Raiatea

Farr Gone Blog
Stuart Cannon
Fri 10 Jun 2011 06:41
May this glorious island please accept my apologies for previously misspelling it's name. It is an island of some note being the original "capital" of Polynesia. That is prior to James Cook leaving a gun with a native who, being newly imbued with power became King and put the seat of power in Tahiti. The difference one gun can make.
Waves are fascinating to me. They are all different and all are constantly changing. Out at sea the waves are symmetrical and well spaced but when they hit an island they tend to bend around it and then clash back together. Where they clash you get all sorts of interesting effects including the occasional wave that will lift the boat up to great heights, and of course gently lowering you down until you are looking up at a wall of water. It is intimidating, on the sail from Moorea I discovered it was bad to look behind, it scared the hell out of you and you lost concentration on the job at hand. Best just to steer and leave imagination to some other time. Today though the short sail we had was through very nodal waves (lots of clashes going on) and it lasted all the way which meant a lot of rolling and sudden ups and downs. Not comfortable but not bad as the breeze was benign blowing around 15 kts. The ever changing shapes of the waves are a bit mesmerizing, like watching a fire in a fireplace with the difference being one is occasionally going to dump on you. When the waves are as mixed up as they get on the leeward side of an island you can't tell which one will get you and the water is warm so it doesn't take long to develop an I don't care about that attitude. Naturally the shorts are stiff with salt and so is the hair so for the good of my fellow man, I shall go and rectify.

Sent from my iPad