roger a different experience for the last part of the trip. A bit of a boy’s only road trip if you like. He won’t have to consider me in his plans and whether I am capable or whether I would want to do something.

So this is probably my penultimate entry. I have loved writing the blog knowing that many people are enjoying our travels.  Roger has been duly instructed that he has to write the blog, so that I, like many of the people who read the blog, can travel vicariously across those last few thousand miles to Australia.

UPDATE: Great news!!! We now have 4 skinks on board!!! And they have been sighted regularly in different locations (indeed baby kinky was found in my empty glass one night).

On the fishing front the score remains the same, however we now have 2 new heavy duty reels, so it is up to Roger and Darryl to do us proud.