Rendez-vous in Raiatea and Start of Leg 5&6 to Suwarrow-Niue-Tonga

Take Off
Jörgen Wennberg
Sat 14 May 2016 11:21
16.44 S
151.26 W

Right after our snorkling on Tahaa we continued further South towards Raiatea and the village of Uturoa. The bad weather continued and when we arrived in Uturoa there were no good places left to neither anchor nor to be in the harbour. Uturoa is a very little harbour on the lee side of the island which means that all boats are more or less exposed to the wind. During our stay the wind was extra strong, bringing up gusts up to over 30 knots and lots of rain. Luckily we found this very last spot, being the third boat lined up upon Aliena and our Finnish friends Mearra Nieida. So good to have access to land in this weather. However other ones were not as lucky and had to anchor outside totally exposed to the strong wind ;-(.


 

We had a little walk in the town of Uturoa which was not very nice. It was ok however charmless. Unfortunately the weather was so bad and so windy that the whole impression of Raiatea was not the best. Alex and Inez sitting with a raiatean woman preparing a present for the family.

  

Our second night World ARC had organised a Rendez-vous at the Cubana Restaurant with dinner and local dancing. The performance was really good with lots of nice music and happy dancers!

  

  

The performance was so good that they managed to shake the whole of the World ARC fleet so we were all on the dance floor too!

 

Alex and Inez had their own fun activities and managed even to engage other crews from the fleet. Inez is playing memory with Cameron and Alex is playing “plus plus” with Derv.

  

Even the big grown ups from the yacht Alcedo of Ryme were amazed by their games ;-)

  

 

The day after in the same rainy weather we had the Skipper’s Briefing at the Cubana Restaurant briefing us about the anchorages in Suwarrow, Niue and Tonga and more information about the passage, etc.

 
   

The 14th of May Leg 5 & 6 started, however only 3 started officially in our class: Wishanger II, Meermowe and us. Wonder how the competition will be…haha…

The start was anything else than glamorous: rain, rain, rain and more rain. At first it gusted up to 25 knots than once arriving behind Tahaa, the wind dropped to 0.0 knots with still all the rain pouring down. Some had to be properly covered….

   

… while others did not notice at all what was happening outside of the boat!